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At the mercy of the mountains

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  • #16
    Originally posted by Adk Keith View Post

    BTW, As I said earlier, I have not read the entire book, but my hat is off to you for putting it together. I can't imagine the effort it took.
    I agree, and my hat is also off to welcome you to the Forum....I hope this will not be your only visit. While I understand your wanting to respond to the thread you found, I hope you will stay a while and look around...

    Scott
    “Death is the only wise advisor that we have. Whenever you feel, as you always do, that everything is going wrong and you're about to be annihilated, turn to your death and ask if that is so. Your death will tell you, 'I haven't touched you yet.” Carlos Castenada

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    • #17
      Originally posted by WinterWarlock View Post
      I agree, and my hat is also off to welcome you to the Forum....I hope this will not be your only visit. While I understand your wanting to respond to the thread you found, I hope you will stay a while and look around...

      Scott
      Yes welcome...And I too will continue with the book. I do find it relaxing but was stunded for a second to think that it was not truthful..
      ADK 46-R # 6750W
      CL-50 #51
      CATSKILLS 9/35
      NPT--Complete 7-6-13

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      • #18
        Originally posted by viewseeker View Post
        Yes welcome...And I too will continue with the book. I do find it relaxing but was stunned for a second to think that it was not truthful..
        Rob - just to clarify, from what I've read here and on VFTT - I don't think anyone was saying it wasn't truthful, but perhaps not accurate. Now I think we're hearing that it may be more related to differing perspectives, viewpoints and recollections of the events in question...
        Scott
        “Death is the only wise advisor that we have. Whenever you feel, as you always do, that everything is going wrong and you're about to be annihilated, turn to your death and ask if that is so. Your death will tell you, 'I haven't touched you yet.” Carlos Castenada

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        • #19
          For what it's worth, I've read At the Mercy and Not Without Peril and I enjoyed both of them. Reading about the mountains gets me through the times when I can't be hiking.

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          • #20
            Originally posted by mikepam1013 View Post
            For what it's worth, I've read At the Mercy and Not Without Peril and I enjoyed both of them. Reading about the mountains gets me through the times when I can't be hiking.
            If you liked those, you might want to pick up "Death in Yosemite" - documents every death ever in the park...
            “Death is the only wise advisor that we have. Whenever you feel, as you always do, that everything is going wrong and you're about to be annihilated, turn to your death and ask if that is so. Your death will tell you, 'I haven't touched you yet.” Carlos Castenada

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            • #21
              Originally posted by WinterWarlock View Post
              Rob - just to clarify, from what I've read here and on VFTT - I don't think anyone was saying it wasn't truthful, but perhaps not accurate. Now I think we're hearing that it may be more related to differing perspectives, viewpoints and recollections of the events in question...
              Scott
              your right scott.. i jumped to a conclusion far too soon. OPPS .. my bad..
              ADK 46-R # 6750W
              CL-50 #51
              CATSKILLS 9/35
              NPT--Complete 7-6-13

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              • #22
                I also enjoyed your book... and welcome to the forum.

                Why are people (in general) intrigued by tragedy?

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                • #23
                  Originally posted by sp_nyp View Post
                  I also enjoyed your book... and welcome to the forum.

                  Why are people (in general) intrigued by tragedy?
                  I'm not sure, but I'm guilty as charged. Two books I read cover to cover without much off-time were "Over The Edge, Deaths In The Grand Canyon" & "Between A Rock & A Hard Place".

                  It makes me think more about what I'm doing when I'm way out there. I want to live a long, good life. I don't want to be in someones book!

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                  • #24
                    Originally posted by 8thday View Post
                    It makes me think more about what I'm doing when I'm way out there. I want to live a long, good life. I don't want to be in someones book!
                    I read books about emergency backcountry situations so that I can hopefully learn from someone else's mistakes, and not make those same mistakes myself.

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                    • #25
                      I agree with you, DSettahr. We can learn a lot from previous mistakes or recognize situations before it is too late to recover.

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                      • #26
                        Thanks for the warm welcome to the forum, everyone. Though I currently live in Colorado, I'm a New York native and the Adirondacks remain one of my favorite mountain landscapes. It's great to connect with others that share that love.

