Just got this e-mailed to me from the in-laws in Colorado. They live right where this happened. Two brothers go hiking and only one comes back.

http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/state/article/0,1299,DRMN_21_2937457,00.html

PS - When I first moved to Colorado, it snowed on us once (July 3, 1999) during a trip. I was ill-prepared. But luckily it didn't turn out like this.

--Chris

My first reaction, when I read that one of them was a soldier, was "what the hell are they teaching soldiers these days?" But then it occurred to me that after 12 years in the Canadian army, I still didn't know all that much about survival per se, or even camping/hiking, because the military always supplied us with all our gear. When I got interested in backpacking as a civilian, I realised that I didn't have a clue what I should buy.

Sad - they did exactly the wrong thing, lying there and shivering all night. If they'd got up and run in circles all night, they likely would have stood a much better chance of surviving.

Statements like "we didn't really expect a blizzard" (at 11,000 feet on a glacier they didn't think it was possible to get a blizzard?) make it obvious that they really had no idea what they were doing. Sad.

I also Heard the Other Day, -somewhere in the U.S., -a Guy Ran into Trouble and had to be Rescued, -When Trying to Retrieve his Lost Keys from the Bottom of a Lake.

He Attached Weights to his Body, and Had a Garden Hose Setup for Air. He Fortunately had Another Person Nearby.

In this way, He so Descended 30 Feet to the Bottom of the Lake, to Look For his Lost Keys.

At Least he Put some Thought into the Matter, though Still Not the Wisest Decision, as it Turned Out!

He Ran into Trouble Down There! The Other Person Nearby had to at least Begin the Process of Rescueing him.

Other More Professional Rescuers soon came.

The Rescuee says he's More Embarrassed than anything else!

For he's someone who Trains such Rescuers, -including some of the Very Ones who Rescued him!

Kind of a Well Thot Out, -Not Too Brite Thing to have Done!

The Report did Not go on to mention, whether he Successfully Found his Keys or Not. Kinda Doubt it though. One Runs into Trouble like that, -and I Think Keys Move from being a First Thing on your Mind, -to a Last! [color:"black"] [/color] [email]Saunterer[/email]

I have always been accused of not trusting people too much, and so far, what I read, and the closing request about information of the brothers makes me want to wait for more details before I agree that it was an "accident" that one survived while walking out and the other died while waiting it out.

Bountyhunter

Somehow I don't think that standing up and running around in a blizzard would have helped them in any possible way. Perhaps during the lulls, but that would produce sweat, and an even surer death, right? Continuing to make progress 'down' might have been more helpful, but it sounds like they waited even after the storm abated, and were probably quite soaked.

O.K. They were ill prepared and paid a horrific price. So, how many of us jumped into the car this week for a quick run for gasoline or a hamburger? Did you have your urban gear on you? Is the car kit up to date? Or, like me, did you forget the cellphone and flashlight, run out of gas and have to walk back in the dark hoping traffic would notice the light coloured shirt I was wearing <img src="/images/graemlins/frown.gif" alt="" />?

Well, the story's no longer accessible on-line (at least, I can't find it) so I'm going from memory, but:

They were wearing T-shirts, which I bet were 100% cotton, and I'll bet they were wearing blue jeans as well. They'd have been better off stripping naked.

The older brother was active (at first), gathering materials for and building an improvised shelter; the younger brother seems to have sat down and waited. So he had a head start on the hypothermia (or rather, the hypothermia had a head start on him). This activity vs. inactivity may have been the difference between life and death for them. (Another possible factor was that he was lying on the ground, and his brother was lying on top of him. Intentionally or not, it may have been that the younger brother was providing insulation for the elder.)

After building the shelter, it appears the older brother destroyed its value by "pulling the walls down on top of them". I suspect this would have trapped the water and made their situation worse, not better.

The temperature was only 13 F. This equates to -10 C. It's cold, but not that cold; even with the snow, I believe it would be survivable for someone who was physically active.

At 13 F, they would probably have been encountering snow, not wet snow or rain. I suspect the reason they got wet was because they sat still and let the snow melt on their clothing.

