Note: American Army Manual 'snowcaves' 1986
The entrance should be built so that it is about 45 degrees
from the downwind side. A small tunnel is burrowed directly into the side of the
snowdrift for 1 meter. A chamber is excavated from this tunnel. Excavation is done to the
right and left, so that the length of the chamber is at right angles to the tunnel entrance.
Personnel doing the digging will become wet from perspiration and from the snow inside
the cave. They should wear the minimum amount of clothing to ensure that they have a
change of dry clothing when finished. 'You are likely to become drenched with snow and sweat. Do your best to stay dry. To wet out (saturate) the least amount of your clothing's insulation quality, work in your base layers and gortex layers. Stay out of the wind'.
http://www.traditionalmountaineering.org/FAQ_Snowcaves.htmWhy did they leave barefoot? - I ask the last question that concerns me.
I can explain. Down there is a steep slope, which is crazy to descend in total darkness in slippery ski boots.
https://dyatlovpass.com/they-died-with-dignityThe Buryatia Incident August 1993
https://dyatlovpass.com/hamar-dabanA group of tourists from Kazakhstan, led by professional climber Lyudmila Korovina. Once they made it to Buryatia, the group set out on a journey across the Chamar-Daban mountain range on 2 August. The weather wasn’t on their side: it was pouring down cold rain and snow. Nevertheless, the group continued on their route relatively safely until 5 August.
Six out of seven in their group did not survive.
The only survivor, Valentina Utochenko, 17, later wrote in a statement how, during the difficult descent, carried out in near zero visibility, one of the members of the group was struck down hard,
foaming at the mouth and bleeding from the ears. The rest of the group shortly developed the same symptoms.
(Yuri Doroshenko autopsy....right cheek soft tissue covered with gray foam; gray liquid coming form his open mouth. Most apparent cause is pulmonary edema).The six members who died had done so almost simultaneously, after rolling around on the ground, tearing their clothes off and clutching their throats. The young woman was left alone. Nearly unconscious, she navigated the power lines until she reached the river at the bottom, where she was rescued by a group of kayaking tourists.
Chivruay 1973
https://dyatlovpass.com/chivruay-incident-2?lid=1'
The same day I flew to Irkutsk with the rescue team of our university's mountaineering club and spent more than a week completing the search that was launched when he disappeared in 1972. I can draw similarities between this episode and the search for Dyatlov group. The body was very badly and quickly destroyed by water after thawing. During the whole winter, the body was frozen in ice near the bank of the Kitoy River, near the Fedyushkina River, 13 km (8 mi) down from where it had disappeared.'
'We arrived 5 or 6 days later and found that parts of body tissues washed with water were almost completely destroyed to the bone'
'This was an illustration of the damage water can do in less than a week'.
'It is necessary to note an important observation, very often referred to in the Dyatlov case, the red or orange color of the bodies. The discoloration is attributed to anything but natural causes (see #Orange). In fact, the recently extracted frozen body does have a reddish color, more accurately red-orange. It's a common occurrence in deaths due to cold. The precise medical definition can be found in the Handbook of Forensic Medicine, it’s called frosty erythema or Keferstein stains.'
'All members of the group who left the tent were adequately dressed but the weather was extreme. Survival under such conditions is a big challenge in general. Everyone had a full set of hiking clothes and extra sweaters. Some had double and triple wool sweaters. Lidiya Martina, Valentin Zemlyanov and Artyom Lekant were wearing insulated jackets. Ilya Altshuler was additionally wearing a warm aviation winter jacket but he didn't wear gloves. Judging by all indications, he died of total exhaustion and lost muscles tone. It is enough to stop only for a few minutes and an irreversible cooling process would begin'.
https://dyatlovpass.com/chivruay-incident-2?lid=1'When snow has accumulated over time on a long steep slope the maximum pressure from all the snow is focused at the bottom of the slope. Digging a shelter (a cavity) in to the base of a deep slope of snow does not improve the insulation aspect of the shelter, but does hugely increase the risk of the slope sliding and the den collapsing'.
'- do not dream that after stopping the snow mass you will "dig tunnels", "live for hours under the snow" - these are isolated cases in the history of mankind and they are related to the descent of a mass of dry snow, while wet snow freezes in a matter of seconds after stopping - this is LIQUID CONCRETE - and the limbs are motionless and such snow does not allow oxygen to pass through!'
Wet snow is a gigantic load of 800 kg / m3. When the avalanche stops in its cone, the temperature rises due to the high pressure of the snow masses. The resulting melt water fills the gaps between the melted snow particles and soon freezes. The resulting "snow cement" does not lend itself to shoveling and is broken with difficulty by an ice ax.'
'Sometimes people die in an avalanche when there is only half a meter or a meter of snow above them. It seems strange, because we are used to the fact that snow is weightless. But the apparent lightness of the snow is deceiving. To get out from a depth of one meter, a person needs to overcome a weight of 150 to 300 kilograms, depending on how high the moisture content of the snow is'.
'We dug it out (to Dubinin), cutting out snow blocks two shovel wide and one shovel long (shovel bayonet) and somehow threw it out of the excavation by hand. Therefore, I believe that the entire layer of snow was a monstrous mass'.
