Anna Smith Death in the Himalaya

I was following this story first published by Gripped magazine but the link has been removed. I contacted Gripped and was informed it was requested to be taken down (strange...). I also read about this on the AAI blog which also refers to a broken link.

Does anyone know what happened? Did she suffer from HACE/HAPE? It is a tragedy for sure RIP.

Story removed from here
gripped.com/profiles/canadi…

Some details can be found here.
rmoutlook.com/article/Valle…

There's a thread here with some info:
supertopo.com/climbers-foru…

Thanks I read through the posts and found a little more information.

My post from SuperTopo.

Very sad RIP fellow climber. Does anyone have details on exactly what happened? It looks like some of the article's first reporting this have been removed. The latest report is that she ascended from 12K to over 16K before feeling AMS. Then she descended and passed that evening. That's a really aggressive/irresponsible push in altitude. Looks like a HACE related death? Very sad...

Can you clarify what you mean by "aggressive/irresponsible"?

Base camp at 3,950 meters elevation -13,000 feet
High camp about 4,486 meters - ~14,800

Sounds like very reasonable acclimation. So to say their acclimation schedule was "aggressive/irresponsible" makes no sense. And is actually less than what many do on the West Buttress of Denali.

Allen Sanderson wrote:Base camp at 3,950 meters elevation -13,000 feet High camp about 4,486 meters - ~14,800 Sounds like very reasonable acclimation. So to say their acclimation schedule was "aggressive/irresponsible" makes no sense. And is actually less than what many do on the West Buttress of Denali.

Allen - That doesn't appear to be the case as I mentioned above "The latest report is that she ascended from 12K to over 16K before feeling AMS." - Link Here which is over 1,200 meters in day.

Davis et al., - Controlling our rate of ascent is the biggest determining factor in avoiding or reducing AMS. 300 meters a day is preferred and >500 meters puts us at high risk. If their push to advanced base camp as the latest articles suggests was >1,200 meters we would expect severe AMS symptoms.

For those interested you can find the latest protocols & guidelines for High Altitude Illness Treatment and Prevention that we in the medical community use here wemjournal.org/article/S108…(14)00257-9/fulltext

Thanks for the respectful discussion. We must be compassionate about the loss of our fellow climbers and gain a better understanding of what appears to have been a preventable loss.

BomberBill wrote: Allen - That doesn't appear to be the case as I mentioned above "The latest report is that she ascended from 12K to over 16K before feeling AMS." - Link Here which is over 1,200 meters in day. Davis et al., - Controlling our rate of ascent is the biggest determining factor in avoiding or reducing AMS. 300 meters a day is preferred and >500 meters puts us at high risk. If their push to advanced base camp as the latest articles suggests was >1,200 meters we would expect severe AMS symptoms. For those interested you can find the latest protocols & guidelines for High Altitude Illness Treatment and Prevention that we in the medical community use here wemjournal.org/article/S108…(14)00257-9/fulltext Thanks for the respectful discussion. We must be compassionate about the loss of our fellow climbers and gain a better understanding of what appears to have been a preventable loss.

1200m is quite the push but is not unheard of in Himalayan climbing (edit: especially at that low an elevation). Guess it just goes to show that there are always outliers on the bell curve. Safe travels.