Faithful through Frostbite

(Mt. Mansfield in snow)

On the night of January 13, 2010, I saw God’s faithfulness in the midst of frostbite.

My work finished a little early that morning, and I decided to take a quick snowshoe trip up to Mt. Mansfield, a gorgeous mountain nearby, the tallest in Vermont. I gathered a scant amount of gear into my backpack, including some light coats, a camera, and an extra Nalgene bottle. Only two packs of crackers remained for me to grab on the pantry shelves; I had been charged to make a grocery run later in the day. I headed out the door toward the mountain with an excited heart, ready for a beautiful adventure. As I approached, the whole peak was shining clearly and brightly in the January Vermont sunlight, surely an omen of good weather and lovely scenery.

The start of my hike at 11:30 am was wonderful – an absolute delight. Bright skies and light, fluffy snow made for a great experience. The trail revealed the snowshoe tracks of several other snowshoers before me – it was nicely packed down and just wide enough for my classical wooden snowshoes to slide through. After a pleasant hour and a half I emerged onto the Sunset ridge, an exposed half-mile of ridgeline that stretches up to the summit of the Mt. Mansfield, called the Chin. There were a couple of hikers up ahead of me, and I was on pace to catch them. I stopped briefly to take a few shots with my camera and pull my wool hat over my literally frozen hair. The clouds had intruded upon my picturesque day, and the summit was barely visible; the valley floor was impossible to see.
(The two guys are barely visible ahead, the Chin is far ahead in the clouds)

At the end of Sunset ridge, the trail turns sharply to the right and loops back around to the summit. The two guys ahead of me were not aware of these directions, and evidently planned to bushwhack their way up the side of the Chin through some difficult, steep terrain pock-marked by half-buried pine trees. Thinking that staying on the trail would be easier and safer, I puzzled out where I thought it might dive through the trees and picked my way through via that route. No one had been here in some time, and my snowshoe prints were alone. As I approached the top ridge, the ground became altogether different. No trees were present, the wind had picked up considerably, and the thick snows on the trail below had changed to a windblown sheet of packed ice. After a few careful minutes, however, I reached the snow covered wooden sign admonishing hikers to stay on the trail- an ironic message today, as the trail at this point was utterly indeterminable and the only clear direction was that of the overall uphill trajectory.

With only a few dozen yards to go, the two snowshoers emerged out of the still-thickening clouds on their way back down the peak. They had arrived before me. We chatted for a bit with some congratulations passed around on our achievement. I thought it surprising that their blazed path had proved successful. The thought crossed my mind to ask them to wait and descend the peak with them, just for the strength in numbers, but my pride pushed that thought aside, and I continued alone. Not but a minute or two later, I was atop the highest pinnacle in Vermont, having bravely conquered it in the heart of winter with an old pair of wooden snowshoes. 2:00 pm – a 2.5 hour ascent in the snow. Not bad. I was already practically on my way to the grocery store. Applauding myself, I snapped a cold photo, turned around and began my descent.
(A cloudy photo on top of the Chin)

Immediately things looked different, and I was thrown into some disorientation by the various contours of land and ridges that I had not appreciated before. My previous tracks were impossible to retrace in the windy, cloudy, icy conditions. I stumbled about for a few minutes uncertain of my plan and trying to remain calm as the winds howled. My two compatriots were nowhere in sight. Then with a stroke of brilliance, I thought to simply follow their idea and bushwhack back down to the trail, hugging the steep face of the cliff. Seemed like a safe, foolproof idea. Indeed, any plan to hastily escape that nasty, exposed hill seemed better than remaining open to the elements.

So I acted. I took the plunge off the side of the Chin and headed down the mountain, stumbling through some snow deeper than I was expecting. After several hundred yards, I was really curious about why I was not encountering the trail. Something was strange. At 2:10pm, just a scant ten minutes since my moment of triumph on the summit, I made a phone call to Jessica just letting her know I was having a little trouble finding the trail, and asking for her prayer. It probably seemed like a pretty calm conversation, but inwardly I feared I was already in a pickle. I was flailing about. The going was very tough. The depth of the light, loose snow was hard to gauge, but I often found myself buried knee- or even waist-deep in the 5- or 6- (or 10?) foot snow despite my snowshoes. With tops of pine trees scattered all over the mountainside, snow was constantly shifting underneath frozen branches or settling around tree trunks. My large wooden snowshoes would then inevitably slide around on my feet, get lodged or even disappear in the snow, and require several minutes to unearth them. My ski poles were of little help, as the snow could easily gobble up their entire length. Progress was slow.

