[pct-l] Close call follow-up

[Scott Williams]

It's bad enough going up there without sunglasses, but a quick fix would
have been Eskimo goggles which he could have made with a bit of duck tape.
 I made them for people last year who didn't have or had lost their glasses
in the High Sierra.  Anything that will provide a dark covering and can have
a slit cut for each eye will work.  In years past I've made them from bits
of cardboard backing for mole skin, but a length of duck tape folded over
itself so the sticky sides are covered worked well last year.   Twenty years
ago, snowed in at Forester I made them for a whole group of teens who had
gotten snowed in and weren't prepared for the weather.  On the second day of
snow, we met two guys who had come over Forester in the deep stuff without
glasses and their eyes were swollen shut.  We summoned the ranger from
Crabtree, gave them pain meds and left them both a pair of Eskimo goggles.
 They couldn't get out of their sleeping bags they were so sick with the
burned eyes.  It is nothing to mess with.

It's a bit of ancient technology that any high mountain trekker should know
how to use as we can all break or loose sunglasses, and if you're on miles
of snow, you will go blind.  Bandannas are better than nothing, as is a
smear of charcoal dust above and below your eyes, but Northern people have
been making these for thousands of years for a reason.  You look like
Geordie in Star Trek, but homemade, on the fly Eskimo goggles do work.

Shroomer