In the ravine Zolotarev and Kolevatov are covered with one jacket.
Then it is understandable why, after the removal of the bodies, the left sleeve of Thibault's jacket turned out to be empty:
and Zolotarev's wide "sleeve" disappeared from his left hand:
Hypothermia
Exertion leading to physical exhaustion is normally a factor in the more serious cases of hypothermia as it eventually leads to a decrease in heat generation either through lack of energy and/or lack of activity.
The level of your energy reserves is vital in fending off hypothermia. In moderately cold conditions where your body is subject to cooling over a long period, while your energy reserves remain intact, your body can work at a rate that generates enough heat to offset heat loss. Once your energy reserves are exhausted (what athletes would call “hitting the wall”), you can’t maintain your rate of work and heat supply falls. Thus, once your energy reserves are exhausted your core temperature begins to fall and you succumb to hypothermia. Even if you are then removed from the cold, your body finds it very difficult to generate the warmth necessary to re-warm spontaneously because your energy reserves are exhausted. Indeed you may continue to cool. These circumstances are sometimes referred to as ‘sub-acute hypothermia’ or ‘exhaustion hypothermia’.
Sub-acute or exhaustion hypothermia most commonly occurs amongst hill-walkers and climbers being exposed to moderate cold combined with windy and wet conditions. This type of weather is common in the British hills. Competitors in endurance activities and events such as mountain marathons are at risk all year-round, not just in winter.
There is a seeming paradox that is critical to be aware of. Compare the above scenario to a situation where you are exposed to more severe cold and subject to rapid cooling – such as falling into cold water – while your energy reserves are still intact. Once removed from the cold, your body will utilise its energy reserves to re-warm quickly.
Insufficient food decreases the fuel available for heat generation and in the short-term is closely linked to exhaustion (see above).
Do not apply external warmth such as sitting the casualty close to a fire or a stove. Again, this opens blood vessels on the surface, drawing blood from the core. Active external warming from a fire can be lethal.
Even if you get the casualty into a warm environment such as a cabin, keep them wrapped up. Otherwise warm air on the skin can cause the casualty to vasodilate. Again this can cause cold blood to be shunted to the core as well as a catastrophic drop in blood pressure. The mortality rate for hypothermic casualities, particularly severely hypothermic casualties, introduced to warm environments is high.
The colder the casualty, the more gently they must be handled. The heart becomes much more sensitive to physical shocks and it is possible to easily send a severely hypothermic casualty into cardiac arrest.
http://paulkirtley.co.uk/2010/hypothermia/If you are lost in the snow and your clothes are wet, should you take your clothes off?
It depends. If the temperatures are above freezing, (32ºF/0ºC), then taking your clothes off when they are wet MIGHT be a good or okay idea/strategy for avoiding hypothermia.
This would only be helpful if you could build a fire and then take your clothes off, and dry them out by a fire or something. Then you could put them back on and stay warm.
If, on the other hand, the temperatures were WAY BELOW freezing, then you would want to keep them on, but with one distinct change: You will want to get that wet clothing away from your skin, so
you will need to stuff the inside of your clothes with crumpled paper, with dried grasses, with dead leaves, or cattail down, or even bubble wrap, to give you some insulation. It will allow your body heat to start to dry out the wet clothes, and still give you protection from the wind, the cold, the snow, or the surrounding wilderness environment.Other Factors: What kind of clothes are you wearing that is wet? If you’re wearing jeans, a cotton sweatshirt and cotton t-shirt, then yes, that’s a huge, huge problem.
If you’re wearing polar fleece or wool pants or sweaters or long underwear, or other ‘wicking’ synthetic clothing, you can keep wearing them, because those clothes will keep you warm, even when wet. However, I would take them off, wring them out, squeeze out as much water as I can, and then put it back on as quick as you can so they don’t get too cold and chill you out! That’s a ‘fresh’ feeling, putting wet clothes back on, in the winter!
https://www.quora.com/profile/Ricardo-Sierra-6Semyon Zolotaryov Had a rolled up newspaper in his back trouser pocket.
https://dyatlovpass.com/case-files-349-351?rbid=17743Does this tell us that by the time Semyon is in the shelter he is still not in a desperate hypothermic state because the newspaper is still in his pocket. Also he hasn't offered it to any other casualty so maybe some in this group only need cloth wrappings to protect their feet and hands from snow contact. They aren't yet needing to pack their clothes with newspaper. Then their shelter collapsed.
A safer Shelter
Snow
dens are better for above the tree line and take time and skill to build, and make the builders wet from snow and sweat. A snow
trench shelter is better and safer in many situations in forest. When digging any shelter having it 'cave in' or 'collapse' is a real and dangerous risk. Depth and snow type should be taken in to account. For a snow trench 1 meter depth in snow with a good foliage floor and foliage roof with snow on top should be enough to protect a person in snow. Snow is 90% air and a great insulator but it depends how wet and slushy it is. The supreme quality of insulation (be it in a sleeping bag, down jacket, wool blanket, etc.) is the
dead air space. And snow is full of it! Snow makes a fantastic insulator – as long as you can keep it from melting (for example, from your body heat).
Topic: Thinking out Loud (Read 13609 times)
