A couple of Massachusetts hikers were rescued by New Hampshire Fish and Game after they were stuck in Whiteout conditions in Mt. Washington in New Hampshire Sunday night.
At around 6pm on Sunday, New Hampshire Fish and Game was alerted by a 911 call about hikers lost a path to Mt. Washington. Officials learned that Kathryn McKee, 51, Fayville, Massachusetts and Beda Lelacheur, 54, Westborough, Massachusetts, had stuck to the deep snow at about 5,000 feet in the mountains.
A conservation officer was able to talk to the air and go to the path. During the next two hours, McKee and Lelacour worked through snow and deep holes in the chest in the snow under the trees to try to recover the path. While they were able to return to the track several times, they could not follow it, as it had been “completely erased by the wind and the snow,” wrote New Hampshire Fish and Game A statement published on Facebook.
Finally, the couple put themselves in the snow to stay warm and wait for a rescue.
The fish and the game started a “complete rescue operation” at 8:30 pm, temperatures at the Mont Washington summit were less 2 and the winds were blowing between 50 and 60 mph. At 10.30 pm, the lifeguards arrived at Mount Washington Auto Road and started preparing teams, according to officials.
A group of nine lifeguards started the mountain at a Snowcat at about 11pm, arriving at the summit just before midnight. From there, “the crews went out to the white and the snow reduced through the deep snow and the wind” to try to find hikers, according to officials.
At about 1:20 AM, the crews were approaching the last known location of hikers for contacting. Rescue teams could only locate the path through the GPS and could not move quickly due to the “tremendous effort needed to break the path in the deep snow,” said officials.
The lifeguards located hikers at 1:50 AM, finding them alive and consistent, but with cold -time wounds. After setting up warm -up shelters, the crew could begin to leave them down at three in the morning, according to officials.
At 4:15 AM, hikers and lifeguards arrived at the COC Railway Base Station. There they were evaluated by the first who respond. According to officials, a hiker was taken to a hospital for a greater evaluation and the treatment of cold weather injuries.
Officials said that both hikers were prepared with a wide variety of teams and that the incident showed the need to “prepare for the unexpected”.
“If they had not had the amount of gear with them, they were unlikely to survive until the lifeguards arrived,” the officials wrote. “Although technology and experience help find people faster, the fact is that mother nature has the last opinion and preparation, above all, is the difference between life and death in the mountains of New Hampshire. ”