UL hiker "swam with the sharks too many times"

Jen the link is no good, I get a forced sign-up ad. Perhaps you can copy-paste more of the text?

The confusion about UL is real. My local Sierra Club did not want to discuss UL during a 10-week wilderness course, partially out of lack of knowledge, but also out of fear that it is dangerous for neophytes.

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LAKE PLACID – Anger. Grief. Love. Thankfulness.
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The family of Hua Davis, who died from hypothermia last Friday while hiking in the High Peaks, went through a range of emotions Thursday morning at their hotel in Lake Placid.

But one emotion was notably absent: surprise.
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Davis, a 61-year-old from Wilmington, Delaware, hiked MacNaughton Mountain last Friday by herself without the clothing and gear officials advise winter hikers to bring. State forest rangers located her body Saturday afternoon.

Davis was an avid hiker who logged 1,500 miles in 2015 alone. She had done the Ultra Saranac Lake 6, hiking those six mountains in the Saranac Lake area in less than 24 hours, and was back last weekend to do the Winter Ultra Six with a group. She did the challenging MacNaughton as a kind of warm up.

Davis was a devotee of ultralight hiking, in which hikers limit the weight of their gear. Davis was found wearing sneakers and sweatpants, which several people have said was her normal hiking apparel. She had a lighter but no other emergency gear.

Davis’ daughter Echo, son-in-law Steve and their 7-month-old daughter came here from their home in France after she died, and have met with state police and forest rangers who were involved in the search-and-recovery operation. They want others to learn from Davis’ mistakes.

“Lacking four pounds of gear, it became a fatal mistake,” said Steve Volla, Davis’ son-in-law, said. “I don’t think that she ever understood that ultralight doesn’t mean take nothing and survive with your instincts.”

Volla said snowshoes, a sleeping bag and other gear were found in Davis’ car at the Adirondack Loj parking lot. She had no survival gear with her while hiking and had become desperate enough to try and start a fire using her gloves. Those gloves, as well as her other clothes, were soaked through and offered little in the way of insulation. Davis had no sleeping bag or space blanket with her.

“Her persistence is what got her by. And sheer luck,” said Volla.

“And her strength,” Echo added.

“The strength of her character,” Volla said.

Echo shook her head, saying “she swam with the sharks for too long.”

Davis had not only done the 6ers in less than 24 hours; she also hiked each of the 46 High Peaks last winter.

“You certainly have to be in awe of what she achieved,” Volla said. “But behind that is a very, very dark addiction personality. The more adulation you get, the more comments about how amazing (you are) just feeds in to a person that wants to continue to strive.

“What happens is the collision that happened this past weekend of a person who knew how to hike but didn’t know how to prepare for a hike. She was successful because she was with a group or was lucky while soloing. And this time her luck ran out.

“She left her family with a tragedy.”

Steve and Echo fault social media with feeding Davis’ dangerous behavior, but like any other addict, Davis tended to pull away from those who had her best interests at heart.

Echo said her mother received admiration on various social media platforms for completing such arduous hikes. She thinks others, including hiking leaders, should have stepped up and told Davis her clothing choices and lack of skills were dangerous. Echo said she had tried to discuss these things with her mom but was met with resistance.

The couple said Davis lacked some basic backcountry skills. She didn’t know how to use a map or compass, and relied on her phone for navigation.

The Vollas said they were extremely grateful for the state police and forest rangers who were involved, and commented several times that everyone they had met with was kind and thoughtful. The pair was upset, though, that Davis had put others in danger with her unpreparedness, and stressed that if anything comes out of this tragedy, it’s that other hikers learn from Davis and don’t repeat her mistakes.

“She would always find a way to make (hiking) not monotonous. She was a happy soul,” Volla said. “That was why we loved her. She was spontaneous and real and just happy. Just purely happy.

“The dark side of that is that people wouldn’t tell her the truth” about her dangerous behaviors.

“God forbid if someone follows her advice or what she did, because she had no expertise to do that.””

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Apparently she was a member of the DC UL hikers meet up group.  I googled some other stories about this and it seems she got lost coming down and bushwhacked through lots of snow – then became wet.  But I really hated the way this article was written….

If you look down a few posts you will see Matt Dirksen posted posted about this SAD NEWS FOR THE MID-ATLANTIC UL COMMUNITY

So, what’s the 4 pounds of gear that would have kept her alive and what did she carry that wasn’t enough?

Sweatpants? Sigh…

she was just wearing sweatpants?

(over her legs : )

Experience does not necessarily equal wisdom. Sad for the families. And SAR.