Finally at 3pm I decided this was foolish. I needed help. I had no idea what I was aiming for, had limited ability to move, and time was running out. Clouds had rolled in thick, and I could not even visualize the ridge. The sun would be setting in an hour and a half, and my prospects after dark appeared bleak. So after calling Jess again, I called 911.

The next seven hours involved multiple calls to several authorities, and especially the Stowe Search and Rescue Team leader. Initially they tried to triangulate my position with my cell phone and instructed me to sit still and that help was on the way. I tried. But without moving, even my six layers of clothing were not enough to block the chill in the single digit breezy temperatures. So I was told to head back up the mountain toward the summit, where my chances of being found would be greater above the tree line. They were assembling a rescue team that would be mobilized to explore the Sunset Ridge Trail area over the next few hours. That sounded hopeful. My cell phone noted that the afternoon had progressed to 4:30pm or so, and the light was thickening at this point. Yet the plan made sense to me, and so I trudged back up the steep, snowy hillside. Initially I had thought to simple retrace my footprints. Impossible. The snow was so loose that even my deep, wading steps had immediately collapsed as I passed, and I could not follow them back up the hill in the failing daylight. So I aimed for “uphill” and plodded along with the same struggles I had had previously.

After perhaps an hour of struggle, I suddenly met a wall of rock, probably 20 feet high. My initial thoughts were full of excitement – I was making progress. After all, where would a cliff-face be except near the mountain summit? Yet before long, I found this insurmountable obstacle to be very frustrating. Initially I tried to pass to the right, but found no easy trail. So I mustered the resolve to flank the cliff on the left side. That proved quite a challenge as well. Night had arrived in full force and my visibility had been reduced to about 3-4 feet. I frequently pulled my iPod Touch (a gadget without GPS or phone capabilities) from my frozen pocket to shine its light for a few seconds to distinguish between an approaching pine tree or rock or abominable snowman. This change of path, however, proved steeper, darker, icier, and altogether worse. OK. I turned again and headed back to the right side. The going in the blackness was miserably slow. I spent several hours in my encounter with the rock wall.

The time stretched to beyond 10pm. Another phone call to the team leader confirmed that I needed to keep going – the team was deployed on the mountain in full search mode. Even this news, while hopeful, did not break through my frustration. I had reached the most discouraging time of my experience on Mansfield. I could not climb over the wall, could not go left or right, and did not want to drop back down into the trees lest my rescuers never find me. I felt stuck. I could not see, my fingers and toes were cold, and all of this was my own dumb fault. My spirits had stayed positive the entire time as long as I could pursue a goal. Now my plan seemed impossible, and I was beginning to be frustrated. “Help me, Lord!” I thought.

It was about that time that a faint breeze carried the sound of dog barking. I froze and listened intently. Sure enough – I had heard barking. Maybe the rescue team had brought a search dog with them, I reasoned. I hollered as loud as I could. Nothing. But a minute later, a fuzzy phonetic babbling carried across the cold mountainside- the unmistakable mark of a distant human voice. I yelled again, and this time a faint voice returned my shout, acknowledging that they had heard me call. I was found.

