The two friends had hiked New Hampshire’s challenging Mount Washington trail a month ago. They returned and did it again Sunday after trekking through neighboring peaks in the White Mountains. Both veteran hikers, the women were an hour behind schedule on their descent and losing daylight, but they had warm clothing, headlamps and other gear.
Then the wind kicked in. The temperature dropped. They were in waist-deep snow and whiteout conditions. They were lost on the tallest mountain in the Northeast, known for its extreme, changeable weather.
“That snow has nothing to stick to,” said Amy Cotter, a weather observer and education specialist with the Mount Washington Observatory at the peak at 6,288 feet (1,916 meters). “That snow gets whipped up very easily.”
One of Kathyrn McKee’s snowshoes became stuck in a “spruce trap,” a hole created in the snow underneath trees.
“It took like 20 minutes to get out of that,” she recalled in an interview with The Associated Press. “And that kept happening. And so we got to a point where we were literally, like crawling on our bellies to try to get to the next point and just struggling so much that it wasn’t working.”
After about an hour of trying to rescue themselves, McKee, 51, of Southborough, Massachusetts, and Beata LeLacheur, 54, of Westborough, Massachusetts, called 911. They reached New Hampshire Fish and Game conservation officers, who plotted their GPS coordinates and directed them toward the trail — just 34 feet (10 meters) away.
It didn’t work.
“They ended up on the trail several times but could not follow it as it had been completely erased by wind and snow,” said Sgt. Matthew Holmes of the Fish and Game Department. After multiple attempts trying to locate the trail and several phone calls starting around 6 p.m., “the two needed to huddle up in the snow to keep warm and await assistance,” he said.
The temperature at the summit was 2 degrees below zero (minus 19 Celsius), with sustained winds of 50 to 60 mph (80 to 96 kph) at the time, Holmes said.
McKee and LeLacheur were stuck at an elevation of about 5,000 feet (1,524 meters).
McKee said she was wearing gloves with liners, but still lost the use of her hands due to the cold.
“I went into my first aid kid to grab the emergency blanket and extra hand warmers,” she said. “I couldn’t open the chest because my hands were frozen.”
The two sat there with the wind blowing on them for about six hours.
“I was terrified that my friend may pass away in front of me and, you know, or I might pass away, “ McKee said. ”And how did we get here? So, you do think about that, but you can’t stay in that thought process because that’s not going to get you out. So we just kept focusing on what is the next thing we can do.”
McKee said they grabbed a bag and used it as a wind guard. She was wrapped in a covering used over sleeping mats and bags.
“I was buried in snow at that point, so it was basically an insulator. So that kind of helped. But it also meant that I was immobile, I wasn’t really moving,” she said.
By late Sunday, the Mount Washington State Park snowcat, a ski resort groomer-type vehicle, started up the mountain’s auto road with nine rescuers and arrived at the summit just before midnight. Crews snowshoed their way through the wind-blown snow toward the trail. They approached the hikers’ last known location at 1:20 a.m. Monday, but had not yet made contact.
“The only way to locate the trail was through GPS navigation, and the going was slow due to the tremendous effort required to break trail in the deep snow,” Holmes said.
McKee and LeLacheur were found a half-hour later. They had suffered frostbite, mostly to their hands.
Crews set up emergency shelters for them, and by 3 a.m. Monday, they were able to move on their own. By 4:15 a.m., the rescuers and hikers trekked down to the base station of the Cog Railway, a locomotive-led train that climbs to the mountain peak.
Holmes said both women were prepared for a winter hike, had emergency gear and had winter hiking experience. But they didn’t expect they would lose the trial. McKee and LeLacheur had received training on hikes from the Appalachian Mountain Club’s chapter in Worcester, Massachusetts.
“We feel really awful about having to make that (911) call, but it did save our lives, and we’re eternally grateful,” McKee said of their rescuers.
Both said they’d go out hiking again in the White Mountains and add a small pop-up tent to their gear in case they need to seek shelter.
“You either get back on the horse, or you don’t,” McKee said. “I’m not going to to have a problem to get back on the horse. I’m going to do it as safe as I can. But I recognize there are risks in what we do.”
