Mt. San Jacinto Outdoor Recreation

Sobering story, Sose. It is amazing how quickly you can deteriorate when the cold gets into you.

I was climbing Mt. Dade once with some friends. We marched up the couloir in the early morning. It was cold, clear, and still. Everything seemed routine. When we hit the eastern crest of the Sierra, there was a howling wind coming from the west. Up until then, I thought I could operate in any wind I could stand up in, but I learned better. We sat down on some rocks to take our crampons off, for the trip up the ridge. By the time I had them off and secured, I was deteriorating rapidly, physically and mentally. So were my companions. We only had to exchange a few words, shrieked at close range to communicate in the wind, to have a meeting of the minds. We turned around. Back in the couloir, on the eastern side of the crest, sheltered from the wind, everything was fine again. Two different worlds, one of them deadly and the other peaceful, a very short distance apart.

I'm sure many people on this board have had similar experiences.

Ed wrote:I don't think there are many circumstances where building a fire makes the difference between surviving or not surviving.

Uh, no.

Hikin_Jim wrote:

Ed wrote:I don't think there are many circumstances where building a fire makes the difference between surviving or not surviving.

Uh, no.

There are plenty of circumstances where people spending a night out in cold weather have built, or tried to build, a fire. I doubt that there are many cases where it made the difference between surviving or not surviving. It is a judgment in a gray area, I know. So is automatically attributing their survival to the fire. In addition, the conditions for a good fire are narrow. In addition to fuel, you need either little wind and precipitation, or shelter from them. I suspect that is more important than the fire itself.