Tom Brown describes in one of his books how his "grandfather" once made him and a companion strip down to their underwear and then walk home through the falling snow. Terrified of being frozen to death, they ran all the way. when they got home, they suddenly realised that they were actually very warm. And Larry Dean Olsen once survived a cold night without a fire by running back and forth in the snow until morning.

Finally, when it did become apparent that the younger one was suffering from moderate hypothermia, the only things that could have been done would have been to build a fire, build a better shelter, or get him up and moving around to generate internal body heat.

But of course, if they had known better, they probably would not have gotten into that situation in the first place.

aardwolfe:

I found more information by using the papers search feature and typing 2 brothers or 2 hiking brothers.

Bountyhunter

The human body is an internal combustion engine. We have a finite amount of energy from food and mechanical action. Conversely, there is a classic tale of Inuit hunters seperated from their sleds on a breakaway iceflow. They knew they were helpless and went to sleep. When they woke, the flow had drifted back into the mains sheet. By conserving energy they were able to hike to the sleds. I think no monday morning quarterbacking could change this tragedy much. In a blizzard I'm crawling into my Wiggy bag with my teddy bear and PRAYING.

I ran accross that story on a scubadiving forum. apparantly the guy attached himself to an anchor and rigged up a hose to breathe. He descended once, found his keys, and came up. Then, for some unknown reason, he decided to do it again but lost the hose.

I guess it seemed like a good idea at the time <img src="/images/graemlins/crazy.gif" alt="" />

Chris.

I'm glad I'm not the only one here who forgets about being prepared once in a while.

Link doesn't work. Have to plug in a search for hikers once you get there.

Just remember it was my evil twin who typed that <img src="/images/graemlins/tongue.gif" alt="" />. When I market the Kavanaugh survival knife and book many of my past posts will disappear in some cyber conflagration <img src="/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />.

Click the link, then search on hikers from the page where you get dumped.

That's strange. I just re-checked and the URL is the same that I posted after I did the search. I cleared my cache and still could get to it. Oh well. Copied and pasted for discussion purposes:

Hiker recalls deadly outing
20-year-old soldier loses his brother to blizzard's fury

By Brian D. Crecente, Rocky Mountain News
June 4, 2004

Even as they lay huddled, tucked together in a fetal position under a thatch of scrub brush in a raging blizzard at 11,000 feet, brothers Bob Paré and Greg Davison thought they would survive.

But in the morning, Paré, 20, realized his 16-year-old brother was dead, or close to it, and that he might not make it either.

He waited another hour for daybreak, clutching his brother's motionless body, before he could go for help.

Paré's harrowing trek down St. Mary's Glacier through arctic conditions in light clothing started as a half-day outing with his brother Saturday morning.

Native Coloradans, the young men knew conditions in the mountains can change quickly, but they expected no worse than a rain shower.

"Three days to June, we really didn't expect a blizzard," Paré said Thursday.

The two left the trailhead for St. Mary's Glacier on a loop that would lead them around the top of the mountain and then straight down the glacier, he said.

They each were wearing an undershirt, T-shirt and jeans. They brought along windbreakers and sweat shirts. Their dog Nikki, a red, brindle boxer, joined them.

About an hour into the trip, an arctic storm slammed into the mountain, battering the brothers with 60 mph winds and plunging them into whiteout conditions. Visibility dropped to about 20 feet.

"We thought it was fairly temporary," Paré said. "We were already on our way down, so we thought we would keep going down."

But they quickly became disoriented.

About 5 p.m. the brothers decided to build a makeshift shelter on the side of a curved rock wall.

Paré broke down nearby shrubs and tiny trees, piling them up to form two walls. He lay his younger brother down against the wall and partially covered him with his body to shield him from the brunt of the storm.

Then Nikki lay on top of the two brothers and Paré pulled the makeshift walls down on top of them, he said.

The two brothers lay like that in 13-degree temperatures for about 12 hours, shivering, talking and trying to stay awake.

Neither brother ever thought that death was a possibility.

"We weren't really thinking something like that was going to happen. There were no negative thoughts," Paré said. "We talked all night and there never was any sort of tone like that."

