Several good comments there. Maybe the S&R team was just saying that they were frustrated because bad weather would not let thm go on the mountain. That would make sense.

A beacon would have helped for several reasons:

1. If the climbers knew they had a beacon, then there was no necessity to send a team member to reach the outside world. That was particularly risky ... descents off mountains in bad weather often claim the lives - even for the best climbers.

2. The beacon would cut S&R costs, and total search time, tremendously.

3. In a worst-case scenario, yes the beacon becomes a body locator. But that still brings closure to the families.

However, this raises a question in my mind.
Are these PLB's designed so that you must manually turn ON the emergency signal? If that's the case, and you happen to be killed by a sudden accident while travelling in the wilderness, then the beacon can never activated. Hence no signal, and no body recovery.

It would be smart for these devices to have a special "countdown mode" as one possible option. You set the electronics working (but not broadcasting a distress signal), and then you activate a clock so that it will automatically send a distress in 12 hours - unless you intervene and say things are OK. That way if you are killed outright, the unit still turns on later and somebody can recover your body. This idea could generate some false alerts. But it would allow bodies to be found much more quickly.

other Pete

Yah, my feeling is a PLB would help, and was thinking along the lines of your comment #1, but figure it was worth a discussion in the context of mountaineering.

I certainly don't see how it would hurt.

-john

"Luck" is not a random event. "Luck" is a combination of preparation seeking opportunity, both good and bad.

"Good Luck" in this case might have have been bringing along extra/extended shelter gear since a front was known to be moving into the area later that day and any problems delaying their return from the mountain could easily result in a stay of a day or two (until SAR was able to deploy after the weather passed).

"Bad Luck" might be not bringing along a couple of day's worth of fuel "because we'll be back before the front gets here", i.e., failure to prepare for a scenario meets an opportunity...

Either way, random chance is not the key component of "Luck".

I'm not trying to point a finger at them but rather identify how they would up in trouble, since "but for the grace of God, there go I". At this point the clearest lesson for me to take from this is that "we'll be home by dinner" - which I'm guilty of too - isn't a viable plan.

PS. Even if they had a PLB the batteries might be dead by now if they activated it the first afternoon.

PPS. I*'m not sure a PLB would have saved them. If SAR can't go due to weather, then SAR can't go and you need to shelter for some time. There's a delay between turning on a PLB and the rescue, and if you're on a mountain in weather, that delay might be measured in days.

I think your assumption is correct - SAR was saying the presence of a tracking beacon would not make any difference in this case because they have been unable to mount a rescue from very early in the event. Knowing where a beacon is transmitting from would have no effect on the climbers until they can fly or climb to attempt a rescue.

As I said earlier, the Mountain Location Unit is unique to Mt Hood, a pretty good description of it is available at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mountain_Locator_Unit.

"...Even if they had a PLB the batteries might be dead by now if they activated it the first afternoon. There's a delay between turning on a PLB and the rescue.."

In this situation, If they had activated it the first afternoon, they would be on Jay Leno tonight.

Grim update. Conditions make search impossible for foreseeable future.


http://www.oregonlive.com/news/index.ssf/2009/12/day_four_on_mount_hood_avalanc.html


...women are more likely to survive then men....

"Water is more important than food," she said. "Water is more like seven or eight days and in this situation that means fuel."

"a beacon would not have made a difference in this situation. It is not a matter of beacons."

...1 percent chance of finding climbers alive after 48 hours.

...believe there was some kind of accident....

A base of about 1,000 calories a day would help them function. Fewer than that and “you get really weak,” he said.

With the body heat in an enclosed space, temperatures in a snow cave can reach up to 40 degrees while a winter storm could be raging outside.

I understand that if it is impossible to mount a rescue that a beacon doesn't change that fact.

But the statement seems odd considering that when the weather breaks, they still need to know where they are, and it seems a PLB would be extremely helpful toward that end.

Regarding PLB batteries going dead -- I don't think it matters, esp. if it has GPS capability. Basically the message would have gotten through and they'd have the location unless they had moved from that location.

That said, could a white-out block the PLB signal? How about GPS?

-john

Well very sadly ... as someone already posted. They have called off the search. And the S&R team confirmed that they just could not get off the ground - no way to even reach a location up on the mountain.

About PLB's and batteries. Climbers have problems with batteries for other reasons as well - for example cameras. You need batteries to take pictures (something almost every climber wants to do!). The solution is to carry the batteries taped onto the skin on your chest or belly. Body heat keeps them warm. This works even in the Himalayas.

About my earlier "analysis" above ... someone asked why I needed to be so specific. The answer was not obvious because of how the answer played out. My goal was to see if the descent route of the 3'd climber (Mr Gullberg) could be figured out, based on the few facts reported in the press. If someone could do this, then you could backtrack his descent route and work out where the other 2 climbers might be located. As noted above, by another reader, if Mr Gullberg had carried even a small hand-written note explaining the situation of the team trapped on the mountain, it could have helped. Ironically, to do that he would have needed to admit to himself that he could die while making his way out in the storm.

Anyway, back to my analysis. I started while working off the proposition that the climbers took the standard route up the mountain. That raised a big discrepancy about why Mr Gullberg's body was recovered on a glacier that is quite some distance from the standard ascent route. One possible explanation could have been that he lost his bearings while descending off the summit, and came down the wrong ridge on the mountain by mistake. Analyzing the pattern of his fall would give the ridgeline that he actually descended. Tracing that ridgeline back up the mountain gives a very valuable clue at to his early starting point. Hence the possibility that his companions could be stranded near the top of the mountain. That logic would have given S&R a place to look for life, if they had a short time window on the mountain on Tue.

Unfortunately, the climbers took a different route and it was not so easy to tie the logic together. Insufficient data. The media often forget that when they fail to report facts accurately, they may be screening out a solution to the problem that is taking place. The news is not about writing "stories" ... it's about getting the facts.

other Pete

Yeah, if they don't their facts straight people on the web can't make the right assumptions. Obviously the writers are idiots and candidates for the Darwin awards, they shouldn't be allowed to write any longer, I don't care about the writers, I care about the families they've left behind...

I realise that everyone is an expert after the fact but can't we even wait til the bodies are buried before deciding how everyone else should have behaved?

Facts are tricky, that's why some people wait til they get more of them before making assumptions.

If the batteries are dead, how is a message going to get
through?

Some people are fixated on beacons, second only to knives,
probably neither would have be of use this time.