November 21, 2025
"'I find it very difficult to convey how horrific it was... It was suffocating, wind so powerful that you had to sit down and curl into a ball...'"
"'... and turn your back to it so it didn’t knock you down the mountain. I couldn’t breathe with the ice and snow blowing so much in my face and then attempting to go up a very steep climb. It was just too many things at once.' They were two miles from their base camp and the large group of trekkers decided the safest thing to do was continue climbing for another mile or so in the hope of reaching a refuge. They would later discover it had been shut because park rangers had left to cast their mandatory votes in a presidential election the day before...."
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47 comments:
The process and internal contemplations that lead to a post like this would interest me. Is this meant as a continuation of the theme of today’s opening post?
So voting is mandatory in Chile but there's no mail-in ballots. Interesting combination.
Experienced mountain hikers know weather forecasts are not something you bet your life on.
From the pictures, it looks like all of them had LOTS of gear. Dead weight, it seems.
Know where you're going. Prepare for worst case. Don't expect "guard rails", "safe" time-out spaces and Rescue Fairies.
The alps are dotted with many plaques bolted to the mountainside, memorializing people who under-estimated nature or over-estimated themselves.
Some persished doing what they loved; others didn't have a clue what they were doing. RIP to all...
It doesn't matter if the refuge was closed. They didn't make it there and finally decided to descend. Later they learned it was a good (belated) call b/c it was "closed" (and presumably they could not break in? Just like they couldn't get into the locked storage room to retrieve a stretcher?) It sounds like it was an exciting challenge, and the little cis woman did not make it out alive, nor did those who (presumably) tried to help her. This guy should hush...
Ann: don't do adventure mountain-climbing. You're not big enough and no, the world is not going to come rescue you. Some people don't learn life is hard until it is too late...
Beside the mountain rangers not living up to expectations: Even those trendy, status symbol Patagonia puffer vests couldn’t save them?
In the U.S, if you don't vote, the Dems will vote for you. It's something they call "public service".
I guess the thought "Let's break into the closed refuge building" didn't enter their heads.
"and suggested radical weather variations were becoming more common due to climate change."
Oh, bugger off.
"I guess the thought "Let's break into the closed refuge building" didn't enter their heads."
That's what I was thinking.
Doing dangerous stuff is the most fun, right?
“The word adventure has gotten overused. For me, when everything goes wrong – that’s when adventure starts.” - Yvon Chouinard
Why would a (survival) refuge ever be shut?
"Why would a (survival) refuge ever be shut?"
It shouldn't, but the article is vague on what the place was.
Ann is just pushing misinformation at this point...
The trekkers NEVER MADE IT TO THE REFUGE. It's irrelevant that it was open or closed.
They turned back and began the descent and LATER LEARNED it was closed. This is just a way to blame Others and not themselves.
Like with yesterday's locker room story designed to whip up outrage amongst her readers. The trans women were FULLY CLOTHED. There was no dangling penis or scrotum.
She's playing you old fools.
They told us Voter ID was dangerous....CC, JSM
"I guess the thought "Let's break into the closed refuge building" didn't enter their heads."
I had that question too and I decided that it must have been that they saw a sign saying the place was closed before they'd invested in getting all the way to it and that there was another route that they believed would get them to safety.
"Aldridge said the situation was not initially treated with “any urgency” by the camp staff or the Chilean authorities."
They were probably thinking "Stupid tourists. The mountain does not care."
The article is vague about a lot of things.
Was it locked? Who knows?
They didn't even make it to the shelter.
They would later discover it had been shut because park rangers had left to cast their mandatory votes in a presidential election the day before.
With conditions worsening, the group decided to abandon the trek for the refuge and attempt the treacherous descent back to the Los Perros camp, which they had left at 5.30am that morning.
And there it is "He said the violent blizzard was “unpredictable, we had no way of knowing” and suggested radical weather variations were becoming more common due to climate change." It's climate changes fault these people died.
File this one in the container marked "When people have too much money to spend doing stupid things."
Aldridge is adamant the John Gardner Pass should have been closed because there were no rangers present in the national park to monitor and advise on the weather conditions.
They were in over their heads. They should have hired a professional guide. Election Days and the related personnel issues don't just spring up out of nowhere. Did they know before they set out that their weather intelligence was lacking? I don't know, but a guide would have.
Even if the rangers had been at the shelter they sought, they wouldn't have known these hikers were out there in the storm, nor would they have been able to go out searching for them if they had.
Probably the group were capable of making the trek unguided as long as everything went smoothly, but when things changed and when it got sketchy, they needed someone who could make good decisions.
well that sucks.
Very sad to die that way at that age. Ultimately a bunch of hairdressers going to Mars.