But as morning came, Paré realized his brother wasn't doing well.

"Around 5 in the morning or so he started mumbling like he was dreaming and I tried waking him up and stuff, but he wouldn't wake up," Paré said. "I realized he was getting severe hypothermia."

But it was still dark, so Paré was forced to wait another hour or so before leaving for help.

Paré checked on his brother a final time before leaving at 6:20 a.m.

"I couldn't find a pulse, his eyes were dilated and there was no response at all out of him," he said. "He was gone or damn close."

Paré tried to get Nikki to lead him to safety, but the dog ignored him and crawled back on top of Davison, refusing to leave.

Although the weather was still pretty bad, Paré thought his trip down the mountain would be easy. It wasn't.

Suffering from hypothermia and with his clothes frozen to his body, Paré stumbled down the mountain as if he were drunk.

"I was walking all over the place and the wind kept pushing me over," he said. "I would just sort of sit down for a minute and then get up and start down again."

After about a mile, Paré fell down one last time.

"I was done, that was it," he said. "I have never ever been so spent, exhausted in my life."

A rescuer, searching for the brothers with the Alpine Rescue Team, heard Paré's shouts for help and found him.

The team rushed Paré back to the parking lot, two miles away, where medical personnel had to cut the frozen jeans from his legs and shoes from his feet to get to his severely frostbitten toes.

It took rescuers using directions from Paré another two hours to find Davison's body.

They were able to find it only because Nikki, who was wearing a bright yellow slicker, was still lying on top of him.

Davison was pronounced dead at the base of the mountain.

Paré suffered frostbite on his arms, legs and feet. He says all but his feet have already healed. He doesn't think he will lose any toes.

Nikki survived the ordeal with no injuries.

Trish Davison, the brothers' mother, said she will remember her son Greg smiling, something he always seemed to do.

Greg Davison, who would have been a junior at Heritage High School, played soccer, was active in the Latin club and was a voracious reader, she said.

She said the brothers were best friends. Paré, a soldier based at Fort Carson, often spent weekends hanging out with his brother. Bob Paré took his mother's maiden name when she remarried.

"Bobby called Greg at least once a day, probably two to three times a day," she said. "Their whole lives they have always been the best of friends. They used to complain to me if one was playing with other children."

"They were four years apart and it was almost like they were twins."

• Funeral services for Greg Davison will be at 1 p.m. Monday at St. Frances Cabrini Parish, 6673 W. Chatfield Ave., in Jefferson County. Visitation will be from 4 p.m. to 8 p.m. Saturday and Sunday at Drinkwine Mortuary, 999 W. Littleton Blvd., in Littleton.

• Donations can be made in Greg Davison's name at any Wells Fargo Bank to the Gregory Davison Foundation or the Alpine Rescue Team fund.

>> I think no monday morning quarterbacking could change this tragedy much.

I think it was Peter Garrison, in Flying magazine, who best described why pilots like to do post-mortems on crashes. I don't recall the exact words, but he admitted that it seemed somewhat shallow and/or arrogant to sit in an armchair in air-conditioned comfort and pass judgment on some poor sot who had flown into the side of a thunderstorm. Nevertheless, it's an important aspect of flying - the gist of it was that the time to figure out what you're going to do is not when the sky turns "loud, purple and sideways" as another Flying author once described it; the time to figure it out is when you're sitting in your nice comfy armchair without the prospect of imminent death to distract you.

Everything we discuss here, whether we relate it to a specific news event or not, is really following this principle; figure it out now, because when it's wet, windy, cold and totally unfamiliar, it will be too late.

I'll bet those Inuit hunters weren't wearing jeans and t-shirts when they went to sleep, but fur coats and sealskin boots; and if there was snow, I'll bet they were nice and cosy in a snow cave. That's a very different thing from lying there passively, slowly dying of hypothermia and doing nothing about it.

I wouldn't advise stripping naked and doing jumping-jacks in the snow until my arms fell off as a first line of defense; but I do believe these guys would have been better off if they had.

Thanks for the article, anyway. Maybe you're special.

I'm hoping this knife will be "wilderness enabled and city legal." Or would that be an oxymoron?