Hypothermia

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DougPaul said:
And don't forget, rational thought is an early casualty of hypothermia...
Assume you are mildly-to-medium hypothermic. Building a fire requires time and skill--can you afford the time and muster the skill in your present condition?.
Doug

My irrational thoughts were the thing that made me fully appreciate what a fine mess I was in and that I had best get help. I knew my thinking was irrational but could not stop it. Also you are so right about the rapid slide. I could no more have started a fire than I could put my arm in the sleeve of my down jacket or manipulate my boot to get it on. I am still amazed when I think of how incapacitated I was as I am normally a very self-reliant person who does not ask for help. It was a very humbling experience to be crawling in the snow to get assistance.
I wonder, Kevin, if you were lying unconscious if they would have risen to the occasion. It would be a shame if you had to get to that state before the chopper would come for you. This could also decrease your chanced of survival.
 
Been there...

Not much more to add, except that my only experience with it was on July 19 or 20, 1998 (yep, July) on Adams. Took a good 3 hours to recover in Madison Hut. Never ever ever ever ever skimp on clothing or judgment on a Presi hike!

Weatherman
 
Hypo at 19

Well, I almost died from hypothermia when I was 19. I was hiking up Pikes Peak and had a peanut-butter and jelly sandwich and a quart of water for a 14 mile hike the August I turned 19 or 20. I was not a "real" hiker back then and severly underestimated just about everything that one could. The temp. were in the 80's at the trailhead and in the 30's at the summit and I wore shorts and a cotton (horrors of horrors!) tee and had only a shell with me.

Luckily, I happened to have met a real trail Angel while hiking. He looked like John Muir and was in his 70's or 80's. He only wanted to go to the 1/2 way point (a Ranger Station), but said that I "inspired" him to go for the summit that he had always wanted to hike up to. This turned out to be a blessing for me as I got ill about a mile or so below the summit.

I sat down on a rock- hallucinating- having gone straight from being cold to hypothermic with out going thru the uncontrollable shaking stage (yes, that can happen) and told my companion to just go ahead without me. But he refused and threatened and cajoled me until I finally got up and started to walk again. It was late afternoon when we both made the summit and then rode the inclined rail back down. We parted ways and never saw eachother again.

I don't even know his name now, but I am certain he saved my life by refusing to leave me behind.

Now I am a seasoned hiker and have seen hikers as foolhardy as I was "back when" hiking around the trails.
 
OK, granted, this is a redo from a previous thread but it probably still has some use here so here it is with some slight editing. Sorry. Guess I'm getting a little lazy. :D

FWIW,

SAR-EMT40 said:
One of the things that makes hypothermia so insidious is how we tend to ignore it and misidentify it. By definition hypothermia is a lowering of your core body temperature from what is normal. The thing to keep in mind is that all your bodies reactions with respect to hypothermia is core driven. By that I mean, you cannot put your hand on a piece of ice and that alone will cause you to shiver. You might give yourself frostbite but the only way you start shivering is if your core temperature has dropped sufficiently. Shivering is one of the first signs of hypothermia. I have been taught that actually the first is a "mental degradation". I know this will sound corny but follow this through. A group of people standing around. One guy standing there shivering and the other says “you look cold?” The guy says “Yeah, its freaking cold out man”. The other says “why don’t you put your hat on?” The shivering guy says “NO I’M OK”. Anyone seen this happen? I know I have. Hell, I’ve done it. Fact is. He is not OK. He is already got a core temperature low enough that his body is responding. It is responding by shivering. This shivering is your bodies way of making your muscles generate heat. This is how the body responds to hypothermia in its first stages. This is when to treat it but his "mental degradation" is telling him, “NO I’M OK”. He doesn’t recognize how much trouble he is in. This is more than just a warning sign. It is actual hypothermia. It’s just that we see it and ignore it so often many of us don’t recognize it as such. Are you going to die in minutes, hours? This obviously depends on the conditions, but make no mistake you are hypothermic and headed in that direction unless you take corrective action. Put a hat on, change out of wet clothes. Put on extra layers.

From there of course it will get worse if no corrections are made. You experience a loss of fine motor control, if you haven't already, so you find it harder to tie your shoes, change your wet jacket and other simple tasks. This is directly attributable to your extremities being vasoconstricted and shunted, again, core driven. Your hand muscles are receiving less blood so they cannot perform the way they normally do and the way you think they should be performing. Everything takes longer to do and is more of a challenge. Yes you can stop your shivering at this stage (first stage) by force of will.

