Climbing Ranger's Report
Accidents in North American Mountaineering 1999

When the 1999 edition of Accidents in North American Mountaineering arrived in the mail I left it sitting on the counter a while, unopened.

For those who don't know, it is the annual report organized by the American Alpine Club that goes over problems people have had while climbing on this continent during the previous year, and is important reading if you want to learn what to do in an emergency and, equally, what not to do.

Some of the reports are simply tragedy, sobering reminder of the risks we must sometimes accept to move in the mountains.

Some are macabre, even funny, amazing concatenations of poor judgement, bad luck and inept execution. Names are prominently affixed, offering a special kind of immortality. The deadpan "just the facts ma'am" style popular with reporting authorities only makes it worse.

So I hope you appreciate that I viewed that latest edition, shiny on the counter, with a bit of trepidation. We were probably in it.

I finished the dishes, swallowed hard, and opened it to the Wyoming section.

Not too bad. They mention repeated calls to the rangers and that makes us seem a little desperate. Maybe we were, a little, but I remember wanting to keep the Rangers posted on progress down the route. They were very helpful, advising us how to bypass some ugly zigzag rappels (in atrocious weather conditions) had we simply reversed the route.

There was a small error in the report. Dan fell more than ten feet, and I caught his fall when he was still off the deck. He injured his shoulder and foot bouncing off the wall on the way down, I think.

Dan and I continued down to the fat air without a bivvy at the lower saddle because we were worried his foot would become unusable if it stiffened up or became extremely swollen. There was no need for all four of us to travel down that night, so Jim and Jack stayed behind.

Jack, who had stayed behind at the lower saddle while Jim and Dan and I climbed the Exum Ridge, broke a corner of a window to get into the little ranger cabin at the lower saddle when the very high winds of the arriving storm flattened the tents. We offered to pay for that, but the rangers said it was unnecessary.

To the Climbing Rangers: Sorry guys for the bother, and thanks for the useful advice on the way down. It doubtless saved us a good bit of time and energy. With the fresh storm coming in hard we needed that time and had very little energy to spare. But, most especially, thanks for not elevating us to the "rogues gallery" of flagrant examples of how "not to do it."

Larry Susanka