The following is an article from the San Francisco Chronicle about a hiking tragedy on the slopes of Mt. Whitney on October 3, 2005. Mt. Whitney is still dangerous if you overestimate your limits and underestimate the power of the mountain. My condolences to the Tom Family.
Shortly before he died on the icy and rocky slopes of Mount Whitney on Monday afternoon, Stephen Tom told his hiking partner that the conditions were too treacherous to reach the mountain's summit and he would descend back to the base camp.
"He said, 'I have nothing to prove,' " said Jim Kramer, recalling the words of Tom, a 45-year-old El Cerrito resident, after they had finished a section of the trail that ascends more than 1,700 feet up switchbacks from Trail Camp to Trail Crest.
But Kramer continued to Whitney's 14,497-foot summit, while Tom -- whom friends and family describe as a cautious and calculated risk taker -- and another hiker they had met on the mountain decided it would be safer to sit and slide down a snow chute used by some people during their descent.
The technique, called glissading, could cut an hours-long hike to Trail Camp to as little as 15 minutes and avoid the nearly 100 icy and treacherous switchbacks on the trail. They had watched a hiker glissade the chute earlier in the day, and Tom was an experienced skier and snowboarder.
But the early fall snow was shallow, and after sliding on their backsides for a few hundred feet from the 13,777-foot crest, the snow-covered top portion of the chute gave way to ice.
"It was mind-boggling to me how quickly he could pick up speed. He went from in control to out of control almost instantly," said Michael McEntee, 44, a Mountain View resident who was descending with Tom.
Tom had hiking poles that he tried to use as brakes. He turned on his stomach, facing up the mountain, and tried to slow himself with his feet. At the bottom of the chute, Tom was moving so fast -- at least 50 miles per hour, the accident investigator estimates -- that he could not stop. He hit a refrigerator-size boulder on the edge of the snow meadow and died from the impact.
"You're up so high your perspective is skewed," McEntee said. "I don't think either of us imagined it would be possible to slide across that flat part into rock."
McEntee climbed to a rocky area after he saw Tom lose control. He called for help, and other hikers on the trail guided him to safety. He was uninjured.
The next day, two other hikers glissaded down the chute and lost control, said Sgt. Randy Nixon of the Inyo County sheriff's department. One hiker broke a leg, and the other was knocked unconscious after hitting rocks; both were rescued by helicopter.
"(Glissading) is one of those things that experienced climbers probably won't do," said SP Parker, an internationally certified guide who is a partner in the Sierra Mountain Center, a guiding company in Bishop. Several years ago, Parker led a group on the trail and saw five people injured -- two seriously -- in one day from sliding down the chute.
"It's tempting because it looks so easy," Parker said. "But it's one of the most dangerous things in mountaineering."
Anyone attempting the technique, which can also be done while crouching or standing, should be experienced and have equipment, such as a helmet and an ice ax for braking, Parker said. Tom, who had glissaded once before, 20 years ago, had no equipment besides the poles, his family said.
In the past 12 years, three people have died while glissading on the chute, and about a dozen have suffered injuries requiring helicopter evacuation, Nixon said. He said he does not know how many people have suffered minor or moderate injuries.
Many people have been known to perform the maneuver successfully. Kramer, who descended the chute later in the day, is one of them. He avoided injury by going slowly down the mountain -- it took him an hour -- though he sped up at the bottom and caught air off a boulder. To his horror, he said, he landed near Tom's body, which was not recovered until Tuesday.
In the summer, no special equipment is required to reach the peak of Mount Whitney, the highest point in the lower 48 states. Some people make the nearly 22-mile round trip from Whitney Portal to the summit in one day if conditions are optimal, but others prefer to backpack to one of the camps along the trail such as Outpost Camp, where Tom's group stayed, about 7 miles from the summit.
While weather conditions were good when the two started out Monday, two storms in the past few weeks had made for a slower and more treacherous ascent. The hike from Outpost Camp to Trail Crest had taken about five hours before Tom and McEntee decided to turn back.
At Outpost Camp the night before, Tom had been in typical form -- generous and caring, according to family members -- sharing his tent with a day hiker who was unable to descend the mountain by nightfall. The hiker's girlfriend, who had snow blindness from the trek, was invited to share the tent of some women at the camp.
"Stephen immediately asked if they wanted something to eat or drink, and he gave them miso soup and hot cider," said Mark Kramer, a close friend of Tom and cousin of Jim Kramer who initiated the trip but elected to stay at the base camp that day with a fourth member of the group.
"He was one of the most generous, thoughtful people you could meet. He was a solid, solid friend and a good person," said Mark Kramer, who met Tom when they went to college at UC San Diego 25 years ago.
Tom grew up in Oakland and Danville, graduating from Bishop O'Dowd High School in Oakland. He later graduated from UC San Diego and received his master's degree from the Thunderbird Garvin School of International Management in Glendale, Ariz. He was employed in real estate management for General Electric in Concord. He enjoyed outdoor adventures and was excited to climb the mountain, Mark Kramer said.
"Stephen was doing three of the things that he loved most -- spending time with friends, challenging himself in physical endurance and roughing it in the wild -- when he died," said his brother, Daryl Tom of Danville.
In addition to his brother, he is survived by his parents, Leonard and Katie Tom of Danville; and brothers David Tom and Stuart Tom.
A memorial service for Tom will be held today at 6 p.m. at Wilson & Kratzer Chapel of San Ramon Valley, 825 Hartz Way in Danville. A funeral will be held at 10 a.m. Monday at St. John the Baptist Catholic Church at 11150 San Pablo Ave., El Cerrito.
The family asks that donations in Tom's memory be made to the Red Cross Disaster Relief Fund.
