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[pct-l] FW: Hiker killed on Whitney
The story is found at:
http://www0.mercurycenter.com/premium/local/docs/hiker19.htm
Rich
Here it is also for the archives as the links have a habit of going dead..
A fatal misstep on icy
Sierra peak
Adventurer died after scaling Mount Whitney
BY S.L. WYKES
Mercury News
Keira Maiden's faith in her father was so
strong she didn't
worry when he failed to return on time from a
solo climb on
his 50th birthday to the top of Mount
Whitney, the tallest
peak in the contiguous 48 states.
Glenn Maiden, after all, was an experienced
snow skier,
cold-water swimmer, high-altitude hiker and
veteran of
100-mile day trips on his bicycle. Even the
sporting-goods
store clerk in the Sierra town of Bishop,
where Maiden
rented climbing equipment, thought Maiden
could handle
the 10-degree temperatures on the mountain.
And Whitney,
while big, has a trail so reliable thousands
make it up and
back safely every year.
Sometimes, even for a man like Maiden, just
one more step
can be too far.
At first, Inyo County's search-and-rescue
team waited, thinking Maiden might have
hunkered down in his tent. A hard-blowing
snow storm with winds up to 50 mph
passed across the mountain a few hours after
his planned trek to Whitney's 14,494-foot
crest.
On Dec. 14, five teams of searchers hit the
mountain and soon found Maiden's tent
tumbled into a tangled ball a half mile from
the spiky peak. By midafternoon the next
day, they spotted the sole of his boot
sticking out amid boulders. Snow had already
drifted to cover his body.
Maiden, a telecommunications expert from
Santa Cruz, was the sixth climber in five
years to die on Whitney.
One small thing consoles his family. Forest
Service rangers found Maiden had made it to
the top on his birthday, Dec. 11, and had
written his name in the log book in the
granite-walled, tin roof shed at the summit.
There was something else, too -- a
disposable camera in his backpack. Maiden had
photographed himself with the Sierra
spread out behind him.
``Accidents do happen,'' said Keira Maiden.
``As much as I don't want to believe that
right now, because my father was invincible,
this was just the wrong step.''
It may have been the first time Maiden ever
faltered. Keira, her sister Brenna and their
mother, Cathy, describe a fearless man so
well-read there seemed nothing he did not
know. He played the piano and guitar. He
cooked. He not only loved art, but knew
artists and their lives.
He was devoted to his daughters, and when he
and his wife divorced, Keira, then 11,
chose to live with him until high school.
Once he promised Keira she could have his old
Italian convertible if she could parallel
park it -- on a very steep street in San Francisco.
This trip to Whitney was a way of ``doing
something big for his 50th,'' Keira said.
``That's a large landmark.'' He was busy at
work, a Scotts Valley start-up called Voxeo,
where Maiden directed business development.
``He didn't have a lot of time to get
away,'' she said. ``Whitney was perfect . . .
He could reflect on his life, on what the
future held.''
Keira didn't think twice about his decision
to scale the mountain. ``I figured if the trails
were open, it was all right. No one
considered it anything dangerous.'' Even if they had,
it would have been typical for Maiden to take
it on. ``He never thought that anything he
did was out of the ordinary,'' she said.
He created challenges
Above all, he challenged his body. As a
teenager, he hopped a freight train to Florida
and spent the summer peeling shrimp. One
winter, he rode an unheated train for days
from the Siberian port of Vladivostok over
5,000 miles to Moscow, Keira said.
Once, north of the Arctic Circle, he survived
the killing cold by digging a snow pit and
spending the night in it, she said. The next
morning, he began the return journey to
Stockholm, more than 500 miles south on
cross-country skis.
He made many of these journeys on his own,
but when others joined him, they found
him no cold-hearted commander, said his
younger daughter, Brenna. Instead, he
encouraged with gentle persistence and
reminders of what these trips were ultimately
about. Whether it was a spectacular vista or
a tiny wildflower, she said that he would
exclaim, ``Isn't this beautiful? You're so
lucky you're here!''
