As a setting sun left purple shadows stretched across the snow on Black Mountain in Jackson, N.H., Tuesday, two buddies from Cranston continued trudging up toward a rustic cabin where they planned to bunk for the night.
In the dimming daylight, however, 18-year-old Pasquale “P.J.” Digiovangiacomo said that his apprehension began to grow along with the aching numbness that was spreading from his left foot up his leg. His friend Dean Cooper, also 18, outfitted with surplus military gear for winter weather, was faring better.
“I’ve just never felt cold like that,” Digiovangiacomo said, adding that he thought he had prepared well for the trip, swathing himself in layers of clothing including multiple pairs of sweatpants under and over dungarees. “I also had on four or five pairs of socks, work boots, a heavy jacket, gloves and a hood, but this was not like any cold I experienced in winters here,” he said.
Cooper and Digiovangiacomo had decided to end 2008 with their first winter hike in the White Mountains, spending Tuesday night in a mountainside cabin and Wednesday on the ski slopes.
After a search on the Internet, the two friends found a Black Mountain cabin for rent. It didn’t have electricity and only a wood stove for heat, but at $20 for the night, the price was right, so they set out from Cranston early Tuesday morning. It was around midday when they arrived at the base of Black Mountain, which rises about 3,300 feet above the cozy ski town of Jackson, just north of North Conway.
Digiovangiacomo said they had packed soup, hot chocolate and other appropriate camping fare, but had to leave some of their blankets and other gear along the trail because the cabin was not as close to the road as they thought it would be.
It was actually about 1½ miles up the mountain, which Cooper said did not bother him until he realized that his friend was becoming more pained by the cold. According to data from Underground Weather, the non-mountain temperatures in Jackson on Dec. 30 ranged between 11 and 36 degrees and a north wind kicked up 30-mph gusts.
Cooper was able to keep his friend’s spirits up until they reached the cabin at about 3 p.m. Once inside, they were dismayed by the diminutive size of the wood stove. And even though Cooper, who had spent years in the Boy Scouts, was able to keep a fire going, the amount of heat that sputtered forth did almost nothing to ease the deadening cold. They had to keep going outside to replenish their wood supply.
Digiovangiacomo said the wind died down to leave an eerie cathedral silence. “There was just nothing there,” he said yesterday. “You knew that you could yell for help and all you’d hear was your own voice echoing back.”
He said he became increasingly worried about frostbite as his numb left foot began to feel hard to the touch and did not regain sensation even when he placed it against the stove. “The pain was like nothing I’d ever felt before,” he said.
Cooper, a student at the Community College of Rhode Island who plans to join the Marines in the spring, said he tried to reassure his friend, but did not want to be wrong if frostbite was setting in. Around 5 p.m., Digiovangiacomo, who had been using his cell phone to talk to his family in Cranston during the hike, made one more call home and then decided to call 911.
Both he and Cooper said it was a tough decision to call for help because they knew that it meant some other people were going to have to head up Black Mountain on a frigid night.
Shortly after the call for help, Digiovangiacomo’s cell phone battery went dead and the two friends waited in the mountain cold. They placed a flashlight in the snow outside the cabin door to help guide conservation officers for New Hampshire Fish and Game who arrived around 9 p.m.
They gave the hikers hot Gatorade and granola bars and outfitted them with special insulated winter hiking boots.
Digiovangiacomo, who did escape frostbite, said he feels that calling for help was the right decision, even though some Internet news stories of their rescue have prompted some readers to post insulting remarks about hikers who are not prepared.
“I really thought I was prepared,” he said. “And it’s easy to [criticize] when you’re not in a freezing cabin in the blackness on a mountaintop, not able to feel your limbs and knowing you could be there all night.”
With the aid of the fish-and-game officers, Digiovangiacomo and Cooper reached the bottom of the mountain around 11 p.m. and spent the night in a motel before heading home.
Digiovangiacomo said he was disappointed to learn that they could be fined by the New Hampshire Fish and Game Department, which under a recently passed state law can charge people who need to rescued if it is determined that they were negligent when heading into the woods.
“I don’t think we were [negligent],” he said. “But we’ve also been told we could make a donation, so we’ll be calling up there to deal with that.
