Steep snowfields, rotten rock bands, and gravelly ledges are typical culprits–combined with overconfidence. Our research suggests that most accidents happen while hikers are scrambling up or descending semitechnical peaks, crossing class III passes, or getting far out onto overlooks for better views and pictures.
Unroped falls are the #1 cause of wilderness deaths nationwide. “She shouldn’t have been on that rock face,” he says. “I’m surprised someone could have lain there that long, but she was probably in and out of consciousness, so people might have passed her.” Smith is a bit more judgmental. Two hours after Skinner reached a spot where he could get a signal, Crane was evacuated by helicopter to a Seattle hospital, where she underwent multiple surgeries (and survived). He found off-duty ranger Dave Skinner, who had a cell phone. “I looked over, and this girl was smashed up pretty bad.” McKee stayed with Crane while Smith ran for help. “We heard a whistling sound,” recalls Brandon Smith, a 26-year-old hiker from Missoula, MT, who was with his girlfriend, Heather McKee. There she lay for 48 hours without food, water, or gear, getting chilled, baked, and severely dehydrated. Despite those injuries, she crawled nearly 100 yards to the shelter of driftwood logs piled beneath the bluffs. When she came to, Crane had a black eye, gashes in her back, two shattered feet, a broken thumb and pelvis, separated ribs, a displaced fracture of her lower right leg, and three spinal fractures. Suddenly, she greased off mossy holds and cartwheeled 25 feet down onto jagged, fist-sized cobbles. Enchanted by the sea stack, Crane scrambled up for a view. On day 2 of her coastal hike, she stashed her pack and jogged to Strawberry Point, where sand bluffs taper out from the shore to form a low spit capped by a 70-foot spire. Not expecting any trouble, she didn’t register at the Third Beach trailhead. After 4 days in the Hoh Rain Forest, Crane had made a spur-of-the-moment decision to trek down the coast. It was a tragic end to a trip she’d planned to celebrate her recently completed sophomore year. Tempted to climb higher? Think twice: The backcountry’s #1 killer is only a slip away.ĭana Crane, an outdoorsy 19-year-old student at Lewis & Clark College in Portland, OR, lay crumpled on the beach near Strawberry Point in Washington’s Olympic National Park.
#WAY TO THE WOODS PLUS#
In each tale, we see a bit of ourselves, plus a few lessons that may help you avoid a similar fate. And therein lies the point: We’re not replaying these tragedies to wallow in others’ misfortunes. Most of these victims made mistakes–the same kind we all get away with on a regular basis. Here you’ll read case histories that illustrate ways hikers might expire in the woods. For another, it’s not the giant man-eaters that pose the biggest risk it’s you and me, and our tendency to make foolhardy decisions. But when they do happen, they typically aren’t the result of climbing, skiing, or BASE jumping accidents nope, it’s hikers who tend to die out there. For one, wilderness fatalities are extraordinarily rare.
Along the way, we came up with some surprising conclusions. So which is it? Should you take the helmet and ice axe, the PLB and GPS, the bear spray and bug juice? To answer these questions, we studied hundreds of incident reports and interviewed scores of experts–rangers, rescuers, guides, scientists, surviving companions, and a few lucky survivors, too. Perhaps that’s because we view wilderness schizophrenically–both as a womblike place where we can heal from civilization’s assaults, and as a hostile void where only the über-tough, prepared for death, should venture. Slavering grizzlies, pouncing cougars, killer blizzards: They’re the stuff of nightmares and blockbusters, the terrors that send our pulses racing whether we’re sleeping in the woods or reading on the sofa.
#WAY TO THE WOODS FULL#
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