Follow Up Boston Globe Article
Tragic fate met on a mountain
Frostbitten spouse recounts errors that killed wife on hike
By Mac Daniel, Globe Staff, 3/30/2004
Dressed and equipped for just a 9-mile day hike over the summit of three New Hampshire peaks, Russell and Brenda Cox kept heading up toward the summit of the first, Mount Lafayette, even after descending hikers warned that conditions were deteriorating. When the Andover couple finally decided to turn back, Russell Cox said yesterday, they headed down the wrong trail.
That last error, on March 21, led to the Andover couple getting trapped near the summit for nearly 48 hours in a late-winter storm.
Sitting in a hospital wheelchair next to a framed photograph from his wedding seven years ago, Cox, 43, yesterday recounted the critical hiking mistakes that led to his wife's final, shivering moments in a cave near the Mount Lafayette summit.
At times tearfully, Cox spoke at length about the experience during a news conference at Massachusetts General Hospital, where he is being treated for frostbite and hypothermia.
Brenda Cox, also 43, was unresponsive when rescuers used a helicopter to rescue the two from the mountainside. She was pronounced dead at a nearby hospital. Her funeral was scheduled for this morning in North Billerica.
Also present yesterday was a New Hampshire Fish & Game official, who said the fatal hiking trip on the 5,260-foot peak is under investigation by his agency and the New Hampshire attorney general's office. Under a 1999 law, Cox could be charged with negligence and required to pay thousands of dollars for the cost of his rescue.
"In my opinion, it was a case of a failure to turn," said Lieutenant Todd Bogardus of New Hampshire Fish & Game, who initiated the two-day rescue operation. "Upon trying to summit on Mount Lafayette, there may have been a period when they should have made a different decision and turned to go back."
The Coxes did not bring a sleeping bag, a tent, or a stove on their day hike, items that Fish & Game officials said could have saved Brenda's life. They were not wearing any insulating layers of clothing, nor did they leave an itinerary with anyone before leaving the trailhead.
Asked about the investigation, Cox said he hadn't thought about it.
"It doesn't concern me," said Cox, whose fingertips were still purple from frostbite. "I'm very happy to be alive. I miss Brenda with all my heart and I'm glad she lived the active life that she lived and that she died doing what she loved."
Cox said he and his wife hiked the White Mountains on numerous occasions before traveling to the Lafayette Campground on March 21 to take a popular day-hike loop that runs over the summits of Mount Lafayette, Mount Lincoln, and Mount Haystack before returning to the parking lot.
When the couple reached Greenleaf Hut en route to the first summit, descending hikers there told them conditions were deteriorating on Mount Lafayette. Despite the news, the couple continued climbing.
After being told by more hikers returning from the summit that conditions were "too bad," Cox said he and his wife decided to curtail their route and return after reaching the Mount Lafayette summit, skipping the other two peaks.
A group of ascending hikers from Quebec passed them as they neared the treeline, Cox said, and before he and his wife reached the summit, they met the same group descending, saying the conditions were worsening. Now above treeline, Russell and Brenda Cox decided to turn around and head back to the parking lot, but they mistakenly headed down the wrong trail. With the wind picking up and snowfall becoming heavier, the couple quickly lost sight of the cairns -- the rock piles that mark the trail routes on the bleak, treeless mountainside.
"We would forage in one direction, return to the trail, forage in another direction, look around, see if we could see the trail marker, return to the trail, and eventually we were able to follow the cairns all the way down to this junction," Cox said, using a map to show his route.
When they unexpectedly reached a trail junction, he said, "we realized something was wrong."
With their ski goggles frosted over and conditions worsening, they carved a cave in a large drift of snow and decided to wait out the storm. There, out of the wind, the couple huddled together Sunday night, hugging and talking.
"We were in a position where we could hug each other, and I remember I could get up close to Brenda's neck and breathe real slowly against her carotid artery and it would warm her up," Cox said. "And we just talked about everything. We talked about everything except for the possibility that we weren't going to make it."
The next morning, despite little change in the weather, the couple left the snow cave. But their clothes had become damp, he said, and the high winds and freezing temperatures froze the outer layers, making the couple immediately uncomfortable.
They returned to find their snow cave had drifted over, Cox said, and after finding a shallow rock shelter, Brenda Cox crawled into its deepest part, and he turned his back to her "to protect her," bracing his legs against rock.
"We could talk to each other, but we were not facing each other," Cox said. "During the middle of the night we were both shivering a lot. The shivers would come and go. And we were talking. And at one point she stopped moving, and I could see her legs were right behind me. And when I put my hand on her legs, they were no longer warm and she had just stopped moving altogether."
"At that point, I realized it was out of my hands and I just had to keep thinking positive."
Cox said he tried to get up and walk, was overcome with nausea, and returned to the cave.
"I just sat and waited," he said, "either to join Brenda or to be rescued."
A few hours later, Cox said, he heard the helicopter overhead that would rescue him.
© Copyright 2004 Globe Newspaper Company.
[end news article, begin Peter Miller comments]
Even with their lack of insulating clothes, their ignoring the warnings of three parties while pushing on to the summit, their failure to use a compass (or correctly read it) exiting the summit, the Coxes could have extricated themselves from their dilemma by turning left down the Skookumchuck Trail when they reached that junction. This trail would quickly have dropped them below treeline. IMO, it is the easiest, most sheltered route up/down Lafayette. Even if less packed down, it offered an immediate bailout. Getting off the ridge and out of the wind is a no brainer. Why didn't the Coxes descend Skookumchuck?
They could not have been hypothermic that early on. Even if the trail signs had been obscured with snow, they should have known which trail this was and the basic facts about it from prior experience or pre-hike prep. Did they not choose it because it wouldn't bring them back to their car? The more I learn about this tragedy, the more plausible this possibility seems. These unfortunate souls seem to have been woefully unprepared for the challenge they took on in nearly every way conceivable.