Yeah, definitely sad.  And not fair to blame the victim

But a shred of goodness than can come from bad situations like this is if there are lessons that others can learn to avoid a similar situation in the future

“And not fair to blame the victim”

Why not? She was a fool.
Call it what it is or some similar types here on BPL will end up the same.

billy

“We took risks. We knew we took them. Things have come out against us. We have no cause for complaint.”
Robert Frost

Perhaps she was happy with her risks?
Cheers

Once again I’m saddened by an arrogant ass who feels the need to be so cruel in these forums. Hua was a good friend and hiking/backpacking partner to other BPL members, who are mourning her loss. Is it really necessary to call her names here, or does it just make you feel all superior? There’s a difference between discussing how she erred so that others might learn and callously referring to her with unnecessary, mean-spirited names.

Actually, Doug…. I think it is YOU who are so mean spirited and being an ass. You have been an ass to me many times here on BPL and you obviously have it in for me posting a year or so ago against aggressive police tactics….. you being not exactly impartial on the issue. It is not mean spirited to say someone is a fool if they are. It is, however, idiotic to adhere to a form of ‘political correctness’ when it could endanger other inexperienced readers here on PBL.

billy

http://www.adirondackalmanack.com/2016/03/analysis-of-the-macnaughton-hikers-death.html

He said Davis was wearing fleece pants and sneakers, despite the temperatures being well below freezing and the presence of deep snow at higher elevations. He said she was wearing a thin outer-shell jacket, two insulated vests, a wool sweater and fleece against her body.

“Those would have been fine had she not gotten soaked, but they were soaked right through,” Whitelaw said about her upper body clothing. “She ended up going through really deep snow. I don’t know if she was bushwhacking or what. … When you combine the temperature, being soaked and her body size, she’s going to going to go hypothermic quickly.”

The photograph indicates she had problems on the way down and wound up going through deep snow without snowshoes. Eventually she sat down against the base of a tree, where she went to sleep and had her vitals shut down due to the cold, he said.

Whitelaw didn’t see what was in her backpack but was “told there was nothing of value for an emergency or saving your own life.” He said he was sharing this information to help others avoid getting into this situation.

On social media, some people have also expressed concern for the forest rangers involved with the search because they felt Davis wasn’t prepared for the trip. Returning from the rescue operation, one ranger fell chest deep into freezing water and had to be evacuated. The ranger did recover apparently without suffering any health issues.

as the saying goes you can be cold OR wet … both cold AND wet is dead

out here these kind of rescued happen all the time … several every winter …. there was one just yesterday

http://www.inews880.com/syn/112/160429/north-shore-rescue-called-out-for-two-lost-hikers-on-grouse-mountain

North Shore Rescue’s Bruce Moffat says the heavy snow and poor visibility made for a difficult extraction.

He adds they weren’t ready for winter conditions.

“They did not have snowshoes. They had snow at their knees and weren’t prepared for the winter conditions that exist up on the mountains right now.”

“We had three team members with extra clothing and snowshoes following in behind and by the time they were offloaded, they were able to their way out.”

in fact its gotten so bad out here that every year the local rescue team writes news articles and blog posts warning folks to be prepared ….

http://www.northshorerescue.com/2015/11/12/its-not-summer/

There is a big difference between calling an action foolish and saying that a person is a fool.

I fail to see how treating someone with a little human dignity (even though they made a fatal judgment error) would endanger inexperienced readers; surely it’s painfully clear to even an inexperienced reader what her error was, and just as clear that nobody is going to go out and emulate her just because we failed to call her names.

Move it to Chaff you two. There are lessons to be learned here. Too bad Hua did not learn them in time. Glad to hear the SAR ranger survived his plunge through the ice looking for her.

Very, very sad. We have all made errors in judgments and suffered. Some learn quickly, some not so quickly. And sometimes stuff happens unexpectedly. My condolences to family and friends. We will never know when Hua exactly reached the point of no return, because there always is one. Actually being aware of when one has reached that point is gained by experience. Remember Rocket Llama went thru a similar experience at the end of her first PCT hike, but she made the right decisions at the right times AND had the right equipment. And as luck would have it she picked the right way down to a road. Hua did not have so many options.

I have a young relative that is an Olympic level athlete. She was 15 when she went for a run one evening a few hours before dark and alone up in her local mountains by Lake Tahoe and took a wrong turn and ended up in trouble. She twisted her ankle, but managed to get back on the right trail and had a warm jacket. She had sense enough to stop and wait. We knew her route, we knew when she was overtime, and she suffered a bit, as did her Mother worrying, but we found her a few hours later. It could have been worse. Now she when she runs, she usually goes with another person and they both carry food, water, a headlamp and a communication device and whistle and at least a warm jacket or windbreaker, and the itinerary is always left in the kitchen.

I have a “rule of 3” when hiking or climbing or whatever…. When one thing isn’t “happy” then take note, when two are simultaneously going on it’s time to pay more attention, when a third pops up it’s definitely time to stop and reassess and adapt or change plans. Before the brain cells are messed up by lack of food, water or oxygen or pain. One good “planning outline” I like to use is Andrew Skurka’s “Environmental Conditions Assessment List” for hikes. Keeps me at least having a base line to work off of and plan for possible changes.

