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The following was copied from a 1995 epost by Bill Rhodes in which he reprinted the Fatal Attraction, Part 2, article by Nicholas Howe from the February 1995 "Yankee." Click here to view the full epost:
Fatal Attraction (whole article, part 2)
by Nicholas Howe Mt. Washington, NH From the February 1995 "Yankee"
Lattey and Couper
That winter, Jim Dowd had also been bothered. He was caretaker of the Harvard cabin below Mount Washington's Huntington Ravine and about two miles up from the highway in Pinkham Notch, and it seemed as if practically every climber who came through said he'd read an article about ice climbing in Pinnacle Gulley up in the ravine. It was in Climbing magazine, it was written by an eager but inexperienced teenager who'd gotten into trouble up there with his friend, and people kept telling Jim they thought it was a great story. Talk like this made Jim feel a little sick, and he'd made a point not to read the article; when Jim was 11 years old, his father had died while climbing the next ridge. One of the reasons Jim was working up here was a sense that he'd like to give something back, and he didn't like to hear about people rushing into ill-advised risks.
Huntington Ravine has always been a place of risk. It looks like the impression left by some immense primordial fist driven into the side of Mount Washington, rock-lined, 1,800 feet high, and the toughest of all trails for summer hikers. It also loomed large in our youthful inventory of awe. Jessie Whitehead was a librarian at Harvard University, she was flinging herself against difficult obstacles when even the bravest of men were cautious, and we knew she'd had a terrible fall while ice climbing in Huntington Ravine in 1931. Jessie survived, but she was almost crippled by a stutter, and we thought her affliction was a relic of that fall. Sue used to stay at our summer place, and we'd try to get close enough to hear her try to talk. We tried to imagine the frightful circumstance that inflicted such a penalty.
Monroe Couper and Erik Lattey were planning their own climb in Huntington Ravine. They were friends in New Jersey, both had young families, and both were just getting started in winter climbing. Now they headed for New Hampshire and signed in at the AMC headquarters at 1330 on Friday afternoon, February 25. The weather forecast for the next day was favorable: Highs in the teens, winds on the summit increasing to 40 to 60 mph. They wouldn't be going to the summit, so it looked good. Saturday morning, Monroe and Erik left the Harvard cabin at around eight, then had to return --they had forgotten their climbing rope. They started up Pinnacle at about noon. The weather forecast, however, had been wrong; conditions higher up were deteriorating rapidly. Bill Aughton is director of Search and Rescue at the AMC, and he was guiding a trip across the Presidentials that day. He was so struck by the unexpectedly bad weather that he took a picture looking ahead to Mount Washington, then turned his group around.
A climber at the bottom of Huntington Ravine spotted Monroe and Erik in upper Pinnacle Gully at 1700. They were not moving well. Guides allow three hours for Pinnacle; Monroe and Erik had been up there for five. The usual turn-around time is 1430 or 1500; they were 2.5 hours past that and still going up, toward the approaching night. Going up in ice climbing must be understood conditionally: while one climber is moving, the other stays in a fixed position to tend the rope and belays, the safety margin. Thus, either Monroe or Erik had been almost motionless for half of their time in Pinnacle, absorbing the cold.
The overnight lodgers at the Harvard cabin were settling in, tending to their gear and making their various preparations for supper, when someone noticed two packs in a corner that didn't belong to anyone there.
The top of Pinnacle eases over onto the Alpine Garden, well above timberline. This place is a summer delight, table-flat and almost a mile wide, and spread with tiny flowers, dense moss and delicate sedges. One of the several unique plants that lives here has its growth cells at the base of its stalk instead of its tip, the better to withstand the brutal winters. This was a brutal winter, and as Monroe and Erik felt their way out of the top of Pinnacle, they found only wind-scoured ice and rock. Just above them on the summit, the wind averaged 90 mph between nine and eleven that evening, gusting to 108 at 2150; by midnight the temperature had fallen to -24 f.
A maximum rescue effort was being organized in the valley. At 0600, 33 climbers gathered at the AMC headquarters; the plan was to send teams up several climbing gullies of Huntington Ravine and also comb the adjacent area, the most likely places to find the missing pair. The plan was quickly modified. The climbers were getting into their routes soon after 0900. It was -16 f at the observatory on the ridge above them, and the wind averaged over 100 miles per hour from 0700 until 1200 with a peak gust of 127 at 0945.
