Snowcave Found! Oregon...

[Jcsgt]

I would imagine the other two would be lower on the mountain. That's really too bad.

 

[ReefHound]

That whole mountain looks like an avalanche waiting to happen.

 

[Bill51]

That whole mountain looks like an avalanche waiting to happen.

Snow slides I might worry about but it’s a little too early in the season for something that steep to be a serious avalanche problem unless they’ve had a longer snow season that I know of.

 

[Cacia]

If you were climbing Mt Hood in the winter, why would you not take an EPIRB? Or is that "against the rules".

 

[Bill51]

It would take a ton of paperwork to get the proper authorization to register an EPIRB for that use, but I have been known to drag an aviation com with me so I can communicate with any aircraft around on 121.5 – and let the FCC bust me after the fact. The lack of voice communications on most reasonably priced EPIRBs is a real drawback in a case like this where the rescuers may know where you are but have no way of getting to you. It would be nice to tell them what supplies you need that they could drop in to you.

 

[ReefHound]

If you were climbing Mt Hood in the winter, why would you not take an EPIRB? Or is that "against the rules".

For that matter, cellphones with GPS? At least one of them had a cellphone and could get a signal, that's how all this started. One of them called and talked to family for 4 minutes to say he was holed up in the cave and the other two went for help. So that raises several questions for me. Why wouldn't they all have phones? If he could get a signal from that snow cave, why not call *before* the other two left? Why not call emergency services and consult with them? Get up to date weather forecast? There's something unteamlike about this that bothers me.

 

[Jcsgt]

Well, who knows what anybody would do in a similar situation, when you're cold, wet and injured.

 

[Cacia]

I think he was sick or having a heart attack and they left him for that reason.

You don't get bad pulmonary edema at 10,000 ft do you? It's not like an 02/ morphine climb, is it?

 

[Bill51]

Actually I had a friend die suddenly of a pulmonary edema 18 hours after returning from a relatively easy 12,000’ climb though he had been up there for almost 4 days without much prior altitude conditioning. I’ve even had problems taking my horse up to some altitudes as it can take as long as 28 days to fully acclimate and you are actually deteriorating in health until then. I doubt they had (or needed O2) on this climb as planned, but it might have been helpful as things are turning out. Weight is the real obstacle on climbs like this because you’d hate to have your safety equipment slow you down so much it caused you a problem.

 

[Cacia]

well, they don't have any thin air in Texas...I don't see how they could be aclimated.