The “swimming with the sharks” comment is kind of insulting. I know women who won’t even go to the store without their husbands….all of us have met with incredulous reactions to how we recreate and hike, I’ve been told dozens of times I’m crazy to be doing thru hikes alone. Most people that I see hiking carry too much stuff. Who judges (official?) how risky an activity is? Is “the ten essentials” a new law everyone who enters the forests MUST have? Did Hua consistently push envelopes by peak bagging or not carrying enough every time? Or was this time just a massive misjudgement on her part of the weather or time and terrain…? I hesitate to call someone stupid because it’s not only not nice, but I don’t know all of the facts. She died, and she paid the ultimate price for doing what she felt was what she wanted to do.

Having spent many years of happy winter hiking in the Adirondacks (including winter ascents of the Trap Dyke and other slides), I would just like to make the point, for those who aren’t very experienced in alpine winter environments, that “snowshoes” and “UL” are NOT mutually exclusive.  It’s also pretty easy to throw a space blanket in your daypack (just in case) and have some sort of firestarter (even if it’s just a mini bic).  I’ve taken “mental inventory” of my pack a couple of times in the Adirondacks in winter when the trail was unclear, and while I would have been uncomfortable, I would have made it through the night.

Sad for her friends’/family’s loss.  Perhaps she got off-trail accidentally (it’s easy to do there if the snow is deep, a few blazes are missing, and no one’s been on the trail recently), and became confused about how to get back to where she came from…

Does anyone else when on trips ever imagine what the accident report might say if things went bad? Sometimes I do:

“Ill equipped for winter, carried only a tarp instead of 4 season tent.”
“Left too late in the day (5pm)”
“Failed to use stove in a sufficiently ventilated area”
“The route exceeded the skill level of the party”
“Failed to check the weather report”
“Should have carried a rope”
“Didn’t leave a trip itinerary, which prevented any chance of rescue”

I’m sure a bunch of muppets in armchairs will have opinions on me being a fool, stupid, how I should have done x, carried y and headed towards z. Maybe they’ll have a point, maybe they won’t.

But it won’t matter, I’ll be dead, neither the first nor the last in a long list.

There is a tendency to make mistakes and not pay for them, repeatedly, in hiking and backpacking. I’ve committed mistakes — not having another layer, not having much water, leaving this or that out of the pack — many times and it would be hypocritical to pretend that not having the right gear killed her.

What kills people, time and again, is getting in over their heads too quickly and being unable to compensate.

Some of the searches I have been called out on have ended with a fatality that has a full complement of gear. It’s things that alter perception or orientation that gets people in trouble. Get a little too dehydrated or a little too hypothermic and you won’t necessarily think of pulling out the jacket, if you have one.

A lady nearly died last year when she had an entire Sierra Club group for hiking companions — she got hurt and they all looked for her, but SAR found her at last — not so far from their base camp. These things get chewed up and spat out in the media, which never gets the entire picture, because the people collecting information never get all of it. There are plenty of reasons things happen the way they do out there.

I should think that it goes without saying that backpacking is more art than science, and sometimes having done everything right means little in the end — you can have skills and all kinds of experience, but sometimes STUFF HAPPENS and it doesn’t always end well. At least they found her. Some people never get found at all. She may not have had adequate skills; it sounds like that was the criticism made in a couple of articles. But it may have been that even survival skills wouldn’t have helped at all. As was repeated often in my Wilderness First Responder training — the right response is not a fixed if/then, or either/or —  IT DEPENDS. And none of us were there to know the full story.

in climbing you can do all the right things and still die …

and you can do all the “wrong things” and still live …

similarly one can be the safest driver in the world and still die …

and you can drive drunk home every night and still live a long life …

now does this mean one should ignore all the basic “safety” advice and skills that decades of climbers have developed over time?

the interesting thing about backpacking is how “resistant” folks are about “safety and education” …

in climbing folks may well choose to violate basic safety procedures at certain times, however often they know they are taking a risk …. ie if you climb without a rope, you fall, you die

in backpacking i find that folks deny that theres any risk at all if they dont know how to use a compass. or if they cant start a fire under adverse conditions … or if they dont have the gear and skills to spend a night while immobilized … etc …

not to mentions theres no resource like Accidents in North American Mountaineering … ive stopped posting accident reports such as the above on here because quite a few folks have the attitude “itll never happen to me”

any climber with that attitude you run away from

It’s interesting how pointing out that sometimes gear doesn’t make a difference sends the message that “gear isn’t important” even when that has nothing to do with the point….

No one intends to go out unprepared.

GEAR AND SKILLS ARE IMPORTANT TO HAVE.

