here is a gesture of my dedication to FOGS. this map
measures roughly 9ft wide and 6ft tall. my head is
size of Brazil! the scale is 1:13,040,000 or 1
inch:206miles. what can i say, i love maps and geography.
(picture available on request)
(from Mike Pomponi, 1/20/07)
1 comment:
mike,
you are a true champion of the geographic world and a role model for us all! thanks for stepping it up and throwing something out there on the list - i have been unable to construct a good posting in a while thanks to my final semester of college being the most intensive one yet. don't worry though, the FOGS will survive!
i guess it's worth mentioning (just in case any of you are a little nervous about sending out an email to the list) that any contributions to the FOGS are always encouraged. that goes for your skeptical self too boland!
DISCLAIMER: this is serious...
on a completely separate note, never go out into the mountains by yourself in winter. on friday the 19th, my two buddies and i found a guy on berthoud pass (~12300 ft on the continental divide) who was backcountry skiing by himself and broke his tibia and fibia... badly. we could see the road from where we were, yet help could not find us. my friend erik went down to the road to meet rescue teams while john and i waited with the victim. 7 search and rescue teams buried 6 snowmobiles trying to find us. at 4:30 when the sun was going down and the temps really started to drop, we decided we couldn't wait any more. two girls who heard us screaming for help came down to aid us out with moving the victim. i know, how did two unprepared girls find us when 30 search and rescuers could not?!? either way, the job would have been soooo much harder without them. (one was a firefighter and kept the victim conscious by talking to him) to move the victim at all, his leg had to be picked up in one piece because it was like moving a wet noodle - just above his boot was a complete break with bones almost coming out of the skin. john and i connected our two snowboards together to make a type of sled for the victim to ride down on. we then attached our backpacks to the heelcups of the bindings so we could hold his weight and lower him down the mountain. moving a 185 lb man in that much pain is incredibly slow. the guy was in excruciating pain, screaming for a helicopter to come get him and yelling at us to get him moving down off the mountain. we slowly began moving him down in elevation.
when the first rescue team met us at about 5:15 and still above 11500 ft, they were un-prepared and only had a couple heat packs to throw on the victim who was literally dying at our feet. he had already begun saying scary things like "make sure my girlfriend gets my dog" and "my truck is at the top of the pass, i want her to have it."
then, one team member needed my snowshoes (for what i never figured out as his help was less than worthless). after the adrenaline had worn off and two more rescuers came, i started realizing that i hadn't felt my feet in hours - we had started our hike that day at 10 am. luckily i had a sandwich to share and some water to go around. it wasn't much, but we all needed the calories and hydration.
a toboggan with a backboard arrived 40 minutes later, and we loaded the ghostly white victim onto it. after repeatedly being told that a snowmobile was coming (which it never did) john basically had to take a leadership role, shouting at rescuers to keep moving the toboggan to save the life of the victim. the only team meber who seemed to recognize the severity of the situation was the emt.
without my snowshoes and missing a pint of blood (i had donated the day before), i was "postholing" to my knees with every step through the deep snow. i must have fallen over close to a hundred times (postholing as deep as your waist at times through the dark while mentally and physically exhausted is trying). meanwhile the jackass who took my snowshoes wasn't even pulling the toboggan and was complaining about a cramp in his thigh. big tough military man was about as useful as another buried snowmobile.
the fiasco began at 1 pm and we weren't down off the mountain until 8:30. we had to pull him out the whole way - over 3.5 miles. the victim was going hypothermic and was rushed to denver hospital for emergency surgery to save his leg.
there must have been 60 people from volunteer search and rescuers to police to emt's on the scene. once i got down i ran to an ambulance to have my feet looked at. i couldn't feel them up to the ankles. sitting in the warm ambulance i didn't even want to look at what lay underneath my socks, but thankfully it was good news. while i couldn't feel them for another half-hour, i kept all my toes. the girls who had helped soon joined me in the ambulance. they had been completely unprepared for the situation and were in sneakers and cotton socks. their situation was worse than mine as their toes were all a waxy white color. the emt's seemed hopeful - they said slowly warming them back up should be enough to save them from frostbite. i have no idea how the victim ended up. we are going to call him later this week.
john, erik and i were recommended to join either the rocky mountain or grand county search and rescue team. we politely declined.
bottom line: never go into the backcountry by yourself if you want to live. and never rely on search and rescue to save your ass. that guy surely would have died if we hadn't found him and moved him. i just hope he keeps his leg and feet.
this was a serious wake-up call to the dangers in the mountains. i can only imagine what those climbers on mt. hood must have gone through. it had to have been terrifying and painful.
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