Outward
Bound feels heat in fatal hike: Critics rip 110-degree ‘dance with
death’
By Marie Szaniszlo
Sunday, July 23, 2006
The South
Boston girl who died on an Outward Bound trek through a Utah desert
last week was hiking in a blazing heat 20 degrees above the limit
set for outdoor programs regulated by that state, the Herald has
learned.
Utah prohibits “wilderness-therapy” programs - those in which courts
and parents enroll troubled youngsters - from leading hikes in
temperatures above 90 degrees, said Ken Stettler, director of the
Utah Department of Human Services’ licensing division.
But Elisa D. Santry, 16, was no troubled youngster. The
strawberry-blond, hazel-eyed girl was an honor student. And Outward
Bound Wilderness, the adventure-education organization that led her
and five other teenagers to Lockhart Canyon in 110-degree heat, is
entirely voluntary and thus not governed by Utah state regulations.
“For programs like that, it’s buyer beware,” Stettler said. “That
industry has a strong lobby against regulation. So when you sign up,
basically, you’re on your own.”
Santry became separated from her group some time July 16. Her body
was found at 11 p.m., when the group’s two instructors called
authorities, five hours after they had begun their search.
One Salt Lake lawyer and veteran hiker slammed Santry’s supervisors
for their handling of the hike. “There was a clear breach of
responsibility on the part of the supervisors the moment they
allowed those kids to be out in that kind of heat, let them wander
on their own and then waited five hours in the gathering darkness to
call for help,” said attorney Stephen W. Lewis, a former Boy Scout
leader who leads youngsters on desert outings in his spare time.
“They had no idea of the danger they were walking into,” he added.
“They had no idea they were being led into a dance with death.”
But Outward Bound Wilderness head Mickey Freeman insisted there was
no reason to believe anything “critical” had happened when
instructors began their search.
Santry was on her 16th day of a 22-day course, a point at which it
would have been “normal” for students to be allowed to spend part of
the hike exploring on their own since they all had water and
whistles to call for help, Freeman said.
But what they may not have taken into account, Lewis said, was the
so-called “furnace effect,” the combination of scorching sand and
the sun’s light reflecting off the canyon walls.
Said Lt. Scott Beers, Division 1 supervisor for Boston Emergency
Medical Services: “It can make them light-headed and dizzy before
they even realize what’s happening. The danger can be
life-threatening.”
Yet risk, is a key part of the group’s ethos. One of the nonprofit’s
primary goals, according to its mission statement, is to “impel
(people) to achieve more than they ever thought possible.”
When Santry awoke feeling under the weather the morning before her
death, her instructors didn’t insist that she stay at base camp, her
mother, Elisa Woods, recalled.
Instead, when they noticed Santry hadn’t eaten all of her breakfast,
they asked if she wanted to go, Woods said. And Santry, who managed
to keep a 3.7 grade-point average while holding down a part-time
job, wasn’t about to say no.
“The irony is that the most motivated people often are the most at
risk because they’re willing to push themselves beyond their
limits,” Lewis said. “The tragedy is that the adults this girl’s
family entrusted with her life breached their primary
responsibility: Safety.”
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