A Distress Beacon Isn't the Same As Dialing 911

http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/hampshire-mountain-hiker-activated-beacon-found-dead-29006945

No info yet on what type beacon, but no beacon replaces common sense.

Many years ago I looked up the details on what a SARSAT beacon transmits to the satellites.

The key thing is that there's only so much space in the packet transmitted, and some of the least significant bits/digits of the location are not sent.

My memory is not clear, but I think the digits transmitted amount to a minimum 300' circle. It may be larger, but the point is that it doesn't matter how precisely the beacon's GPS can pinpoint the location: only a limited number of digits can be sent.

In the best conditions a good GPS can get to < 30' precision, but these were not the best conditions. Her GPS may not have been able to calculate a fix even as small as SARSAT's capabilities based on where the beacon was and how the atmosphere was distorting the signals in the storm. And with the wind it's not hard to imagine the beacon being promptly covered by ice, dirt & debris even if the beacon was in a good spot for listening to GPS satellites.

Finally, beacon GPS may not have even come into play. The Fish & Game guy said the error circle was about a mile. That used to be the precision for locating the beacon by "triangulation" from the SARSAT satellites when no GPS data was available. If this capability still exists it's not hard to imagine storm-driven radio distortions causing a satellite fix to wander a lot.

Mount Washington weather is notorious even to non-hikers. A weather radio would have been a good idea.

PS. A GPS receiver generally uses a temperature-compensated oscillator in the timing measurement. It may have been too cold for the GPS receiver to calculate a position!

Yes indeed.Knowledge trumps gear and gadgets

Here is a video from the search http://www.wmur.com/news/rescuers-search-for-missing-hiker-near-mt-adams/31294362

At 0:32 is visible the harsh weather condition.

It sounds like even with location data accurate to within an inch the rescuers still might not have been able to save her. Knowing where you are is one thing, being able to get to you in time is another.

I think Phaedrus hit the main point. The real issue seems to have been that the conditions were so severe that SAR teams had difficulty even getting into the area.

Modern 406 beacons provide location data both by transmitting GPS coordinates and by Doppler shift. As J_V_A notes above, the GPS coordinates are truncated to an accuracy of 100 meters or so. Doppler shift alone gives a location to about 2 km.

In this case there isn't enough info to know why ".......a lot of the coordinates that we received over the night were all over the place within a mile circumference". It could be the subject was still moving around, desperately seeking shelter. Or perhaps buried under snow where the GPS couldn't get a good fix, but the satellites could still get a Doppler fix on the 5 watt 406 signal. I doubt the cold or weather conditions had much effect on the GPS chip, in Alaska folks regularly use GPS in conditions at least as severe.

Sometimes no matter what gear you have or what preps you make, when your times up its up. There are no guarantees in life except that it ends. I feel sorry for this person. I also feel sorry for the SAR team. To be so close and have this outcome must be heartbreaking for them. If she was wandering around after activating her beacon it impeded her resque. not much to shelter with on a ridgeline like that. I wonder if she had a bivie bag if it could of helped....

BOATMAN
John

What was the weather forecast at the time? Setting off in the face of wind and storm like this is not a very good idea, especially solo,and you had better have the capability to dig a snow cave really quick.

I'm reading that beacon was ACR ResQLink 375. Another article.

http://dailym.ai/1EMuAzy

looks like a experienced outdoors person.

In my experience there are a few kinds of persons who will go out despite bad weather forcast:

- People with time and/or money contrains. Do it now or wait/save up for another year.

- Setting your self up for succes type of persons. 'The we, go out despite bad weather forcasts and see how the weather actually is on sight and determine if you turn around or not'. Weather forcasts are just forcasts and it's not really too accurate. Many people, me including have just stayed home when the weather forcasts was bad, just to find out it was pretty good.

- A little bad weather means less congestion on populair routes, which sometimes makes things more pleasant and sometimes even safer.

In all cases, beter get a good bail out plan and bring proper equipment. I do not know her, the area or the weather forcast, but I do get why people do not abord plans when the weather forcast turn bad.

Thanks - very worthwhile remarks.I guess this may mean we can't just buy the latest technological marvel stick it in our pocket, and expect that everything will be just fine.

Good points.

Another common reason for intentionaly going out in severe weather is for training oneself, and testing equipement in preparation for a major expedition to one of the big peaks of the world. Judging from various articles about her, Ms Matrosova was a very active climber and treker. I don't know anything about the area, but it sounds like she was planning a solo winter traverse of several peaks in one day, which sounds like a very stout agenda. It is possible that this was planned as a training trip, but things spun out of control.

As usual, we don't have a lot of information, so much of this thread is pure speculation. It will be interesting to see if this event gets written up in the next edition of "Accidents in North American Mountaineering". That volume is published yearly by the American Alpine Club, and usually has some very informed analysis, often by participants in the rescue.

100 mph winds is not "a little bad weather".

From the limited info we have, it doesn't appear that it was 100 mph wind when she started the traverse. My impression was that the extreme winds came after she was already up there.