Now that was a great feeling. A warm rush of near-glee coursed through my chilly body, and I began to slip and slide my way toward the sound. I was found. As the voices strengthened, a faint illumination began to blend through the clouds. As the minutes and the rescuers marched on, this hazy light coalesced into individual headlamps of men walking toward me through the thick snow. The pair of men came within ten or fifteen feet from me before they could spot me in the dense cloud. Warm greetings were exchanged, warm gloves replaced frozen ones, and the ferocity of the mountain seemed somehow milder. The guys gave me some candy bars, and strapped a much-needed headlamp to my snow-covered wool hat. We began to march back the way they had come. Soon the rest of their team emerged from the night - there were altogether five of them (and no dog) – and we snowshoed our way back up toward the summit. “Where is your lottery ticket?” one of them asked, “You sure had a winner tonight.” “Yeah, we gave you no better than a 2% chance of being found on a night like this,” another commented. Wow, I thought. Thank you, Lord. The men helped me hike back the several hundred yards to the trail I had lost, and then on to the summit. Our destination was on the opposite side of the peak – the Stowe Ski Resort was just over the ridge on the eastern side of Mansfield. Fifty MPH winds met us on the top of the mountain - a nasty place to be on a January midnight. Everything up there was disorienting. The summit trails are like a maze at noon in the summertime, let alone in conditions like these. In the night and cloud and wind, our team struggled to find the appropriate path, even with GPS help and a combined experience of hundreds of Mansfield ascents between the rescuers. It required three separate attempts on three separate trails before we began our descent on the appropriate one. After a final half-mile of hiking, the open avenue of a wide ski slope emerged. We hiked to the end of the ski lift just as a Snow Cat, a large tractor made for pushing snow around on the steep ski slopes, wheeled up. We all piled aboard.

“So what do you think you might do differently next time?” asked the most experienced hiker of the team. I chuckled and asked him how much time he had to listen. The folly of my trip was glaring. The combination of hiking alone on the highest peak in Vermont, being exposed above tree line in the middle of January in waist-deep snow, using old-school wooden snowshoes without crampons or cleats, lacking any reasonable amount of food or water, neglecting any provision for overnight warmth, forgetting a light and compass, and all while wearing cotton pants and gloves just begged for catastrophe. And most of all, I lacked the main thing, the essential nugget, the supreme tenant of hiking: I neglected any respect for the mountain.

A few minutes after midnight, we disembarked safely at the Search and Rescue station, a part of the Stowe Ski Resort, I found myself suddenly in the loving and remarkably well-composed arms of my wife. She had come with her good friend Heather Ebbers, who had proved invaluable in shouldering some of the emotional load for Jessica, not to mention sharing her snow tired-Subaru with us. Jess reported that a small army of friends from the church had diligently been in prayer for me. We hugged in tremendous gratitude for a few minutes, stopping finally so that I could shed my frozen clothes. My hands were inspected first of all. A pasty white color demarcated where the tips of all my fingers had been mildly frostbitten. My left ring finger had been bitten a little more severely, bearing the eerie texture and color of a dead fish and lacking any sign of pink, perfusing blood flow. My toes had been practically untouched. Praise the Lord. On the mountain, I was completely unaware that my digits were under such an extreme cold assault. Every minute that passed was damaging tissue, and I never would have realized it.(Fingertips three days later)

After thoroughly thanking the entire crew (how can you appropriately thank someone who saved your life by risking theirs?), Jess, Heather, and I piled into the Subaru and drove the hour back to Burlington. Jess urged me to keep my fingers in front of the car’s heater for the entire trip. I stopped by the hospital to discuss my fingers with some of my fellow orthopedic residents, re-warmed by digits in some hot water, and headed home. Jess and I joined together in a heartfelt, thankful prayer at 3:30am before crashing in bed, physically and emotionally spent.

I type these words one month after the scary events of January 13th. Since that time, the Lord has been abundantly gracious to me. Dozens of people have been praying for my fingers, and God has worked through those prayers mightily. My fingers are heading toward a complete recovery: old dead skin has peeled off the tips, leaving pink, healthy skin underneath. My ring finger has some residual numbness that should continue to improve, but it still feels funny every time my left hand strikes the “s” or “w” or “x” key on my computer. Lord willing, the nerves will all regrow.

A month has also given some new perspective on the whole experience. In retrospect, being lost and found on Mansfield paints an amazing picture of the Gospel. I was lost, plainly and simply lost. I was lost in pride and folly, unable even to recognize the impending danger of my condition. Destruction was so close around me. Only the gracious hands of God kept me from an injury or a slip or another misdirection that easily could have proven fatal. I was totally unable to help myself in that situation, was utterly powerless to improve my state. In fact, it required the work of another to pull me out of sure disaster, because I could not do it on my own. It required their sacrifice on my behalf to bring it about. When the rescuer finally arrived, I had no debate, no long decision about whether I should accept their help or not, no choosing what to do. No, I had but one immediate, reflexive response – walk toward the light of my savior who had come for me. And thankful joy flooded through my heart, leaving me forever grateful and forever changed. Thank the Lord.