Not everyone completely understands why, and some of us teach classes and engage in preventive SAR alll the time trying to change that.

I don’t know MacNaughton peak, but I was in the Adirondack the same weekend, Whiteface and Algonquin. The weather was perfect, sunny without wind. The trails where icy or packed snow. If someone was thinking just to follow trails, snowshoes were clearly not necessary and 2/3 of hikers didn’t have them.

Buswack is another story.

another death from hypothermia in the north east this month …

His mother, Sue, has been poring over family photos and printing memories his friends and family have posted online following the news that Mr. Hallock’s body was found Feb. 28 on the Castle Ravine Trail in Randolph, N.H., near the treeline between Mt. Adams and Mt. Jefferson.

The 54-year-old Orient resident was an avid hiker who served on the board of the New York State Outdoor Guides Association. As the founder of Northeast Mountain Guides, he also led groups in winter survival and other types of outdoor activities.

“From a spiritual side, he found being out there on top of a mountain as a beautiful thing,” Ms. Hallock said in an interview this week. “It’s more than physical — he would meet God in the mountains.”

While his cause of death is still under investigation, Ms. Hallock confirmed her son died of hypothermia.

Since he was found with just a daypack, Mr. Hallock’s brother Matt said he believes he had only planned to climb the mountain and return within a day.

http://suffolktimes.timesreview.com/2016/03/66330/hallock-family-remembers-hiker-he-would-meet-god-in-the-mountains/

in the rescue on the original story …. the rescuers themselves had to get rescued after one of them got soaked and was in danger of hypothermia<
Rescuers had completed the mission and were hiking out of the difficult back country terrain when a forest ranger carrying a 50-pound pack fell through the ice of a brook and was submerged chest deep in water, Seggos said.

Fellow rangers quickly pulled their colleague from the water, changed his clothes and stabilized his core temperature.

With temperatures in the lower 20s, and their colleague facing the potential of frostbite and hypothermia, the rangers requested an emergency extraction.

Using night vision goggles, state police and rangers performed a nighttime rescue operation.

All of the rangers were then taken to the Lake Placid Airport. The ranger who had fallen through the ice was determine to be in stable condition and after warming up was sent back into service.

http://www.syracuse.com/news/index.ssf/2016/03/adirondak_hiker_dies_on_macnaughton_mt.html

while having the extra gear may not have helped … one is better off with a few basics than without … rain protection, some simple shelter (tarp/garbage bag), and some firestarters with the ability to use it … not to mention a compass and the skills to at least get a bearing

also the proper footwear so one has less chance of slipping, or sinking deep into the snow and getting soaked (which contributed to the hypothermia)

having airbags and other safety features in a car might not save yr life, but yr generally better off with em than without em in an accident

heres another rescue last month around here where some folks decided to hike close trails without the proper gear for winter …

Seven hikers have been rescued near Grouse Mountain after trekking up a closed trail in an area with a high avalanche risk and becoming stranded.

North Shore Rescue team leader Mike Danks said the group became stranded after attempting to hike the closed Hanes Valley Trail, which runs from Lynn Headwaters Regional Park to the top of Grouse Mountain.

“The only thing I can say they did well is they recognized that they were lost, they called for help and they stayed put,” Danks told Metro. “But for us, we ended up putting our members at risk, all because we had someone that did the Hanes Valley Trail in the summer and thought it would be a great idea to do it in the middle of winter.”

He said the hikers, who are from the Vancouver area and in their late 30s and early 40s, set out on the trail at about 10 a.m. on Sunday, ignored several signs indicating that the route is closed in winter.

The trail, which has several creek crossings and is in a remote area of the backcountry that has a high avalanche danger, is a challenging route for experienced hikers even in summer conditions.

“There are lots of signs that are up, and they’re up there for a reason,” said Danks. “It’s very steep terrain up there. They were somewhat equipped but definitely not set up for winter travel.”

While no one suffered any injuries, Danks said some of the hikers had signs of hypothermia and had to be rewarmed.

The incident is prompting North Shore Rescue to again remind anyone heading into the backcountry to ensure they’re well prepared for winter conditions before hitting the trail.

If the conditions on Sunday night had been too unsafe for search and rescue volunteers, Danks said the hikers would have been forced to spend the night on the mountain, which could have had dire consequences. 

“We just want to make sure that people understand that by taking this risk, by going into these closed areas, we’re not always going to be there to help them if it’s too dangerous for our own people,” he said. “They’re very lucky that no one was injured.”

http://www.metronews.ca/news/vancouver/2016/02/22/seven-rescued-after-hiking-up-closed-grouse-mountain-trail.html

No need to call her names.

Go to the link James Marco posted. It has a little biographical information. Sounds like she was a very inspirational person, and overcame many obstacles to ‘make it’  America.

Learn from her mistakes and honor WHO she was.