This past summer, my husband and I visited several national parks including Kings Canyon. For one hike, we had to check in at a small ranger station (it would have been possible to bypass it purposely, but you couldn't miss it by accident because of its placement at the trailhead). The rangers kept a log of everyone on the trail and whether they intended to do any back country camping, so that they would know whom to go looking for... presumably the next day, not the same day.
My point being, I like that system because it affords at least a little awareness (on the part of the hikers) that Here There Be Monsters, and (on the part of the rangers) there are such and such people out there. But even so, you have to be prepared to make it through the night on your own.
A cimate of unpreparedness in change.
Isn't it a little ironic, but it seems that the people clamoring the loudest about climate change often seem to end up being poorly prepared for any.
But: The rangers were gone for the day to vote, but locked up a rustic shelter with bad weather coming? Seems like a case of under-reporting here, too many obvious disparities remain unclarified, unexplored.
If you go to a place like Patagonia, you might want to consider that people are not going to be like you are used to. They may expect loud mouthed tourists to know what they are doing and defer to them. And why not hire a guide? Because the tourists think they know what they are doing.
Yeah, who would ever have predicted unexpected bad weather in the mountains of Patagonia? Must be "climate change."
I have a very different concept of what makes a good holiday. I don’t understand why people would deliberately place themselves in jeopardy when it’s so easily encountered by chance.
I'm going to push back on this "guide" stuff. Would you hire a guide to backpack in Glacier or Yosemite? From the looks of the trails, that's what this place was. It's not the backside of the moon.
It's not even Everest (where you do hire a guide).
Shit happens, people die. When I lived in Santa Cruz, people from San Jose (in Santa Cruz anyone on the other side of the mountain was considered to be from San Jose) would regularly drown in the ocean. Usually caught at the base of a cliff by a rising tide or swept off rocks by a sleeper wave.
We should thank these people who sacrifice themselves and thereby set an example of how not to behave. How to books for dangerous activities are written in blood.
I had that question too and I decided that it must have been that they saw a sign saying the place was closed before they'd invested in getting all the way to it and that there was another route that they believed would get them to safety.
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Nope. Read it again.
They initially thought a 1 mile hike uphill INTO THE BLIZZARD WINDS would be better. I mile is less than two miles to head back down to safety, but... as they fought it, they changed their minds and turned back.
No sign needed. They just realized it was impossible to march into the winds. They LATER learned it was closed, and are bitching. Silly white people. Y'all can't read either. Stop using grok and listening to written words. Read them on the page and think. Go back and re-read the article and stop making up shit. The people think they're going to get a lawsuit. They're not. Nobody owed them anything...
"Shit happens, people die."
Yeah. The only thing remarkable in this episode is the "closed refuge", and it's not at all clear from the article that that's an accurate characterization.
“I find it very difficult to convey how horrific it was,” Aldridge said. “It was suffocating, wind so powerful that you had to sit down and curl into a ball and turn your back to it so it didn’t knock you down the mountain.
“I couldn’t breathe with the ice and snow blowing so much in my face and then attempting to go up a very steep climb. It was just too many things at once.”
They were two miles from their base camp and the large group of trekkers decided the safest thing to do was continue climbing for another mile or so in the hope of reaching a refuge. They would later discover it had been shut because park rangers had left to cast their mandatory votes in a presidential election the day before.
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They would LATER discover...
They are pissed b/c had they known it was closed, they would have started the descent earlier without wasting all that time and energy.
They fucked up. White people took stupid risks and are now blaming others. Nothing new under the sun...
Don't try to cover for them, law proffy. They made stupid choices, gambled and lost the little cis lady in the pack (and others.) No sympathy at all for the "survivor". He did what he had to do and saved his own life and left others behind. Que sera. Now he's trying to blame the natives/workers.
Why don't you ever fix your errors, prof?
"Shit happens, people die."
Yeah. The only thing remarkable in this episode is the "closed refuge", and it's not at all clear from the article that that's an accurate characterization.
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This. Maybe the article should have read, "They LATER learned the refuge station was unmanned and no staff was there to help them anyway..." Again, the door might have been closed and nobody there, but they could have gotten in. But... they turned back likely driven by the winds and storm, and never got there in the first place.
Why have sympathy for these folks? Cuz they're cute? Remind you of your children???
"Mandatory votes"
That sort of thing sounds very disruptive. I wouldn't have waited for someone to tell me, I would have checked.
My take? If you know people, I bet the little lady wanted to turn back asap when the storm hit. She likely was outvoted. She decided to stay with the pack, but knew she would struggle going uphill into the storm. The big asshole who survived (and now has such guilt he is grasping at straws blaming his decision) overruled her. Only later, after they lost time and energy, did they turn back and start the descent when even he was struggling and realizing it impossible. Like most humans, he saved himself, and the little lady died, and the likely good men (the German) and women who probably tried to help her...
