The summit of Mt Washington on a ~20% Risk day in February.

A different day up on Mt Washington.  A decent February day.  Slightly below average winds, slightly above average temperatures.  But, even with favorable conditions, frostbite risk to exposed skin is still very serious up there.  Removing mitts to handle a map or manipulate some buttons on a device, and your hands will turn purple in a matter of seconds.  Topping out on Damnation really threw me for a loop when looking at how much elevation we were going to be giving up following the few cairns we could see.  We couldn't see the summit cone, and without orienting features, you might only have method-of-steepest-ascents, and that would have routed us to the summit, rather than just skirting across the flats of the Garden.  Only in this brief break in the clouds, did the descending path become more obvious as the correct routing for what we wanted to do.

Those cairns are huge, they come up to my chest.  I've been up there in visibility so low that I've walked right into one, resulting in a pretty decent laceration on my knee.

The windswept nature of it all also highlights a situation where microspikes have a distinct advantage over crampons, especially if you are doing one of the larger traverses where you are going to be covering miles and miles of this stuff.

And this is where that experience part comes into play.  Could I do this, yes, ten years ago.  These days, probably; I've still got the skills/training and equipment (even if it's a bit dated, although I do need new winter boots), but I've now spent more time in Asia and other hot climates and not in the mountains like I did when I was younger, so I don't bounce back like I used to despite hiking several miles of trails most days of the week and I don't like the cold like I used to so if asked to go into that situation for fun, my answer would be, without hesitation, no.  At this stage of my life it falls outside of the acceptable range on my risk matrix for recreational activities (and I still do a lot of things some of my friends and family think are dumb )- in a professional context, with the right people and equipment backing me, yeah, I'd probably still join a SAR effort after evaluating the appropriate factors, but not a recovery effort.  Younger, stronger guys can handle that, you don't need a wilderness paramedic for a dead body.  

If I were going there for my own enjoyment, I would pick another time of year with better weather conditions.

Me and another Arfcommer slowed way down to help a kid who was in distress descending Lions Head Winter Trail.  His axe wasn't cutting it, so I gave him one of my technical axes that gave him a more positive grip.  His axe was fine, but he was mentally fatigued and his straight shaft handle wasn't doing him any favors on a descent that favors a lot of hooking.  I think he was in micros, but that was fine, because I think I was in micros at that point, with my friend still being in crampons only because he didn't own micros.

The kid was just sketched out by the steepness.  Ok, take away the trees, and it would be horrifying.  And, objectively, if you fell, you risked a potentially immobilizing injury.  But, the trees are there, so you can pretend that it's not that steep, grab the occasional exposed root, maybe stem off of a trunk, and get to the next walkable section.  It is a section that can seem like it just never fucking ends, yes, but it does end.  I've seen guides have to belay clients up or down the thing, and frankly, they've got the patience of saints, and the bank accounts of bums, to do so.

I couldn't just pass by the guy in good conscience.  He wasn't incapacitated, and he probably wasn't going to become so, but he didn't have sufficient warm stuff to have much margin if his movement slowed much more.  And night was coming.

A few weeks later, I was at a talk given by some prominent locals about some other stuff, and SAR was part of the discussion.  One of the questions was that, with them being on SAR and likely getting the call, would you preemptively help somebody if you passed someone and judged that that person might be the reason you get a phone call later that night.  And, the answer was, "Nope."  They explained it as, "They've got to learn somehow."  They did go on to say that if the situation was dire, yes, they would intervene, but otherwise, they weren't inclined to get in the way of that persons learning experience.

There is a parking lot on top of this mountain. Why the fuck walk?

That's pretty much how I've always looked at it as well.  

As I've gotten older and a lot more miles (read a lot more beat up), I'm less inclined to put myself in a situation where I realize I may well become part of the problem.  Even having the knowledge doesn't mean you can or should physically undertake some activities- you have a ton more experience and skill in that environment than I ever did and now in my 50s I know that I couldn't pull off some of the things I've done in the past.  Trying to teach that to people in a wilderness first aid/1st responder/EMT class is a hard thing, just like it is in confined space or various water rescue courses (all of my teaching certs have lapsed at this point).  Even when you have a white board and you start drawing little stick figures to show how an injured rescuer exponentially increases the problem and makes it that much more dangerous, you can tell some folks just don't get it. Trying to explain things like weight constraints with helicopters, especially as altitude increases or when weather conditions come into play, will really want to make you bang your head against the wall.  

I've gone sledding in Tuckerman's Ravine during a white out. We canceled our summit attempt for that day due to weather,  and we had the proper gear.

I remember seeing this sign when I hiked Mt. Washington during the summer in the 1970‘s. Climbing the rocks in a cotton sweatshirt I realized halfway up that if it started raining and blowing we wouldn’t be able go o make it up or down before hypothermia set in. It was sobering to a 19 year old.

Any smart person, that is helped by strangers in the back country, should realize they were at least not in a great situation, recognize they were helped because their less than ideal situation was obvious to the passerby , and still learn from that experience. I bet that guy bought 2 good bent handle axes to take next time. But then again, most people aren't very smart and lie to themselves all the time. so maybe they have a point.

And it you aren't using the trees, you arent using the whole route. ( just like golf, if you aren't using the trees, you aren't using the whole course )

How does something so glaringly obvious escape someone?

Did he have a PLB, Inreach or something.?

Might have just been his cell phone.  I wouldn't expect a cell phone to work inside Crawford Notch SP from 302, but higher up, above 4k, you might get something.  Further north, out of the notch, and up on Washington, I would think you'd have reception higher up on Washington, if not the whole route/aspect he was on.

Using a cell phone in those conditions would be brutal, though.  Using any device in those conditions to relay information with any degree of detail would be brutal.

You have to seek out the leeward side of something, anything.  Fortunately, he found something at Lake of the Clouds.  Short of that, the cairns can provide a break for one person, maybe two, when needed.

I bought some stylus pens last year with the intention of putting a cord on them an using that to manipulate my phone without having to come out of gloves.

Didn't work.  Didn't even work in the apartment.  They were simply JFC garbage.  I need to buy several different types to find some that work, test them ahead of time, put them in the freezer, retest, etc.

If you find something that works post it up, I could use it for hunting, my climbing days are over

A film I didn't know about until yesterday.





And the very matter-of-fact, non-Hollywood writeup of the events...  
I only ask that you don't mention what's on pages 53 and 54, for the sake of others who haven't read it.
https://digitalcommons.dartmouth.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1155&context=appalachia