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Six Ways to Weather the Mountain
By Charles R. "Butch" Farabee, Jr.
 Butch Farabee is assistant superintendent of Montana's Glacier National Park and author of Death, Daring, and
Disaster: Search and Rescue in the National Parks. Since
1965 he has worked in ten different United States national parks
and served a four-year stint as the U.S. National Park Service's
emergency services coordinator.
Think you're king (or queen) of the mountain? Think again,
because the mountain doesn't care. Last year in U.S. national parks
alone, nearly 7,000 people needed to be rescued. An additional
25,000 required some form of emergency medical service. And it's
not just the weekend warriors who get hurt.
In early October the
world lost one of its greatest mountaineers when Alex Lowe was swept away by a massive avalanche. If it can happen to the best, it can
happen to you. All the more reason to follow these simple tips.
| 1. |
Don't bite off more than you can chew. |
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Virtually every week of the year, rangers at the Grand Canyon deal
with hikers who aren't aware of their physical limitations. While
standing on an overlook on the South Rim many decide they could
very easily hike down to the Colorado River, far below. What
hikers often forget is the grueling grind of the 4,000-foot (1,220-meter) climb back up. |
| 2. |
Research your route in depth. |
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Rangers in Utah's rugged Zion National Park recently recovered the
bodies of two Scout leaders from the foaming waters at the bottom
of a 6-foot-wide (1.8-meter-wide), 300-foot-deep (92-meter-deep)
gorge. With them—but miraculously unharmed—were five
teenagers who had previously rappelled only off of school
bleachers.
Had the boys tried to complete their journey, they
would have had to rappel through 15 frigid waterfalls, several of
them 150 feet (46 meters) high. They wouldn't have made it. More
important, had the adults researched their route, they would have
learned—the easy way—that it was treacherous for novice
climbers. |
| 3. |
Let someone know where you are going and when you expect to be back. |
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Be generous with your expected return time and always stick with the plan. Like firemen who respond to false alarms only to be killed
in traffic wrecks, rescuers have died searching for people who
didn't need rescuing—people who didn't even know they were
considered lost. |
| 4. |
Check the weather and prepare for the worst. |
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Exposure and hypothermia are probably the biggest killers of mountaineers. Every year rangers in Yosemite can count on having
to rescue otherwise competent climbers from an early fall
snowstorm, because these rock jocks failed to look at the weather
forecasts. |
| 5. |
Don't freak out. |
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Recently a visitor to Yellowstone found himself confused after taking a wrong turn onto a game trail. Once the trail fizzled out, he
panicked and became unduly frightened about being in the deep
woods with "wolves and bears." He literally ran over a cliff to his
death. So always pause and think about your next move, should
you make it or not. |
| 6. |
Don't depend on technology. |
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One techie recently got caught in a rain forest deluge on Washington State's Olympic Peninsula. He hoped his cell phone
would save him. He would have been better served by a good set of
water- and windproof outerwear. His cell phone got wet, so did he.
The battery died, so did he. |
Top
Photograph courtesy of Charles R. "Butch" Farabee
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The Climbing Pub