                        I also appreciate everyone's careful reading of the book (catching errors), their measured criticism, and their understanding. (Thanks, also, to those of you who've enjoyed the book and shared your positive comments!) Though it was officially published in 2008, I researched and wrote the book years earlier, when I was a young writer early in his career. I've evolved and matured much as a writer since then, and if I were to re-write the book today, it would be quite different. Never the less, the errors that did creep in (relatively few, in my opinion, considering the scope of the work) haunt me still. Some were simple typos or careless oversights. Others were partly a nature of the work - at times, I had to reconcile conflicting accounts of a given story, attempting to separate fact from fiction (a process that certainly leaves room for error).

                        Even so, I did strive to make the book as factually accurate as possible. In addition to doing "standard" background reporting (such as reviewing old newspaper clippings), I filed a Freedom of Information Law request with the state to obtain official search and rescue reports, and I interviewed more than 30 survivors, searchers, rescuers, family members, etc. totaling dozens of hours of interview tape. At any rate...

                        As for the question of why we like to read stories of tragedy, I think previous posters' comments about learning from the mistakes of others is an important part of it. For better or worse, I think there's also some morbid curiosity at work...the same reason we slow down when driving our car past an accident scene, or why the nightly news is filled with "bad" news and relatively little "happy, positive, good" news. Finally, I also think that we recognize an aspect of ourselves in the stories we read. As people who adventure in the mountain landscape, we've all had in the past (or will have in the future) our own brushes with misadventure. It's an inevitable part of the experience. At times, a very fine line can separate our own misadventures from the ones that make it into books like mine. We could just as easily be the people we read about. Whether it's sympathy or empathy or something else, we connect with that...

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                        • #27
                          Peter and I have compared notes and memories etc.

                          There really were no conclusions between us. When you are a searcher on the ground, you don't necessarily know what is happening elsewhere in the search and as a researcher, you have to go on what you are told by those who were there. From what we can piece together there were similarities in both searches that may have caused people interviewed to have mixed the two together or there may just be a difference in perspective. No matter why, but these type of "discrepancies" are bound to exist.

                          Once again, I salute Peter for collecting information and writing about the very real and serious possibility of becoming sick, injured or lost while we are out doing the things we love to do, as well as the potential outcome of a situation when things go terribly wrong. As a searcher, it is not unusual for me to get home after a search and think "there but by the grace of God go I". The Birchmeyer search was one of those.

                          Learn, go, and be safe.

                          Keith
                          'I would rather sit on a pumpkin and have it all to myself, than be crowded on a velvet cushion.' - Henry David Thoreau

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                          • #28
                            Compass???

                            Does anyone know whether David Boomhower was carrying a compass? I'm still trying to make sense of the fact that he was just 3 or so miles to the west of route 30 when he decided to "stay put" and hope someone would find him.

                            Over that period of 55 days in the wilderness, one would think that just bearing due east for those 3 miles would have saved him. A compass would have aided him in that regard even if the weather was clouded over and rainy much of the time.
                            Ahh............Wilderness.......

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                            • #29
                              Originally posted by poconoron View Post
                              Does anyone know whether David Boomhower was carrying a compass? I'm still trying to make sense of the fact that he was just 3 or so miles to the west of route 30 when he decided to "stay put" and hope someone would find him.

                              Over that period of 55 days in the wilderness, one would think that just bearing due east for those 3 miles would have saved him. A compass would have aided him in that regard even if the weather was clouded over and rainy much of the time.
                              Not even a compass bearing was necessary. All he had to do was walk downhill, and he would've come out at Lewey Lake Campground, probably after no more than an hour and a half of walking.

                              I've been down the Sucker Brook Trail several times, and it is kind of hard to follow in places. Not so much due to a lack of markers, but due to a lack of people using the trail. About the only regular use the trail gets its from people day hiking from the campground, and the few groups that make it up to the height of land turn around there without venturing any further. Because there's no worn tread to follow in many places, the trail can be hard to follow.

                              On the west side of the ridge, the trail crosses Colvin Brook 10 times without a bridge. Some of these crossings are pretty tricky, and and a bunch of them are within a few hundred feet of each other. This can be kind of demoralizing to someone who's never hiked the trail before. (The reason for the numerous crossings is that the trail follows an old logging road, and there used to be bridges that are now long gone at each of the crossings.)

                              While the trail certainly isn't one for the novice hiker, I have to suspect that there are other circumstances that we don't know about concerning Boomhower's adventure. If he knew that staying put was a good idea in the woods during an emergency situation, why didnt he just stay put on the NPT, where everyone knew he was, instead of heading off on a side trail?

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                              • #30
                                I am currently reading At the Mercy of the Mountains. This thread is absolutely priceless.

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