You don't know human nature, ann. Too long in the protected, tenured environment where you never had to challenge the men, and it paid off to "go along to get along." Cost this little lady her life, it seems...
Listen to your instincts. Even if she had gone it alone, I wonder if she'd still be alive if she had turned around, left the pack and begun the descent when she knew it was dangerous, and the big macho fools didn't realize it yet...
I'd bet the dead little lady's new boyfriend (and her parents, siblings?) are pissed at the survivor too, for leaving her behind.... So he's blaming the natives. "The place we were trying to get to was closed! If I knew that, or there was a sign (think about it, ann -- do you think they were capable of reading an ice encrusted sign "Reguge station closed" in those conditions where they couldn't see a foot infront of their faces? Tell me you've never driven or been outside in a blizzard, old wise professor emeritus.
The thing about some "educated elite" is they think they are experts at ALL things. It costs others because they aren't, and those who know more/better than you, take a risk in pointing that out and calling you out on your ignorance... Worth it in the long run. Good luck, ann.
A friend and I used to do mountain backpacking trips every summer, primarily in the Canadian Rockies. One trip we "checked in" at the ranger station in Jasper before setting out. The ranger knew our intended route and didn't say anything untoward about it.
We were in for two weeks, and after a while we realized something remarkable; we were not seeing anyone else. Which was pretty cool, but unusual. This trip was a bit more rugged than our past trips, and included fording rivers, one big one in particular, rather than having them bridged. That big river ford was a challenge, but it was what you had to do on this route. Others had done it before us, so we just did it, congratulated ourselves when it was accomplished, and continued on.
It was only when we got back and "checked out" at the ranger station did we learn why we had not seen any other hikers. The trail had been "closed" because the rivers were "too high", even for horses! The original ranger had never said a word.
Best trip of our lives!
This is just sad. Those of us who don’t take part in risky adventures can assert our superiority for a while but folks die in accidents of all kinds every day. I saw a YouTube video about an old lady traipsing through the wilderness all alone. “Aren’t you afraid something might happen to you?” asked the interviewer. Her answer, “I told my grandkids I wanted them to say their grandma was eaten by a bear instead of died of old age in front of the boob tube.”
America LOVES to reward risk takers.
But... we never really let them assume the risk they take -- we ALWAYS bail them out when they make costly mistakes ("too big to fail...)
So the WISER minds, who refuse to take such risks, never are amply rewarded, it seems, except in longer lives and more stable families/communities.
These people paid with their lives. And the biggest man in the pack got away with his. Instead of shaming him, people want to make excueses.
Sad. Wiser minds would not have continued marching into the storm or even set out on an unplanned mission where something like this could go wrong. Being risk averse pays, especially when those who risk and fail have to assume their losses, with no insurance or lawsuits to cover their mistakes.
Re. ""Aldridge said the situation was not initially treated with “any urgency” by the camp staff or the Chilean authorities."
This means the wiser camp staff knew their was nothing that could be done until the storm passed. They weren't willing to risk MORE lives to save people who would likely (and did) die anyway...
Getting a tent to a hypothermia victim in a blizzard just wasn't worth it. They knew that. The others who died up there weren't thinking straight. aka "YOUR emergency is not my problem. You can't pay me to risk my life to rescue you from your foolish risks..."
Life lessons best learned early. Don't take risks if you can't afford to lose. Don't get married if you don't want to get divorced and don't know/trust your partner. Don't have kids if you can't feed or provide for them (and yes, it takes a lot more as they age than just sticking a baby in a bureau drawer and nursing them...)
Invest wiser. We do. We're sick of bailing the rest of you out.
Commitment to tourist safety varies considerably across the world. About ten years ago, I was in Iceland and hiked out to the Glymur waterfall. Beautiful spot, the fall itself is about 640 feet, and you hike up a trail alongside to a vantage point a bit below the top of the fall that ends in a dramatic cliff drop of (at a guess) 500 feet or so. Not a railing to be seen.
Catastrophic climate change is a first-order anthropogenic forcing. Be prepared. Call ahead.
Reading the article it seems like they didn’t get to the refuge at all. Puzzling.
It says they abandoned the trek for the refuge because of worsening conditions. The fact it was unmanned is irrelevant. The big issue is that the rangers didn’t close the route up because they were voting. But weather at that altitude is unpredictable so who knows what the rangers would have done.
If there is a station inside the park from which the rangers could have shut down the pass (if only they had been there), it reinforces the idea that this is not exactly an untrammeled wilderness.
The whole story, as written, is odd.
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