Various sources report Richard Ferrari fell nearly 1000 feet while soloing Mount Whitney’s northwest face via the Mountaineer’s Route in extremely hazardous conditions. It took authorities two days to recover his body. The articles note the Mountaineer’s Route was first scaled by naturalist John Muir in 1873.
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The Gallup Independent has a strange tale about a lost hiker whose life was saved because the keys were in an SUV stuck in a 5′ New Mexico snowdrift. Chuck Whitney got stuck on County Route 50 and so he and his girlfriend camped out while they waited for help the next day. In the middle of the night they heard a car door slam and the engine start but didn’t investigate because they thought the region was too remote for anybody else to be there. The next morning he found foot prints and saw somebody had been in the car although they had left. Whitney found out later after reading a newspaper report that the person in the car was Mike Miller who had spent 23 hours lost in a snowstorm and was subject of a statewide search. After drying his clothes Miller walked further down the road where he was picked up by a passing motorist.
News24 reports 3 climbers in the in the Ecole en Bauges region of Savoie in the French Alps near Grenoble were swept to their deaths by an avalanche, Local officials in Savoie said an investigation would be carried out into the circumstances of the worst single mountain accident of the season.
The Post Intelligencer reports Paul Toomey, 19, of Everett slid 700 feet downMount Pilchuck and then fell over a 200 foot cliff. Toomey was wearing tennis shoes and had gone off the trail when he lost his balance in slushy snow near a lookout at about the 5,000-foot level of the 5,324-foot mountain.
The Yomiuri Shimbun reports a new trail has opened on Fuji. The Murayama Kodo trail was the most popular route up the mountain until it fell into disuse in 1903, when an easier trail was opened. In 2002, the Tokyo-based Fujisan Club began clearing the trail. The new trail is a stark contrast to the modern method, whereby visitors travel to the fifth station–2,400 meters above sea level–and then ascend to the 3,776-meter summit along a relatively easy trail. Records show that the ancient trail was opened in the late Heian period (794-1192) as part of the rigorous training for yamabushi, ascetic Buddhist monks. The trail begins at Murayama Sengen Shrine, 500 meters above sea level. It served as the main trail until the middle of the Edo period (1603-1868), when a new route was opened.
The Union Leader reports there has been an increase in the number of hikers on Mount Washington thanks to the winter running of the Cog Ski Train but there have been no new problems. There is a new route to access the famed mountain in winter and early spring and perhaps an easier way up, some believe. The plowed rough, rocky and long Mount Clinton Road from Crawford Notch to the Marshfield Base Station is now a snowmobile trail, and the Base Road from Fabyan’s Station in Twin Mountain has been plowed to access parking to skiers while also allowing snowmobilers on a side trail. In the December 2004 issue of United Airlines’ on-board magazine is a historic illustration of the Cog, and an article about “The Cog that Could.†Its subheading was “A ski train ratchets up winter options on Mount Washington.â€Â
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Centerdaily reports Lee Barry has become at the oldest person to complete the Appalachian Trail at 81. He carried a homemade pack (made from nylon with no frame) . He started Jan. 2 at the trail’s southern terminus at Springer Mountain, Ga., hiking for three weeks at a time and returning home for monthly church council meetings. When he finished walking the trail’s 2,175 miles on Nov. 20, he had turned 81. A “thru-hiker” is one who intends to complete the trail on a continual, but not necessarily non-stop, basis, according to spokesman Brian King of the Appalachian Trail Conference in Harpers Ferry.
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The AP reports an avalanche on Grossglockner – Austria’s highest mountain – swept away two Hungarian backcountry skiers killing one. There were avalanches throughout Europe. A 48-year-old German man was found dead after he and his son were swept away by an avalanche as they were skiing Sunday in the resort of Saalbach in the Salzburg province (his son survived). A Czech man was killed in a separate snow slide near the resort of Bad Gastein, also in the Salzburg province.
The BBC reports officials are unable to raise nearly $4 Million to replace the Showdon Cafe which was once labelled a “slum” by Prince Charles.
The current concrete block cafe is nearly 70 years old and deteriorating. Snowdonia National Park Authority says it needs to raise the funds by June or the new cafe will not be built. The new cafe to be completed by 2007 would be a stone and glass building. It is estimated that 350,000 visitors make the trek to the top of Wales’ highest mountain every year by train or on foot. The original cafe was built in 1935 by Sir Clough Williams-Ellis, the creator of the tourist Italianate village of Portmeirion on the north Wales coast.
– have all stalled because of a lack of cash. More than $8 Million has already been raise ($6 Million from the Assembly Government and $2 Million from the Wales Tourist Board, Welsh Development Agency and Snowdon Mountain Railway.
Links:
Hightrek Page on Snowdon Cafe (source of image above)
There have been a lot of articles about the record low snowpack on Rainier and the Pacific Northwest including Hood while California is having near record excess snowpack (leading to a very rare blossoming Death Valley). AP notes the snowpack spectacularly dwarfs that last record low in 1977. For instance, the record low water content at Stampede Pass was 11.1 inches. It is now 2.5 inches. At Paradise less than 3 feet of snow remained on the meadows, with some spots having only a few inches. Normally, Paradise has 15 to 20 feet of snow in late winter.