Name: Climbers Tell Story of Mt. Washington Climbing Accident
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Climbers Hugh Herr and Jeff Batzer recount an experience that led to them needing limb amputations.

Climbing partners have a harrowing experience on Mount Washington in NH.

Climbers Tell Story of Mt. Washington Climbing Accident

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Climbers Hugh Herr and Jeff Batzer recount an experience that led to them needing limb amputations.

Climbing partners have a harrowing experience on Mount Washington in NH.

Body & Brain

Climbers Tell Story of Mt. Washington Climbing AccidentPublished: April 5, 2022Jeff Batzer: The first night when we got there was just to get up, to stay overnight on the mountain at Harvard Hut. There was very much of that warning too, the Appalachian Mountain Club folks that were very careful, I think, to warn people like, "Hey, do you know what you're doing here? You're going to go up into a really rough realm." And so there would've been a bit of that too. That next morning is where we wanted to choose a route going up through Huntington Ravine, where there are a number of different ice climbs.So we decided... really, I think it was that morning to do Odell's Gully. Hugh led it and did a number of pitches on up through, and at one point I had these heavy GORE-TEX mittens and I had slings that were Velcroed on. And so I could let them hang down so I could work on the tools and take screws in and out. And so the one time I did that, the sling came open and looked and the mitten was gone. So that would come in later on, as far as being a major problem with trying to keep my hands from becoming frostbitten. So we're at the top of Odell's Gully, which is 800 feet from the ground, we decided we would drive on and actually try to get to the summit and just try to knock that all off, maybe about 20, 25 minutes or so. And these little wispy wind gusts and the snow that was coming down turned into just hurricane-force winds.Hugh Herr: Above Huntington's, we probably walked five minutes at the most. That was the critical decision that led to the accident.Alison Osius: Among the mistakes that they made was that they didn't have a compass. They didn't have a map and compass. And they were using the wind and so when they turned around to walk down, they did not realize that the wind had changed, and so they walked in the wrong direction. Instead of going down where they had come from, they went down the wrong side and they went into the Great Gulf which is an immense wilderness.Jeff Batzer: Just some awful events happened that night. There was a river over in that Great Gulf area. Well, let's just follow this, which is going downhill at least, maybe that'll get to something eventually. And what happened was Hugh fell through the ice and was soaked from the waist down. Maybe within an hour or so it happened again. We were always right next to each other and he would go through the next time he went in up to here.Hugh Herr: It's minus 20 degrees Fahrenheit and your feet get wet, it's a rapid decay. Given my experience in the mountains, I personally did not believe we would last tonight. What I didn't estimate is the power of being with someone else. That's critical because if you're with another human being, you can hug them and you dramatically reduce the surface area of the dual body, but you double the heat source. So by hugging someone, you can stay alive for a remarkable amount of time in those subarctic conditions. We actually rationalize that the sooner we died, the better. So we actually stopped hugging each other.Alison Osius: It's hard to imagine that they could have survived another night. And then by incredible miracle Cam Bradshaw, the 28 year-old hut manager, who was out snowshoeing and she saw these weird tracks and she thought, "Oh, that must be a moose." Because they were so inconsistent. And so she tracked them for a long time.Jeff Batzer: It was about 2:30, just heard some noises over in the trees, real close to us and could see this girl fighting her way through the trees.Hugh Herr: She came upon us and was standing there. And at first we were silent because we didn't trust our minds. And then we shouted and she responded.Alison Osius: And she said, "Are you the guys that are missing?" And they said, "Yeah, that's us." And then everything went into motion really fast.Jeff Batzer: Actually he said to Hugh, I was cheering him on when nobody was around, "Just come on Hugh, hang in there, we need to make it a little bit longer."Hugh Herr: We felt tremendous elation because we went from being certain of death to, gosh, we might live.Jeff Batzer: Little did we know what our bodies would have to go through in these next days and all that in the hospital and everything.

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Climbers Tell Story of Mt. Washington Climbing Accident

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The Evolution of Prosthetic Leg Technology

Augmented

Increasing Access to Brain-Controlled Prosthetics