You are in stage two when you have a loss of gross muscle coordination and at this point you cannot stop shivering. You also suffer from the ‘umbles. They are still conscious but will stumble when they walk, mumble when they talk, and fumble when they attempt to do simple things. You are getting near the point of no return. Making a fire at this point would be almost impossible. The lack of gross motor skills of your hands, arms, fingers and legs would not allow you to grasp a match and strike. Your chances of being able to walk around picking up wood to make the fire and set it up to create a fire are almost certainly all gone by now. You need help. You better have a friend around.

End stage consists of unconsciousness and shivering has stopped. The body cannot re-warm itself at this point. It is almost impossible to help someone in the field to and bring them back to consciousness. The best you can do is to try to keep them from losing more body heat. Change them out of wet clothes, put them in dry clothes and put them in a hypothermia wrap and evacuate them rapidly and treat them very gently.

One other statistic I will leave you with is that any person, who has a core temperature change (up or down) of seven degrees, has a 50/50 chance of surviving.

Keith

Keith
 
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Yep - on a pressie traverse attempt. It was ideal hypo weather - in the mid to upper 30's above treeline, steady rain and wind.

1) cold rain all day, windy, wet as all hell
2) due to rain, developed blisters - was drinking the night before and forgot to put on my liner socks. :eek: :eek:
3) due to blisters - hiking slower than normal - not staying as warm

I pretty sure I was at very early stages . The thing that saves us was eating/drinking, and calling it a day before things got worse.

ended up bailing down the ammo trail.
 
Man, these stories are starting to freak me out. What psychopath started this thread?

Two quick hypothermia stories:

Whitewater canoe race in northern RI, decked out from head to toe in cotton. Late March, snowed the day before. Temps about 40. Ice-laden branches drooping out across the river. Wife says, "Don't do it, it's too cold." I condescendingly pat wife on head and tell her I'll be fine. One of these days I'm gonna start listening to this girl. Recreational canoe with very low gunwales (the low gunwales proved very costly). Reach the second or third set of rapids and water comes pouring over the sides. The canoe doesn't flip, but sinks with us sitting upright in our seats. When we sink to the point where the water reaches my chest, it physically stuns me like few things ever have before or since. The next five or ten minutes is (to steal from Poe) a rapid "descent into the maelstrom". Standing chest deep in ~40 degree water, all available energy is spent freeing the canoe, which the current has pinned under a half-sunken log. When we finally free the canoe and get back in, we still have about 2 miles to paddle to the finish line.
Mistakes...
1) Inappropriate clothing
2) I had no business doing class-2 rapids, in that weather, with my lack of experience.


Ocean State Marathon (yes, Rhode Island is big enough to run 26.2 miles without having to go round and round in circles). Cold October day. Cotton tshirt, lots of sweat, lots of cold wind, and about 4 hours of stupidity. At the finish line, the medical staff takes my temp, which is so low it doesn't even register on the mercury thermometer. Good news, they give me a free long-sleeve race t-shirt to warm up.
Mistakes...
1) Inappropriate clothing (notice a trend here?)
2) Not quitting at about mile-16, where I passed within 1/2 mile of my house.
 
OK luckily this didn’t happen to me and I usually don’t relay these kinds of stories but this one is special. We got toned out for a call for a “person with finger stuck in car on the off ramp EXIT XX off Interstate 84 eastbound”. It was nighttime, it was cold, it was rainy and I had just settled in and was planning on staying nice and warm the rest of the night. I have seen enough crushed fingers and was planning on passing this one to someone else with less experience.

A few minutes later we get a little more information. “His finger is apparently stuck in the gas tank”. OK, so I’m a sucker for a good trauma story. :D At that point they had me. I had to see this one and hear the story. I get there and it is a UCONN engineering student that apparently ran out of gas. He then walked the short distance to a gas station to get gas and filled a container of gas and brought it back to the car. Now he opens the gas cap and looks into the filler neck and sees the little flap that so many filler necks have and thinks that the gas cannot get past it. So he uses his finger and pushes through the hole to open it and the flap proceeds to lock his finger in the hole so he cannot remove it. So here he stands, on the Interstate off ramp, with literally thousands of people driving by him and because of his location and embarrassment and his inability to move much he stands there for apparently a couple of hours in the cold, rain, wind and dark trying to find a way out of his predicament. By the time he figures out what a desperate situation he is in he uses his cell phone, which lucky for him is in a pocket he can reach, to call a friend who comes to help. Unfortunately the friend cannot do anything either so he finally calls us. By the time we get him unstuck he is not only seriously cramped up from the cold, rain and position he has been in but he is also so hypothermic I can’t get a reading of his temp on the tympanic thermometer. Now that wasn’t a surprise because his ears were so cold I figured I wasn’t going to get a reading. I also didn’t feel like making him suffer the added indignity of me having to place a rectal thermometer in him to find out what his temperature really was. :eek: Anyways I warmed him up, suggested he might consider another career besides engineering and sent him on his way. He was really a great kid and had a great sense of humor that just got caught in a very embarrassing situation. :eek: What does this have to do with hiking? Nothing I guess except for the hypothermia and yes it was one of the funniest things I had ever seen and maybe just be aware hypothermia can occur anywhere. :D

