Woman falls and dies on Baldy

[Sean]

Early reports from Reddit and Facebook say that a woman tumbled down Baldy Bowl and succumbed to her injuries yesterday.

[HikeUp]

SAR report...

https://local.nixle.com/alert/9861947/? ... vtyKg2d_o0

Which states there was a 2nd recent fatal fall... "Within the past two weeks, two hikers have slid on ice on Mt. Baldy and both succumbed to their injuries."

[bcrowell]

[merged from a redundant thread]

There have been two deaths on Baldy recently. Very sad, RIP.

Does anyone understand what exactly happened when Crystal Paula Gonzalez died? The OC Register says, "The hiker was trekking along on the Baldy Bowl trail, nearly nine miles long, when she slid on ice and fell from an estimated 500- to 700-foot-high ledge, according to the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department." I assume they mean that she was on the ski hut trail near the bowl, but there's nothing with that kind of exposure on the ski hut trail, if you're on route. There were a bunch of witnesses, but news reports all just repeat the same info above.

Usually when people get killed on Baldy in winter it seems to be that they're on Devil's Backbone, which has a lot of exposure.

[Sean]

Does anyone understand what exactly happened when Crystal Paula Gonzalez died?

@bcrowell Check out the Reddit thread linked in the first post. It sounds like she was going up a XC route in the Bowl, having left the normal trail, which itself was covered in snow/ice. Based on a search through her FB posts, she typically climbed with an ice axe, microspikes but no helmet. She might have been hit by falling ice or rocks, lost consciousness or her balance and then fell. That's me guessing. She could have fallen for other reasons. I haven't heard a definitive answer. It seems she went up alone, so maybe no one witnessed the actual cause. But she apparently tumbled a long distance and hit a tree on the way down.

[bcrowell]

Thanks, Sean, that makes more sense.
The take-aways for me are (1) when judging your run-out, consider trees; (2) wear a helmet if you're going up a route that's notorious for rockfall.
Not that I'm blaming her, but it's important to learn from accident reports how to reduce your own risk.
This is actually pretty similar to my recent trip I posted about where I made the decision to turn around: mission-abort-at-south-fork-t8744.html
Like her, I was on a steep snow slope, no helmet, with a run-out where I could have hit a tree. That was exactly the scenario I was visualizing: slide, fail to self-arrest, hit a tree and get seriously injured or killed.

[Sean]

... it's important to learn from accident reports how to reduce your own risk.

In addition to the physical dangers of the mountain conditions, it's important to recognize your own mental issues which might put you at additional risk. I tell the story of my own problem of having a bias for loop routes. It's like summit fever, but we can call it route fever--when you irrationally continue on a preferred or planned route despite common sense telling you to take a safer one. This happened to me once on Baldy. I had gone up Register Ridge in winter, with only trail runners and no gear, planning to loop around on the Backbone. While Register was mostly clear of ice, the Backbone was covered in it. Not wanting to backtrack down Register (clearly the safer option), I grabbed a rock and chipped small footholds in the Backbone route. Luckily I managed the frightening crossing above the Manker headwall. A slip and fall would have probably resulted in death. After that episode I started noticing this route-bias in my psychology and now I try to check it whenever I'm faced with such a decision.

[bcrowell]

Yeah, probably a more common example in that area would be that people are like, "Let's do the bowl!," and then when they get there the conditions aren't good, but they do it anyway.

[AW~]

Daily Mail
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/articl ... -dark.html
Follow her until its cut for obvious reason.