I don't know what can be learned from this...since I cannot get my head around where or how it occurred.
Is there a map available showing where this occurred?
I do know from personal experience bad things can happen when you are fatigued in the mountains.
My takeaway is that anywhere along the north slope of Whitney requires caution, even in dry summer conditions. I know very, very few people ever head here, outside the Final 400 on the Mountaineer's Route and/or the Easy Walk-off, but if I ever had the urge to do something in this area outside of those two, Dawson's experience would spring to mind immediately.
The only good reason I can see to be on this slope would be the Muir-Whitney-Russell-Carillon traverse. Below is a snippet from a TR on SummitPost that might be helpful in understanding what happened with Dawson.
"The north slope descent was much more difficult than expected, steep and loose, with intermittent cliff bands and polished slabs. Patient route finding kept the difficulty in the 3rd-4th class range. There were many relicts of past rappels left on the slope, we found a servicable #2 Camalot, and an old ring piton, along with many rotten slings. The descent to the base and the subsequent crossing of the basin to the base of the South Face of Mt. Russell consumed an additional hour and fifteen minutes."Whatever his reason for being on it, descending the north slope of Whitney appears to be serious business. If I'm traveling unroped on a slope that has clear indications of Class 5 use, I'm rethinking my route really,
really hard. We'll never know if he failed to appreciate the terrain, didn't notice the old abandoned pro, got ledged out, slipped on loose scree/talus, was in the dark - whatever. So many possibilities and combinations. There's not a lot of difference between a wet polished granite slab and ice. The exact location of his recovery might help unravel some of the mystery, but probably not much.