Keith
 
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When was a kid (13-14?) I went on a all-day hike and after returning, swam in a large snowmelt-fed lake (Bowman Lake, Glacier Ntl Pk). Was shivering for the next few hours (though dinner and until I went to bed).

The hike drained my fuel tank and the cold water chilled me. It was mild hypothermia, but all I knew was that I was cold. Don't recall any mental effects. (It was long before I knew what hypothermia was.)

Doug
 
I tip-toed around hypothermia earlier this spring on some hikes. I wrote a trip report called "cheating hypothermia" because that's what I was doing. There were a couple of hikes where I was pretty wet and cold, hands totally numb... I was running scenarios in my head "okay, if I have to stop here I'm going to drop my pack dig out the tarp, get under it and change clothes, then I'm going to..." "if I stumble and hurt myself here's what I'm going to do...". I was also running mental checks "Alright, I'm cold, but how's my balance?, am I still funtioning okay?". It was a little scary, but I think it was under control.
 
I had a bout with mild hypothermia while kayaking in the Bahamas. Go figure!
I had several factors that contributed. I was dehydrated-I had been sick in the morning. We did a hard paddle across 4 miles of open water in very rough conditions,and I was pretty rocky before we even started. When we arrived at our destination I climbed out of the boat,soaked,wearing a shortie wetsuit. The temp was about 72o and the wind was screaming. It didn't take long to find myself in trouble,as I stood in the doorway of our beachfront room,in the wind. I began to shake uncontrollably,and couldn't tell my wife what was happening. I guess all the training paid off,as I recognized what was going on,and ran into the shower,pulled the faucet full blast to hot,slumped to the floor,and waited. It was amazing-in a matter of minutes I was fine,once the warm water hit me.
The scary part is the loss of motor function-I couldn't phone for help if I had to,and I could barely speak.
So...hypothermia can happen anywhere!
 
One of my earlier trips (1994) the Monday after Thanksgiving. Two friends & I attempted Flume Slide with inadequate gear. 3-5 inches of snow fell Sunday night switched over to rain on drive up. Cotton under raingear for me, friend had water resistant jacket not waterproof.

At base of slide I could not get up first tricky spot covered with verglas. Thinner faster guys behind me getting a snack, I had carried my extra food around my middle so I went ahead knowing they would catch up.

Never thought about walking in woods a little bit to go around verglas covered rock. We also had to back in CT by 7:00 or 8:00 so we had reached our turnaround time & bailed.

I was the back of a small car, dry clothes & heat cranked & still shivered from Flume Visitor center lot to just south of Manchester, NH. If we had not had a reason to be back in CT & figured out the walk in the woods, (an early sign there IMO) we probably would have got into real trouble.
 
I had a mild enough experience this past spring to have a newfound respect for hypothermia after hiking Big Slide. Heading back to the Garden from John's Brook Lodge it started raining. I did have layers, but since it was warm, I was sweaty, and I was almost done with the hike, the rain felt good and I opted to just get soaked. By the time I got to the Garden my fingers weren't working so well to sign out and I found myself having a hard time conversing with groups heading out. I wasn't shivering yet, but I definitely felt "off." I luckily learned my lesson about 1/4 mile from my car.
 
