The emergency call gave Yosemite dispatchers very little time. A man on the John Muir Trail was reportedly hypothermic. Then the connection failed.
It was 3:30 p.m. on November 2, 2015. Yosemite’s first winter storm of the season was bringing rain to the valley and snow higher up. Dispatchers could not reconnect with the caller.
Two rescuers started uphill around 4 p.m. They carried headlamps, rain equipment and medical supplies. Before they located the man, they requested that warm intravenous fluids be prepared for his arrival.
The John Muir Trail hypothermia incident would end somewhere they were not expecting.
John Muir Trail: An experienced hiker turned around
The initial report described a sixty-year-old. The man was actually seventy-three and had nearly forty years of winter-camping experience.
He had planned a week in the wilderness and checked the forecast. Expecting temperatures in the thirties and forties Fahrenheit, he selected equipment for relatively mild winter conditions rather than the colder-weather gear he owned.
After a night at Little Yosemite Valley, he packed a damp tent and a partly damp sleeping bag. He continued toward Tuolumne Meadows until temperatures dropped into the twenties around 11 a.m.
He turned back. The park’s account records his understanding that roughly fifteen difficult miles remained between him and the valley.
By the Ice Cut below Nevada Fall, he was wet through to his long underwear. Another hiker initiated the emergency call. He continued downhill rather than staying at that location.
A knock at the clinic
At approximately 5:45 p.m., the patient arrived at the back door of Yosemite’s medical clinic. He requested treatment for hypothermia.
The search team was recalled. Its members had probably missed him because they entered the trail system at a different point, working from an uncertain location.
After reaching Happy Isles, the hiker had taken a shuttle to the clinic. When he removed his boots, there was standing water inside them. Later, at a hotel, he opened his pack and found the contents soaked despite its rain-resistant zippers.
The park credited his experience with helping him recognize the need to abandon the trip and keep moving toward medical assistance. Nearly forty years of winter camping had still left him facing a dangerous retreat.
The frightening detail is the speed at which familiar equipment stopped providing its expected margin. A week’s supplies were still in his pack. He was still on a known trail. Yet the difference between reaching shelter and remaining exposed had narrowed to the miles he could continue to walk.
Sources and reporting
Researched reporting: an original narrative based on the published records linked below.