Two summers ago, Brenna, then 18, joined him
to hike to the summit of Mount
Whitney. She and her father had hiked many
times together, but this was her highest
mountain. ``He was like, `It's no big deal.
It'll be fun!' '' she said.
In December, he returned there. From marks
found on the trail, searchers believe Maiden
fell in a section of the trail called ``99
Switchbacks'' -- that's what it takes to negotiate
the 60-degree slopes in that portion of
Whitney's upper reaches.
Maiden hit his head and came to rest in a
cluster of car-sized boulders. Rescuers say he
fell more than 1,000 feet. Here, at well over
12,000 feet, the ice never disappears, even
in summer. The mountain's ice can be so hard
that even an ax might bounce off at the
first hit.
``There are patches of snow and ice left over
from the previous year,'' said mountain
guide Todd Bogel. ``Step on it and you only
get one chance.''
Maiden had rented an ice ax, special boots
and metal prongs called crampons, which
attach to boots. He was wearing the crampons
when he was found, although one had
broken.
Maiden, Bogel said, ``might have recognized
the hazard, but not the danger.''
Uneasy feeling
Sgt. Randy Nixon also understands Whitney.
For seven years, he has coordinated the
searches and rescues for the injured or
missing. From the start of this search, he had an
uneasy feeling.
Maiden set out on the 11-mile trail two hours
after the mountain's previous climber had
returned. He was alone on the mountain. ``He
went up there by himself,'' Nixon said.
``In our business, that's one of the bad
things -- solo -- because even a minor injury can
become fatal.''
Nixon also talked to the store clerk, who
told him of Maiden's rentals. ``I said, `It
sounds like he was all set. He's got the
experience he needs.' ''
``I don't think so,'' said the clerk, who
thought Maiden had a lot of experience in cold
weather survival, but not in cold weather
mountaineering. The clerk said Maiden told
him he had never used an ice ax or crampons
before.
``That was a red flag to me,'' Nixon said.
Still, he said, Whitney ``is a good mountain.
It's good rock. They talk about big
mountains being treacherous and being killers
and things changing at a moment's notice.
The storms here are really predictable. The
mountain does create its own weather but not
to the extreme like McKinley.''
That happens to be the mountain Maiden had
planned to climb in June. It's a
20,000-foot-plus Alaskan peak, the
continent's tallest, that even in summer can take as
much as a week to ascend.
Others have fallen from the same area from
which Maiden is believed to have fallen,
Nixon said. Rescuers recovered another hiker
who survived a slide down the
switchbacks this month.
Keira insisted on seeing her father after he
was taken off the mountain. ``I had to see his
body and to ask all the questions and to
replay the incident in my mind.'' She read a
study of people who had survived near-death
experiences and ``their mind shut off in the
first few seconds,'' she said.
As her father fell, she said, ``I don't think
he would have panicked. I don't think he ever
thought he was going to die.''
Contact S.L. Wykes at swykes@sjmercury.com or
(650) 688-7599. Fax (650)
688-7555.
At 11:20 PM -0000 1/24/01, Reynolds, WT wrote:
>Anyone know about this?
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: Don Horst [mailto:donhorstyh@yahoo.com]
>Sent: Wednesday, January 24, 2001 2:32 PM
>To: Camping List; Tom Reynolds
>Subject: Hiker killed on Whitney
>
>
>Did anyone see the accounts of the hiker who fell on the Mt. Whitney trail
>in December? Sort of
>strange. He was supposedly very experienced in cold conditions, but not
>winter climbing. He
>rented crampons and an ice axe in Bishop, but apparently had no training in
>using them. He was
>hiking alone, and fell on the way down. The article said it was on the
>switchbacks, but the map
>did not look right to me. But I have never been there. Did you see it,
>Tom?
>
>=====
>Don Horst
>
>Reynolds answered:
>
>I did not see the article. In general one does not use the switchbacks to
>climb Mt Whitney in snow. You climb the VERY steep slope above Consultation
>Lake to Trail Crest, the contour to the top. That slope is usually used as a
>glassade on the way down. Possibly he lost his axe.
>
>The store at Mt Whitney will NOT rent ice axes for this reason
>
>Tom
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