MOUNTAINEERS AND MT. WASHINGTON

To the Editors of the CRIMSON:

I am writing in regard to the recent tragedy on Mount Washington in which Jacques Parysko '54 and Philip Longenecker 3G were killed, and which occasioned a letter from the Harvard Mountaineering Club (CRIMSON Feb. 5). Having been one of Parysko's closest friends for several years, and having climbed Mount Washington in the winter with him, I cannot agree that panic and inexperience caused the fatalities.

Longenecker was not an inexperienced climber. Further, it is reasonable to believe that Parysko ran by three emergency telephones because he knew that they connected only with the Appalachian Mountain Club camp at the base of the mountain, staffed during normal ski hours. He passed the telephones at night. We cannot say if he knew, or discovered, that the Teuckerman Ravine Shelter was unoccupied. Certainly he passed the two first aid caches simply because it was not aid for himself he sought, but help for his snow-buried companion.

Parysko was running down the Sherbourne Ski Trail, in all probability, to get help at the Spur Cabin, occupied by some members of the Harvard Mountaineering Club, its owner. Their letter says "The final irony of fate is that he died just a few yards beyond (our) Spur Cabin . . ."The path leading some 75 yards form the trail to this cabin is marked only by tree blazes (which are as good as invisible at night) but is indicated by no sign whatever. There is but ONE sign of which I know that indicates the way to the H.M.C. cabin, and that sign is located at the base of the mountain. By contrast; other shelters near the trail are plainly pointed out by signs at the various locations.

The members of the H.M.C. will find an entry I made during the Christmas recess it the log book in their cabin. It notes that Parysko and myself had spent seven hours trying to locate the place, and pleads for signs indicating the cabin. It is signed by both of us. Had some action been taken to adequately indicate the way to Spur Cabin, there might not have been the double fatality of a week ago.

In December, Parysko and I asked at the A.M.C. cabin if there were any reason for the Harvard Mountaineering Club's failure to mark the way to Spur Cabin. The answer we were given: "Those Harvard boys want privacy." They still have it.

While granting that the advice in their letter is fine, I feel that the H.M.C.'s concern is belatedly expressed, and does little to excuse their evasion of a vital responsibility to the climber and skier, not in print, but on the slope of mount Washington. R. Michel Zilberstein '54