Wow. No I didn't hear about that one. What happened to the well-prepared winter hiker? Did he leave the other guy behind?
Me thinks they took different routes. There’s only so much you can do for someone you encounter who’s unprepared and won’t follow advice.
Climbing down the Headwall is just a bad idea. In the dark? I would bet the prepared person tried to talk him out of it.
If you’re practiced with ice gear it’s a different story. But even Ueli Steck, who solo climbed the Matterhorn in less than 2 hrs, fell to his death on an “easy” training climb on Nuptse, preparing for his Everest-Lhotse route.
Memorial Day weekend, the visitor’s center had a whole rack of spike devices for hiking boots. Not actual crampons though. Without toe spikes, those aren’t much use climbing 30+ degrees.
When we were coming down the trail, we passed a young guy coming up for a look for a trip up the next day. (Ah, the young. A quick 4 hr hike to check things out)
He wanted to know about the snow and hiking up the bowl. I asked him if he was skiing and he said he’d be snowboarding. I told him I don’t know how snowboarders do it, skiers can kick steps in with the plastic boots. Plus they have poles. Maybe he could get crampons to fit snowboard boots? Maybe the snow would be soft enough to kick with snowboard boots.
Then there was the mom with a bunch of kids. She had skis, the kids nothing except the oldest, maybe 11, had a smooth bottom rigid plastic sled. I told him he was going to have to bail out to stop, as there’s no runout, only rocks at bottom. They past us still going up about 4:15 before we got to Hermit Lake. I know they all made it down because they passed us on the way down.
Then there was the dad with skis, and 3-4 kids all under 8. Again, they’re still heading up, maybe they get to the bowl at 4:30. The kids are dressed the same as any warm spring day in town. Presumably, the guy had raincoats in his pack. Still, it’s easy to slip on the low angle snow just moving around and there’s rocks everywhere.
That group we actually mentioned to the caretaker when we stopped at Hermit Lake. He said he’d talked to them.