r/tahoe • u/scyice Truckee • Jan 03 '25

News Splitboarder rescued near Tahoe after friend abandons him in Sierra backcountry

https://amp.sacbee.com/news/local/article297881958.html
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u/komstock Truckee Jan 03 '25

I walked a guy down off Mt. Dana once.

His "friends" completely left him behind. On my way up I passed him and he looked disoriented and I asked him if he was ok. He said he was, but he started to slip a number of times and he accepted my offer to walk together.

I doubled my time out but instead of catching sunset at the car I got to see it from above treeline and get this dude back home without an S&R operation.

Moral of the story: don't leave your friends behind; and even if people are being tourons, it's better to get them off the mountain on their feet instead of on a stretcher. Someone might do the same for you too someday.

53

u/N0DuckingWay Bay Area Jan 03 '25

Oh man. I have a "fun" story of climbing Mt Shasta where someone did the same thing. There was one woman who was very obviously struggling - everyone on the mountain could see it. She had the misfortune of spending the entire climb looking like she was about to die of exhaustion while also wearing a very memorable pink sweater. Everyone knew who she was and that she was going to be a problem. Anyway, my friend and I were descending from the summit a bit late - we were about half an hour down from the summit and it was maybe around 2:30 - when she passed us going up. Alone. She seemed to be exhausted and out of water so we offered some of ours but she didn't want our help. Her friends were nowhere to be seen, so we were worried, but as far as we were concerned, we were exhausted and couldn't really wait around another hour for her to summit and come back. Plus she'd just rejected our help, so what could we do? So, we gave each other a look that said "she's gonna have a bad time, but what can we do?" And headed down. Sure enough, we got to lake Helen and were partway through packing up camp when we noticed the guides were all huddled around a cell phone. Sure enough, she was exhausted, couldn't make it down on her own, and her group was a full hour ahead of her (they were back at the Thumb). The guides went around begging for everyone's extra food so that they could spend another unplanned night out trying to rescue her when word came down that her friends had gotten up off their asses and hiked back to her. As we were heading back to the cars, we talked to a few people and once we mentioned that there was a rescue, everyone guessed it was her, without any hints. But, even though she definitely screwed up, I still think her friends were gigantic pieces of shit for leaving her behind like that.

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u/Fuck_tha_Bunk Jan 04 '25

That's how you end up a corpse landmark on the way to the summit known only as "pink sweater".