Mount Marcy is seen from Lake Placid on Sunday. (Enterprise photo — Chris Gaige)
KEENE — A hiker died near the summit of Mount Marcy on Thursday, after calling 911 that afternoon to report they had slipped there.
The state Department of Environmental Conservation confirmed Sunday evening that a 21-year-old hiker from New Jersey was found dead near the mountain’s summit area Thursday night. The DEC did not release the hiker’s name, gender or where within New Jersey they were from as of press time Sunday.
A DEC spokesperson said the rescue effort began when the hiker called 911 at 3:05 p.m., reporting they had slipped and were unable to get back onto the trail. The hiker also said they had a dog with them. It’s unclear whether any other members were in the hiking party or what caused the hiker to slip.
That call was routed to the DEC’s Ray Brook dispatch center, which coordinates DEC wilderness emergency calls and responses throughout the state. Ground and aerial search teams of DEC forest rangers, assisted by the New York State Police’s Aviation Unit, responded to a possible helicopter hoist rescue, given the nature of the emergency.
Two forest rangers attempted to spot the hiker from the State Police helicopter, but heavy cloud cover around Mount Marcy’s summit at the time prevented any sighting, according to a DEC spokesperson. At 6:06 p.m., one of the forest rangers who had been in the helicopter was inserted into the ground search operation at the Marcy Dam Outpost, which is about 5.1 miles away from and nearly 3,000 feet below the summit of Mount Marcy.
From there, the forest ranger hiked up towards the hiker’s last known location near Marcy’s summit, according to the DEC spokesperson. At 9:51 p.m., the ranger located the hiker, at which point they were dead. It’s unclear if other forest rangers had been searching there earlier, or if that was the first forest ranger to make it up to the summit area.
The dog was still alive, and rangers hiked it out to safety. Poor weather conditions at the time prevented rangers from being able to remove the body. Early Friday morning, a State Police helicopter was able to insert two forest rangers at the site and recover the hiker’s body.
“The New York State Department of Environmental Conservation offers its condolences to the family,” the spokesperson said.
At 5,344 feet, Mount Marcy is New York’s tallest peak. Its alpine summit is prone to extreme winter weather, such as low visibility from clouds and/or blowing snow, frigid wind chills and deep snow pockets that can form “spruce traps,” where hidden pockets of air develop as snow falls around the short summit pine bows, creating sink holes when stepped over.
Winter navigation can be especially difficult on exposed summits like Marcy, where strong winds can quickly blow in any preexisting set of snowshoe tracks. Thursday’s temperatures were in the teens and had fallen to the single digits, with a wind chill around zero, by 9 p.m. at Lake Placid’s New York State Mesonet weather station, which is located at 2,018 feet. Temperatures and wind chills were likely colder at higher elevations.
It’s unclear what trail conditions were like on Thursday. The DEC reported on Wednesday that the snow depth at its Lake Colden Interior Outpost cabin was 49 inches. The outpost is about 3 miles west of Mount Marcy and nearly 2,600 feet below its summit. Snow depth generally increases with elevation.
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This is a developing story and will be updated as more information becomes available.
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