[pct-l] What to do when bad weather looms?

[Joan Henriksen]

Thanks for posting this link. I appreciated Katalina's candor about the
situation.  There has been some talk on the forum about how hiking partners
can compound emergencies.  I really feel that the opposite is true.  I spent
the last two winters camping in the high desert in Utah during my tenure as
a wilderness therapy guide.  When Katalina talks about her fingers being too
numb to tie her hitches on her tarp lines, I could totally empathize!
Losing body heat is frightening and it can happen so quickly.  I will also
say that I think that snowy and cold conditions are the best time for hikers
to stick together.  People react differently to cold/wet at different
times.  One person can be fine and dandy when the other is becoming
hypothermic.  I have certainly been in winter conditions that I found
uncomfortable in as part of group but probably would been terrified by if I
were alone.  It just goes to show that so much of being a competent outdoors
man/woman is mental.  Being solo, puts a lot more mental pressure onto the
individual hiker.  Don't get me wrong I love backpacking solo. It is just
way more intense.

On Tue, Jan 26, 2010 at 7:50 PM, Len Glassner <len5742 at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Tue, Jan 26, 2010 at 10:48 AM, Ken Murray <kmurray at pol.net> wrote:
>
> >
> > Often, when things go wrong, mistakes are compounded.  Last year when the
> hiker got into trouble in snow, and called for a SPOT rescue
>
> Her journal entry for that day:
>
> http://postholer.com/journal/viewJournal.php?entry_id=8688
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