Bill, you OK? Mountaineers die in Ecuador

[pabranno]

Bill, I read 3 dead 12 injured in mountaineering accident in Equador.
Tell us you’re OK.
Can’t link, so sorry.

Pamela

[9ideon]

^^^

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/carihua...-fall-ecuador/

https://explorersweb.com/tragedy-in-...ad-12-injured/

[pabranno]

Your thanks button says it all😊

[Bill Ryan]

Posted by pabranno (here)
Bill, I read 3 dead 12 injured in mountaineering accident in Ecuador.
Tell us you’re OK.

Pamela

Yes, all fine here, thanks.

My personal comment: it's not immediately obvious why or how this happened, or could have happened. 15 climbers shouldn't all fall anywhere, or into anything, all at the same time.

From https://explorersweb.com/tragedy-in-...ad-12-injured:

~~~

On Saturday at 9:30 am, 15 climbers fell 60m into a crack while attempting to summit 5,018m Carihuairazo volcano in central Ecuador. The Association of Mountain Guides, Ministry of Health, several regional fire departments, and the Special Operations Group pooled personnel together to execute a rescue operation.

The Carihuairazo volcano in the Ecuadorian Andes.

Six women and six men sustained injuries ranging from bone fractures to head trauma. Rescuers flew the injured to hospitals in the nearby towns of Riobamba and Ambato.

Unfortunately, three are dead, including a 47-year-old woman named Veronica Torres, and two men, Francisco Castro and Miguel Campoverde, who were 45 and 50 years old.

Efforts to recover the three victims were to resume today when weather improves. However, this detail suggests that poor weather could be the culprit for this tragedy.

[ExomatrixTV]

Three mountaineers died and 12 were injured after they fell while climbing Ecuador’s Carihuairazo volcano, rescue services said Saturday.

“A 47-year-old woman and two men aged 45 and 50 died in this emergency,” ECU911 rescue services said in a statement. “Due to weather conditions and nightfall, it was not possible to evacuate the bodies.”

Six women and six men, aged between 39 and 58, were transferred to hospitals in the towns of Riobamba and Ambato. Some of the injured climbers had contusions and fractures; they were evacuated by air, ECU911 said.

The climbers were attempting to summit the central Andean volcano when they fell 60 meters (196 feet).

Carihuairazo, a 5,018-meter colossus in Tungurahua province, neighbors Chimborazo volcano — the highest peak in the country at over 6,200 meters.

The three climbers who died were all Ecuadorians, and work to recover their bodies was scheduled to continue Sunday.

In June, a woman died and a climbing companion was injured when they scaled the highly active, off-limits peak of the Popocatepetl volcano in Mexico.

• source

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=cIL-Jz7tipE

[Bill Ryan]

A little more. This is very local news, tiny on the big global stage, but of course it captured my interest.

I'm just adding it in here because (a) I do know a little about this kind of thing, and (b) I also know there are quite a few mountaineering enthusiasts (even if they are armchair ones) in the Avalon community.

According to the survivors, all 15 people in the team were about 600 ft below the summit and descending the mountain, when one member slipped, dragging the other members into a 60 meter-deep crevasse.

The crevasse is a well-known feature of the mountain, and even has a name: La Canaleta.

Reports are confused, but either all 15 were all tied together on one rope (ABSOLUTELY NOT a good idea), or there were several smaller roped groups, and when one slipped, they all started to get knocked over like pins in a bowling alley.

One climber was 39, but the others were all aged between 42 and 58. Half of them were over 50.

I'm older than that! So age can also mean stamina and experience. But they weren't 20-something spring-chicken athletes, and given that the group was half/half men and women, it seems likely they were mainly a group of married couples on a big shared adventure together.

What that suggests — but this is just a guess, not meaning to be unkind — is that some of them may have been relatively inexperienced, and maybe not everyone was in tip-top shape.

As I wrote in my post #4 above, something like that should never have happened. It suggests a lot of inexperience with roped descents, which require great care and a great deal of alert awareness for exactly this kind of reason.

And ideally, with a large group on tricky terrain, there should be one person who is listened to and respected, and who knows enough to direct everything carefully and make sure that if the worst happens — especially when everyone is tired and on the way down, maybe relaxing a little (also never a good idea!) — everyone doesn't get dragged down a steep slope all together in a terrible huge tangle of rope, which is what I'm sure must have occurred.

[Strat]

Glad you're ok Bill! Good work looking out Pabranno.

I suppose a takeaway lesson here is to consider a guide when going into unknown territory, even if it seems safe.

Even around here people flock to FL to go to the beach but swimming at the beach is a whole different ballpark from a pool. I wouldn't recommend it for those who haven't done it.

[JackMcThorn]

It is my understanding the volcano was 'off-limits'. Those people should not have even been near it.

[Bill Ryan]

Posted by JackMcThorn (here)
It is my understanding the volcano was 'off-limits'. Those people should not have even been near it.

Yes, interesting. Nothing in Ecuador is "off-limits" (as best I know!), but it might well be a local regulation that an experienced guide is mandatory or strongly recommended. (With this group, there doesn't appear to have been one.)

I've been reading more about the mountain. It seems that the glacier at the summit has receded to the point of exposing a lot of rock that now requires technical roped rock climbing (and roped descending). It's NOT a hike. I wrote above

Posted by Bill Ryan (here)
The crevasse is a well-known feature of the mountain, and even has a name: La Canaleta.

It's not a crevasse, it's a steep, loose, vertical gully. La Canaleta translates as "The Gutter", meaning something like a steep open drainpipe. It seems they all fell down that thing, a pretty nasty thing to happen.

As best I can tell, this is a photo looking up La Canaleta: (you can see that it narrows and gets steeper at the top)



... and this is a view looking down:



...where one has to rappel (do a controlled slow slide down a well-anchored rope) to be safe. It's no place to slip and then bring 14 other people down with you.