The Hanover Collaboration

A 17yr old eagle scout was lost for three days in the Presidentials. I’d assumed that he was dead a day before they reported that he had been found okay.

Here’s it is from the local paper

First check the weather archive. It snowed on Saturday, rained on Monday and was pretty warm the whole time.

It’s hard to tell what was going on since the newspaper is so terrible.

Here’s a map and here’s my best guess: He was planning on doing the usual traverse of Madison, Adams, Jefferson and Washington from Pinkham notch, counter-clockwise. On the summit of Adams he decides to take a “short cut” through the great gulf (although even in the summer, I’m not sure that would be any faster than the ridge). Maybe we give him the benefit of the doubt and he was planning on calling it a day and wanted to go out via Jefferson Ravine for some reason (e.g. car shuttle). When he gets to the bottom, he finds the river uncrossable. He turns around but in a moment of stupidity imagines that somehow he is still going to make it out before dark and rather than heading back up Adams, he starts up the Six Husbands trail. He probably makes about 1/4mi per hour and eventually packs it in for bed.

On Sunday morning, he wakes up convinced that he is just short of the summit of Jefferson and decides to head up instead of down. In fact he is nowhere near the summit of Jefferson and proceeds to spend all day Sunday going up Six Husbands.

Once he gets back up, I’m guessing he’s thinking auto road, but he’s tired and doesn’t get there before Monday night. In fact he’s still on Clay at 10:30AM Tuesday.

The rangers talked like he could have gotten out on his own. I’m not convinced. I imagine he could have made it to the observatory by Tuesday night, but I really doubt he could have made it out on his own. Unless he had to spend a lot of Monday on Six Husbands, he was making really terrible time when they found him.

In any event, I’ve done some stupid solo hikes too, but I’ve never been forced to spend a whole night out, let alone three… in the winter. I’m pretty impressed with the kid.