Sometimes knowing when to turn back and retreat of the hill triumphs the idea of pushing on with the 'Mountain Rescue will get me out of here if I need to push the button' idea. Sometimes getting down of the hill came be more tricky than going up it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6T7YlbqHelI

I'm glad to see the evenhanded comments on this thread. We don't have solid info on the deceased's outdoor background but she certainly didn't seem like the stereotypical tourist who, for example, hikes out in Death Valley in flipflops with 0.5 liters of water.

I suspect it's like Tjin and AKSAR say: she was basically qualified for the adventure but rolled the dice and lost with the weather. She may not have had enough experience in gale force winds to appreciate how debilitating they can be. It's what you "don't know that you don't know" that gets you.

Many of us here at ETS have surely danced a little close to the edge regarding uncontrollable factors like weather and came out OK. I know that there were plenty of times over the years where I could have gotten the short straw, and I'm by no means reckless.

One more article.

https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2015/0...oj7K/story.html

Thank you for sharing this really exceptional account, with much more information than the usual news account. How close have any of us come to the line this lady crossed?

I know I have crossed it a few times, but as a military necessity. I do know my limits.

Thats hard to say. I know my limits and try to avoid really bad weather. But I have goten back to mountain huts cold and miserable. Was i close to that line. Don't know. Also had white out conditions when skiing. If I went to the wrong direction I would ended up in the national park side of the mountain in white out storm conditions. Thankfull I went the right way. I sort of found a ski piste. A face plant helped me orientate enough to figure out i was skiing next to the piste the hole time in the highest avalanch danger...

jsshannon, Thanks for that link. It is definitely better than the typical media reporting of these events.

As the article notes, the qualities (iron determination, and judicious risk taking) that make for a successful mountaineer and a successful business person can also sometimes be ones downfall. The line between a great adventure, and a life threatening disaster can sometimes be razor thin. Sometimes we can step over that line without even realizing it, until it is too late. And luck (good or bad) is always part of the equation.

Most of us who have spent a lot of time outside have probably come close to that line now and then. I've often though about one particular trip, in a small inflatable boat in coastal Alaskan waters. We made a series of decisions, all of which seemed quite reasonable at the time, and yet we got progressively into a more and more dangerous situation. If we had all died, I'm sure people would have said "what were those idiots thinking?" Yet at the time, it felt like we were doing the sensible thing.

Stories like this are one reason why I try not to get too judgmental when people get into trouble out of doors.

The other day I was in a store that sell used books and magazines. There I stumbled on a National Geographic article from 2009 about Mount Washington. Lucky enough, it is on-line as well: http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2009/02/mt-washington/shea-text/1

Great article, much better than I normally find. Really well researched, thorough and well written.

I've been thinking that the title of the thread isn't right.
A distress beacon IS the same thing as dialing 911 in terms of results.

In this case, neither action could have saved her life.

Folks hope that 911 or beacon activation is kind of like a Star Trek emergency transporter that will whisk them out of danger instantly. But dialing for help doesn't work that way.

Shifting topic a little-

From reading aircraft accident reports I learned the technique of considering how the accident report would read if something went wrong with a risky action I was considering doing. Can be applied to just about everything one might be doing from flying to backpacking to just driving your car to work.

I remember one particularly distressing body recovery operation a number of years ago in which we retrieved the corpse of a young lady who had just flown to Arizona about two hours earlier for spring vacation. Her friends met her at the plane and took her to the local party spot, where she fell about 90 feet and expired.

This has made me think many times of my very first hike in Arizona with the university hiking club. The leader said "Let's do some rock climbing," which resulted in me taking a 30 foot slide, ending hung up on the lip of a vertical precipice about 40 feet high. Had I gone over, I would have been killed or at least significantly injured.

Well, I wasn't, and I eventually learned better. We were all newbies once.

I wonder about the practical matter of how to deploy a beacon in such an environment.

In > 100 mph winds the beacon is not going to stay put in whatever open space you put it in. And if you tie a lanyard down, will the beacon stay face up?

The beacon's transmitter antenna to SARSAT probably works with the beacon either face up or face down. But the antenna for listening to the GPS satellites probably does not.

There's also the problem of the wind whipping around a beacon whose lanyard is secured, breaking the beacon against rocks. And snow/ice/debris being blown onto the beacon and covering the antennae.

I think that points out one of the advantages of a PLB vs SPOT. The PLB has a built in redundancy regarding your location.

Even if the PLB can't get a GPS fix to retransmit, the satellites can still get a Doppler fix on your location using the 406 Mhrz signal. Granted, the Doppler fix isn't nearly as accurate as a location from GPS, but it is way better than no fix. I believe the 406 Mhrz transmission from the PLB is at 5 Watts, and should get through tree cover, some snow, etc. My understanding is that with SPOT, either it gets a GPS fix, or there is no location data at all.

The older generation of EPIRBs and ELTs had not GPS capability, they relied only on Doppler. They still saved many lives.

A one mile circle cumference seems pretty small if the weather is good...big "if".

Thought the same thing, one mile circumference... would mean would be within ~280 yards if you were at the centre.

Depends a lot on the terrain. 280 yards could place you on the wrong side of a sheer canyon or rugged ridge. It is still better than no fix at all.