On Friday, November 6, 2015 at 10:36:20 PM UTC-5, Ramy wrote:

From the condition of the glider it looks like it made relatively low energy landing.

Most of the terrain near Mount Washington is below treeline, and 99.99% of it is very densely spaced trees. (Chris landed between two trees spaced 4 feet apart.) My glider has a profoundly stable benign spiral and a Jar-22 'safety cockpit' (more modern gliders have even stronger cockpits). I wear an emergency parachute. I've never made a parachute jump. I'm old enough to have weak leg bones, but I've never had a fracture and I'm not overweight. Breaking a leg on a parachute jump is a non-zero possibility.

If I were in Chris's situation, my first thought would be to stay in the glider until it came to rest in the trees. I'd deploy my PLB while I was waiting to descend (hoping to get a rescue call out before I lost satellite contact in the dense trees), make a Mayday radio call, and tighten my shoulder straps.

I might have a few seconds to pull back the stick, slow down and stall into the trees.

I'd rather have the limited protection of the glider around me, rather than plunge through the tree canopy dangling from a parachute.

I know that you're not suppose to activate a PLB until you've exhausted self-rescue options, but crashing a glider into the trees, I'd expect to need rescue. Being off trail in October in the White Mountains late in the day is a precarious survival situation due to hypothermia, especially if injured and relatively old. Chris's plane flipped upside down after landing. Does anyone carry 50' of spectra cord in a chest pack (to use as a rappel line attached to the parachute harness and anchored to a shoulder strap)?

Am I an idiot?

BTW, following last year's Reno IMC bailout discussion (RAS discussion can change behavior), this year I limited myself to blue sky dry wave days (had two great wave flights with low probability of IMC), but getting stuck in IMC is still a remote possibility. The year before last I dove through a Foehn hole or two (which is exactly how Chris got stuck).