Three hikers missing on Mt. Whitney

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And another thread from the other Whitney Portal BB -

The post from Doug Sr. is among the more informed. Doug and his wife own the Portal Store, as well as the Hostel in Lone Pine.

We've been having a period of stormy, unsettled weather, and it will likely continue for the next several days.
 
Looking at the webcam earlier the summit was in the clear. I can see now the clouds have once again moved in.

Hopefully they are in the summit hut.

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Looking at the webcam... Hopefully they are in the summit hut.
A little off topic, but I am intrigued that a place like this, (with no large power source), has a web cam. Does anyone know if it is powered by solar panels? And does it transmit a picture every few minutes to a monitoring station somewhere? And finally, how robust are these units, that they can work at this elevation, with the wind and weather conditions being pretty extreme?
 
Tom -

That webcam isn't up on the mountain. Rather, it's in Lone Pine. If I'm not mistaken, there are actually two webcams pointed at Whitney - one is located on the Doug Thompson's hostel (near the light) and the other is a bit south at the Lone Pine film museum building.
 
Kevin –

Your link didn’t work for me.

Does the state of California or the counties responsible for SAR have a mechanism to recover cost of rescues?
I’m thinking when the smoke clears, and there’s a full accounting of the events, there may be some outrage over this one.
 
I’m thinking when the smoke clears, and there’s a full accounting of the events, there may be some outrage over this one.

Craig, I might have missed something; Other than the one mention of "needing a lighter", I don't see that these guys did much wrong. Do you just think they weren't prepared or made a bad decision ? Like I said, I might have missed something.
 
Craig -

Am not sure why it didn't, but in any case - go to news.sierrawave.net. The site doesn't require a login.

Chip - I think what Chip may be alluding to is a video they took of themselves at around 11.8K'. It was snowing, with reducing visibility. Looks like they were a bit below Trail Camp, but can't tell for sure due to the snow.

Here's the link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fqXZFrhJAAU&feature=player_embedded

When I watched it I had the same reaction as I did this summer after an Audi TT passed me at very high speed, endangering me and others, only to see that vehicle in a spectacular rollover about 1/2 hour later. Fortunately, no one was hurt in either case, but ...

As for charging for SAR in California - it doesn't happen.

There are two other hikers missing in approximately the same area, a father/son team. I hope they're found OK.
 
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Good that those three are safe. Now hoping for a good outcome on the father and son missing in the same area. There's a comraderie in the hiking community, for sure, and it intensifies if you've been a visitor to the area, I think. Mt. Whitney is a wild place in contrast to New England.
 
Craig, I might have missed something; Other than the one mention of "needing a lighter", I don't see that these guys did much wrong. Do you just think they weren't prepared or made a bad decision ? Like I said, I might have missed something.

The details are very sketchy right now but hopefully there will be a full accounting.

1. The conditions on Whitney this time of year (tweener season) are very unpredictable. Nice down low – fresh snow, ice, windy, stormy up high. There was predicted bad weather for their hiking timeline (unclear as to what the forecast was). They continued hiking up as the weather turned bad (didn’t turn around). The other 2 groups turned around due to the conditions. The other 2 groups were seen descending past an upper camp late at night (indicating a slow ascent without summiting).

2. The group flew in the day before their hike and didn’t acclimatize.

3. The summit hut is locked off season, maybe year round. They had to have broken it to get out of the weather. Their supplies consisted of a day pack (unclear as to what that consisted of). The hut had a food stash inside that kept them fed for the (4 days ?) they were there. They probably didn’t have the necessary clothing to spend a night on the mountain much less (4 nights?).If the summit hut wasn’t there, this probably would have turned out much differently.

I’m thinking this group was underprepared for the conditions they were likely to encounter and continued ascending into worsening weather just to summit.

Like I said the details are sketchy and perhaps I have the facts wrong but hopefully we’ll get a full accounting so there may be some learning from this. These guys were pretty lucky I think.
 
If the summit hut wasn’t there, this probably would have turned out much differently.

I’m thinking this group was underprepared for the conditions they were likely to encounter and continued ascending into worsening weather just to summit.

Okay. Agreed. Happy they found the hut. The entire group seems to have been on a "City Slickers" type adventure quest, with the low and high point stuff, which, I'm sure, added to these 3 being compelled to summit.

Good Karma out to the other two.
 
3. The summit hut is locked off season, maybe year round. They had to have broken it to get out of the weather. Their supplies consisted of a day pack (unclear as to what that consisted of). The hut had a food stash inside that kept them fed for the (4 days ?) they were there. They probably didn’t have the necessary clothing to spend a night on the mountain much less (4 nights?).If the summit hut wasn’t there, this probably would have turned out much differently.

Craig - I'm not sure the room on the western side of hut (the one to the right of the register box) is locked during the off season, or even has the capability to be locked. I know that snow frequently blows in there, sometimes nearly filling the room. I believe there is a smaller room, to the left of the register, which is kept locked by the USPS and contains emergency gear. I do know that when I was last there (Sept 15th), the door handle on the larger room was nearly falling off.

Personally, I rarely go into the room when I'm up there - it's just too damn cold.
 
It appears one of the 3 hikers texted his GF when they arrived at the hut telling her they were at the hut and needed food, water and warm clothing. That explains why the others in their party jumped in their cars and left the TH once they returned.

Apparently SARs knew they were in the shelter. Probably no outrage in Cal. on this one. If an outer-stater did this in NH.... :eek:

On a side note:

I have been following the story of a missing hiker in CO. He disappeared in the Holy Cross wilderness 4 weeks ago without a trace. In a lengthy thread on 14ers, “CCSARCAP” posted the following stats from a book called “Lost Person Behavior”.


One day after a person is reported missing his/her chances of being deceased is 50%
Two days 74%
Three days 83%
Four days 92%
Five days 100%---Although there have been mentioned a few miracles

I found these stats very interesting.
 
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