Catskillmountaineer.com Forum

Very sad story:

http://nypost.com/2015/02/17/new-york-h ... mountains/

A woman hiking solo on the Presi Range in New Hampshire dies of exposure. They were reporting -85F wind chill with 140+ mph winds at Mt Washington Weather station.

I have been following this story. Very sad outcome. A lot of questions as to what happen.

There was a nice article in The Boston Globe this weekend on this incident:

The Boston Globe article about Kate Matrosova

The article keeps talking about her using a PLB. She didn't have a PLB. She actually had a SPOT, which is different. The SPOT uses a 400 milliwatt transmitter. where the PLB uses a 5000 milliwatt transmitter. That is why they had GPS reading all over the place. To me, it was the difference between life and death. SAR got confused and believed that she moved because the second reading was in the tree line. Logically, that is where SAR went. The PLB would have transmitted ONE signal and started the Strobe Light. This would have guided them to her that night, instead of 12 hours later....which was too late.

I had run into her a number of times before. She was very fit, strong, and smart. From my conversations, she appeared to be very knowledgeable.

She grew up in Siberia Russia. She knew what cold was like. I think that she encountered worse weather then she had expected. Sad outcome. My condolences to her husband and friends.


Picture of Kate Matrosova

Some people have been saying that she was irresponsible in going on that day with so little gear. Some are claiming that her husband should pay for SAR. I thought that SAR in NH was volunteer?

It is very interesting about the PLB and SPOT. I think most people are confused between the two.

There are a lot of people who are jumping to conclusions before they know the basic facts. I think that she underestimated the wind, but the original forecast for winds wasn't nearly as bad as what happen. I don't think that her gear list and clothing was that bad. Maybe she should have had snowshoes, but I don't think that it would have made a difference. The failure of the SPOT was the primary cause of death. Scattered GPS readings that led SAR on a wild goose chase. The SPOT has value, but it isn't a PLB. For life-threatening situations, the PLB is the right tool.

There weren't any expenses. The SAR is volunteer. The suggestion that someone should be billed for the SAR is ridiculous. From what I know, I haven't seen any evidence that she was being irresponsible. It is important to remember that a very small piece of evidence can change the view of what happen. But, I do think that she had some very bad luck.