We were doing Wittenberg-Cornell-Slide, 10.5 miles, and starting at 10 a.m. from the Wittenberg trail head. I don't know if you've ever done this hike, but it was my first time out with the snowshoes.
We bear booted the approach to Wittenberg and had to mount snowshoes for the last mile or so of the ascent. I'm still getting in condition for these hikes, so I was pretty tired already at that point. In the col between Wittenberg and Cornell there's a small vertical climb they call the "chute". At that point on of the girls on the hike who wasn't too confident on crampons was afraid to go up the ice. The leader was chopping steps into the ice with an ice ax and in the mean time I was starting to get chilled. (Oh, didn't I mention--I wasn't really dressed properly. Had a heavy cotton top on under my shell and the temp was in the teens with 40 mph gusting winds) and I was soaked in sweat. Also, my gloves were wet (no mittens or liners) and my fingers kept getting numb when we'd stop.
I was near the back of the line and decided I'd switch out my snowshoes for crampons. I unhooked my right snowshoe and stepped out of it and immediately sank to my hips in the snow! (I guess the snowshoes were working!) One of the other hikers helped me get up and I found firmer footing to change into the crampons.
It took almost an hour to finally get everyone up the chute. We summitted Cornell an after getting down into the col between it and Slide took a break for a snack. Another mistake I was making was not eating enough, and my water was all ice cold.
Following the break we headed out again. On the approach to the climb up Slide the snow suddenly deepened again and I found myself back in up to my crotch. I managed to back out of the snow and change over to snowshoes again. Now I was starting to feel the effects, though subtle, of hypothermia. I was getting very tired, felt sleepy, and my lack of conditioning was showing. I effectively hit a wall. Most everyone was well ahead of me and I was struggling to get up the mountain. My heart was pounding like a sledgehammer and I was breathing like I was trying to summit Everest without oxygen.
I was taking 4 or 5 steps and having to lean over my poles to rest, then repeating. Also, being my first time on snowshoes, I was having trouble properly kicking steps into the snow. I'd get 20 feet up and suddenly slide back down 10 or more. It was also starting to get dark. One of the younger hikers came back to stay with me as I struggled onward. He suggested I stop to put on a headlamp. I knew I had packed one because I changed the batteries the night before, but the confusion from the hypothermia must have been getting to me because no matter how hard I looked I couldn't find it. So now I was exhausted, hypothermic, and without a light!!! I felt the fringes of panic want to set in but pushed it aside (I've dealt with panic before while working as a Divemaster here on Long Island).
So the guy who was staying behind, turned on his light and urged me on. As we got close to the summit one of the other hikers came back and helped to light the way in front of me. Part of the final approach is a side hill traverse. All I could see was the steep snow going off to my left and then blackness. Meanwhile I kept sliding on the snowshoes towards the abyss and that prompted me to really pay attention to every step.
We finally reached the summit where the leader said he'd sent the rest of the group on ahead to the cars. He told me to take a break, eat and drink something, and gave me a spare headlamp, some liner gloves and a pair of mittens.
As soon as I took off my pack and felt the icy wind hit my overheated and wet back I began shivering uncontrollably. I informed him I was hypothermic and was shivering badly, whereupon he started shoving chocolate and tang at me and said to eat and drink and let's go!
I donned my pack and took off at a fast pace down the mountain and eventually reached the cars--11 hours after we started! I couldn't wait to get in and get warm!
So, I learned a bunch of valuable lessons that day. I returned to the Catskills a week or 2 later and did Lone and Rocky, a 2 peak bushwhack, with the same leader. This time I was more properly dressed, paid more attention to taking off clothes as I warmed up, and carried my water and Gatorade insulated. This hike went much better.
 
KayakDan said:
So...hypothermia can happen anywhere!

For me it was on Cannon, two years ago this month, hiking through the mist, not even a rain, just a mist, but I still got soaked through. The wind was howling on top of the mountain. When I reached the lodge I was shivering involuntarily and had real trouble unlacing my boots. With some difficulty I changed out of my wet gear into the dry spare clothes I had enough sense to pack in plastic bags and stuff into my backpack. Before leaving the lodge I ate some chili, and a grilled cheese sandwich, and drank a hot chocolate. Recovered nicely and finished the hike, but I'll never forget that experience of losing the dexterity to unlace my boots.
 
I had a weird delayed reaction experience in the ADKs last summer, although I'm not sure it was hypothermia. Jay H and I had spent the night before near Flowed Lands, and then we had hiked Cliff and Redfield that day and walked back out to my car at Upper Works. It had rained in the night, and I got pretty wet from all the blowdown on Cliff. It had been a cool day and I had felt a little chilled a couple times, but nothing too bad. From Redfield back on out I was very tired, but felt warm and more dried out at least.

After the hike I was exhausted and very hungry. We drove back to Keene and got to the Noonmark Diner a few minutes before ten, just in time to order food. I had been driving w/ the window down, and had started to feel cool again in the car. At the Diner, I was pretty cold all of a sudden, even shivering a little. Of course the AC was on inside, since it was August. I ended up eating wearing a fleece jacket, down vest and my balaclava! After I ate I felt well enough to drive to Spencer's BBQ. For a few minutes there, it was pretty weird though. Maybe just lack of calories + exhaustion.