Tiger Burns was working his way up Escape Gulley with two partners, and he suddenly found himself in midair, blown out like a heavily dressed pennant, with only one elbow looped through a webbing strap to keep him from a very long fall. Nick Yardley and his partners were the only ones to get above timberline, and then only briefly -- they had to crawl down. After all the teams were back down on the wooded plateau near the Harvard cabin, it occurred to Jim Dowd that Monroe and Erik might have gotten into Raymond Cataract, a broad basin adjoining Huntington Ravine, remarkably regular in contour, no steeper than a hiking trail, and funneling out into an outlet nearby. Jim was thinking that Monroe and Erik might have made a snow cave. They might still be there, unhappy, but safe. Jim Dowd and Chad Jones started up into the Cataract. Snow drifts in heavily here, and it almost avalanched on them. Jim had a grim sort of chuckle: Al Dow had died in an avalanche near here during another winter search mission -- there's a plaque honoring him on a rescue cache in Huntington Ravine -- and Jim was thinking that if this slope let go, they could just add (d) to the name on the plaque to remember him as well.
Their hopes lifted when they found boot tracks, but they turned out to be from Nick Yardley and his partner, descending. Other than that, there was only a mitten and a pot lid, found in the floor of the ravine. They were on top of the snow, so they couldn't have been there long; they'd probably been blown loose from somewhere higher up. Jim and Chad made a last visual check of Pinnacle and saw nothing. Then they looked at each other and said almost at the same moment, "They're still on the climb." Privately Jim thought, "Damn, we missed the boat. We were looking in the escape routes." He imagined the climbers thinking, "We need to get out of here and the direction we are going is up." First lessons in climbing teach people to climb, not escape, Monroe and Erik had kept pushing upward.
When Jim got back to the cabin that evening, there were the usual number of recreational climbers in for the night, but the usual banter was missing. "Everyone was looking at me with these big eyes, like, what happened to those guys?" Jim had gone through their packs earlier to see if he could get an idea of what they had with them by seeing what they left behind. He'd also found two steaks, so now, after the long day of work trying to find the missing climbers, he cooked their steaks for own supper.
Early Monday morning the teams started up again. The summit temperature was steady between -13 and -15 f; at 0500 the wind peaked at 128 mph. Ben Miller was with a group climbing Odell Gulley, just left of Pinnacle. Ben had the longest association with Mount Washington: His father worked up there for 39 years. A climber of long experience, Ben knew the mountain and its habits as if it were his backyard. Ben's group reached the intersection of Odell with Alpine Garden and found a cleavage plane -- laying flat, Ben felt that if he put his head up, the wind would simply peel him off the snow. Working his way up over the crest, he saw others on the Garden fighting through the wind, their ropes bowed out into taut arcs. Rick Wilcox and Doug Madera went up the ridge above the right wall of the ravine. This place has no difficulties for a summer hiker, but when Rick wasn't totally braced against his crampons and ice ax, the wind would send him sprawling along the ground. There was a 2,000 foot drop 30 feet away.
As soon as Al Comeau came over the crest of South Gulley, he saw someone there in the sun. As with Derek Tinkham, Al was the first to reach the victim, but this was a moment all rescue climbers dread --it was someone he knew. Al recognized Monroe Coupler, a climbing student he'd had the winter before, a musician of unusual talent and sensitivity, a person Al remembered with great affection. Not seeing Erik Lattey, Al went down the top section of Pinnacle to see if he had gotten stuck there. When he returned, Brian Abrams and some others were there. They realized that Monroe had died in the act of trying to make something hot for himself and his friend. Erik was nearby, lying face down in the rocks with his arms outstretched, heading toward Monroe, as if he'd tried to find an escape route Saturday evening, then gone back for his partner.
This was a tough one. Members of the climbing community had little sympathy for Jeremy Haas, but Monroe and Erik had tried to do things right. They'd taken climbing lessons from the best in the business, and in their last moments they were trying to take care of each other. The bodies were finally recovered on Tuesday. Then after three days of almost continuous effort, the teams gathered for a debriefing down at AMC headquarters. An official from the US Forest Service offered to arrange psychological counseling for anyone who felt the need, but there were no takers. The consensus was that they'd rather have the Forest Service arrange steaks and beer. This was, after all, volunteer work.