Mt Whitney Zone Forums General Discussion Elephant in the Chatroom

As a 62 year old man with a lifelong jones for a JMT solo, I find this sobering.

Beginning with Gene Hall about a year ago, you may have noticed a baby elephant in this room, growing bigger every week. We have seen a number of similar incidents: at least five deaths, natural and accidental, and one unknown (Sawmill Trail), emergencies and near emergencies (Shyam Das, Kenny and BackMan), all solo hikers. Three of these, including two deaths, in the last three weeks.

All the circumstances are different, but there are similarities between certain of these incidents; seasoned hikers dying peacefully doing what they love, experienced climbers falling, summit fever: are all represented at least twice.

I am not saying that there is pattern or trend here. Statistical anomalies happen all the time: they are, paradoxically, normal. But they are also reminders, at least to me.

I draw no conclusion here, but this has my attention.

I've noticed this, too.

I have been attributing this to the low snow year, predominantly.

for example, for the PCT, they wrote about double the normal number of permits, larger than has ever been written, for this year.....and my communication with various waypoints verified that they've never seen the like.

I would imagine that it is predictable that as volume goes up, incidents go up, too.

I would be interested to know if the SAR volume numerically has been at a high, as well.

I've been wondering why the incident/death rate seems so high this year also. I figured, for whatever reason, I was just more aware of the incidents this year than in years past.

This doesn't make it any easier on the families of those lost, but I think that some years, accidents go way up.

Statistics show that sometimes. For example, last year Yosemite N.P. had a really high number.