Matt
 
mcorsar said:
At the Diner, I was pretty cold all of a sudden, even shivering a little.
A friend of mine usually gets the shivers during dinner at the restaurant after a winter daytrip. (No hypothermia during the hike.) Don't know why. She just puts on a jacket and warms up over the next 10-15 min or so.

Doug
 
A couple of years back, my brother, cousin and I were planning on hiking Wright, Algonquin and Iroquois from Marcy Dam via Whale's Tail and back down via Lake Colden and Avalanche Pass.
It was August, and down by the Dam it was about 65-70 degrees out. We have all been hiking for years and know what the essentials items to carry are, especially for High Peaks.
We kept up a good pace going up the trail to Wright, hiking in shorts and t-shirts. It got cooler and cooler as we approached tree line. During this time, I added a long-sleeve polypro shirt and once we left the treeline, I added a thin, nylon, waterproof anorak on top. By my estimate (and I'm not usually that far off) it was about 45-50 degrees and the wind was moving at about 20 mph.
Once we hit the summit, they were a little shagged out and needed a break, so they took shelter in the lee of the rock and began to break out some food. I wanted to see the crash site and take pictures of the plaque, so I asked the nice associate ranger who was up there where I might locate it. When I left, my brother was putting on a jacket and my cousin was getting some food in his belly; he had on a long-sleeve shirt at this point.
I found the crash site, checked out the wreckage, shot some pictures and made my way back.
When I got back, the guys had their packs on and the associate ranger was putting her pack on as well. She was saying, "we need to get him below treeline now." My cousin was shivering like crazy, his lips were blue and he was getting a little uncoordinated. I don't know how close he was or what stage of hypothermia he might have been in, but he was in bad shape.
I looked at him in disbelief. "Where's your jacket?" I asked.
"I left it in the lean-to."
"Why would you do that?!"
"It was so warm down there, I didn't think I needed it."
"Is that shirt cotton?"
It was soaked with sweat.
"Yeah."
"What?!! Are you serious?!"
I reached in my pack, pulled out a wool cap and fleece vest and handed them to him. (I think I might have even had gloves for him; I know I had extra socks that I use as gloves...) Then I gave him my hiking poles to help him balance on the way down.
Once we got below treeline, the wind abated and he began to warm up. He ate, drank some and steadily improved.
We scratched the other peaks for the day and slowly made our way back down to the lean-to.
I haven't done Algonquin or Iroquois yet, but I have gone back out hiking with my cousin. Now, however, I check to make sure he has the proper gear in his pack every time.
He always does now.
 
Many years ago while fishing in maine on a backcountry pond I had crashed late in the afternoon after making the drive overnight and fishing all day. My buddy built himself a raft and went fishing instead. He fished half in, half out of the 60 degree water for 4-5 hours. He was a tough kid and would wade fish in jeans while shivering all day. Towards dusk he dropped his rod and could not see to retrieve it so he anchored his raft and started to swim to shore. A third person in our group was wade fishing about 100 feet away from him stated that he started to panic and scream for help. He managed to get a hold of him but did not have the strength to pull him to shore.(He was getting over a severe case of giardias that had hospitalized him). My friend drowned that evening. I could never get my head around what happened until this spring. I was fishing on a warm 40 degree day. The ice was still in the bogs so I could access some of my favorite trout water.l The fishing was amazing, I was catching fish on dries drifted downstream as I stood in thigh deep freezing water. I lost track of time and finally broke off my fly in a fish. I found that I could not use my fingers to tie on a new fly. I started back toward my truck stumbling, dizzy, nauseous. When I reached the road I was sweating and could not stand any more. I started to think about sleeping and staying right where I was and taking off my waders as I was pouring sweat and felt very hot. Something in my head told me I had to get moving. I crawled the remaining 200 yards to my truck and could not find the strength to get in. Finally I summoned some energy and managed to find my keys and open the door. I hauled my self inside, started the truck and tried to eat a PBJ. I awoke an hour later and managed to eat the PBJ. I slept until after dark in my idling truck, under a sleeping bag. When I woke up I felt very tired but my head was clear again and I was very hungry. I was lucky to have broken that fly off when I did or I doubt I would have made it home that evening. Be careful out there!
 
I was solo camped neart summit of Santanoni preparing to do the trio. Forecast temp was low teens. Unexpected cold front came through around 6am, dropping temp to -25. Got a migrain. Took my pills which are a diahrretic so I peed a lot. Water supply froze and couldn't get my stove to restart. Made it back to the parking lot around 6pm. Car wouldn't start. State police rescued me around 2:30am. Couldn't stop shivvering for an hour or so. Estimated core temp 94.
 
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