A series of unfortunate events

You have to pay attention all the time.

A story showed up today in the Alaska Dispatch News about an Anchorage student who died while skiing alone in Montana. It was a fairly short story but it appeared the fellow was experienced. A line in that story stood out and it's something we all should listen to and store in memory.

It goes: "It appeared Wright had an equipment malfunction that led to a series of events that ended with his death."

Small events add up. Years ago 1980 Iditarod champion Joe May told me about an experience during the race in which it happened to him. He had loaned some equipment to another musher who had some problems and then Joe ran into a severe blizzard that drove him into a snow cave on the Seward Peninsula wondering if he would survive. Things add up.

Though my experience this week pales in comparison to those two, the lesson still applies and as my situation deteriorated, I could tell too much was going wrong. Fortunately I never came close the point of no return and at the point where I turned back I was not far from accessible help.

We may never know exactly what string of events developed that led to Nathaniel Wright's death but the message should be carried on, and it goes back to the old saw "for want of a nail the shoe was lost; for want of a shoe, the horse was lost, for want of a horse the general was lost; for want of a general the battle was lost …"

In my case it could have been that  Bic lighter that should have been in my survival pack. In Joe's case it was the heavy winter pants and mittens that he had loaned to his fellow musher and in Nathanial Wright's case something broke and that led through that series of events that eventually killed him.

There is another lesson here, one explained by Iditarod musher Donna Gentry Massay. She lost the trail during a race somewhere in the area where Joe had holed up a year or two before. When she realized she was off the trail and wasn't sure exactly sure where she was, she "stopped and wrote it all out in the snow." In other words she traced her path with a finger in the snow making a makeshift map that helped her figure out how to get back to the trail. I have used that phrase often, "writing it out in the snow." To me it means sometimes when things are going wrong, you have to stop and think your way through whatever problem you are having and figure out where you went wrong, take stock so to speak and gather your wits. That was the process the led me to turn around and go home Monday.

As a friend who is experienced in the Bush commented on yesterday's post, we are constantly learning new lessons. And, too, we shouldn't be forgetting the old ones.

Here is a more detailed version of the incident in Montana. Note that he left his emergency kit in his car.

Anchorage student dies while skiing in Montana back country