Today’s Real Hot Yet Truly Morbid Fact!
Oh, I acknowledge that this story is way too long for a daily newsletter, but it was so interesting, I had to share most of it. I hope you find it as interesting as I did. – DeSpair
John Mark Williams, 24, was an employee at Old Faithful Snow Lodge during the winter of 1987-88. Originally from Wetumpka, Alabama, he was the kind of person nearly everyone liked—blond, blue-eyes, intelligent, athletic, sensitive to nature, outgoing, and happy. He was in excellent physical shape, and a strong skier and rock climber.
John Mark Williams
On Monday and Tuesday, February 7 and 8, 1988, a party of Snow Lodge employees winter-camped near Shoshone Geyser Basin on Shoshone Lake, some eleven miles south of Old Faithful. The party consisted of Jack McConnell, Jill Fitterer, Andrea Paul, Melanie Weeks, and John Mark Williams. All were experienced Yellowstone employees of several years each, and all were excellent skiers and winter campers in good physical shape. Weeks and Paul skied in on the seventh; Fitterer and McConnell skied in together on the eighth. Williams skied in alone on the eighth and joined the others that evening. Weeks and Paul were skiing out on the eighth when they met Fitterer and McConnell heading in, heard that Williams was to join the party, and decided to go back in. Andrea Paul was to be eternally thankful that she went back.
On February 8, the group made camp at 5:00 p.m. It was not a legal camp, as they were assigned to a campsite spot but instead camped on the shore of the lake. Although rangers would later criticize them for the decision, several party members were to note later that the decision to camp there was a “common sense” one based on the incoming storm rather than any conscious disregard of park policy.
John Mark Williams had been fascinated by the beauty of the Shoshone hot springs on earlier trips, and decided to go for a walk in the geyser basin while the others stayed behind to cook dinner. Perhaps John Mark wanted to see the beauty of the springs in the snow, and engage in some quiet contemplation. Or perhaps he wanted to do some illegal “hotpotting”—soaking in the cooler of the thermal pools (and there are not many springs that fit that description). He may have also needed some time alone to do some thinking about his prior relationship with Andrea, a relationship that had lasted several years and had ended the summer before. He invited the others to join him, and when they declined, he headed out into the geyser basin alone. It was not yet dark and was snowing only lightly at that moment, but the storm was to roll in quickly.
Yellowstone Hot Springs in Winter (Photo: NPS/Diane Renkin)
By 6:00 p.m., it had begun snowing a little harder and darkness was fast approaching. Jack, Jill, Melanie and Andrea finished eating, cleaned up their pots, and started settling into their sleeping bags. By 6:45, the visibility had grown very poor, from heavy snowfall, gusty winds, and dense hot-spring vapor. Indeed, ranger Bonnie Gafney, soon to be heaving involved in the incident, would note later that while the storm was raging, “the howling wind was incredible.” When Gafney opened the patrol cabin door on the shore of Shoshone Lake (where she was spending the night), she “couldn’t even see the lake for the blowing and howling snow.”
As time passed, the four campers grew concerned about Williams, so Melanie and Andrea set out with headlamps into the dark. Blowing snow and darkness kept them from being able to see well despite their lights and they quickly realized that heavy snow drifting was occurring so fast that they could not figure out which way to go. Confused and disoriented, they gave up after ten minutes and returned to the tent.
“I hope John Mark is okay,” Andrea commented upon their return to the tents.
“Ol’ Henry (a nickname of John’s) is probably loving it out there!” was McConnell’s confident reply, but then he quietly noted to Jill. “Something is wrong. He should have been back by now and I’ve got a bad feeling.”
Shortly after that, around 7:30 p.m., the four tent occupants heard screaming in the distance, then silence, punctuated only by the moaning wind and the sound of snowflakes slapping the sides of the tent. Then they heard screaming again: “Oh God, help me! Help me!” As all four scrambled to get out of their sleeping bags, the screaming grew closer.
Exiting their tents, the others saw Williams in a stumbling run, holding him arms above his head and crying, “My hands, my hands! I hurt so bad!” McConnell asked Williams what had happened and in broken words he answered, “Oh God, I fell in a real hot one. I’m hurtin’ real bad.”
Moving quickly, the others stripped off Williams’ wet clothes and placed him in a sleeping bag. He had been scalded from his feet to his neck. Long strips of his skin had already begun to peel off from the second and third degree burns which covered ninety percent of his body. The others elevated his feet in an attempt to treat him for shock, while his screams of pain filled the tent.
Jill Fitterer remembers the screams being painfully long and loud, sounds she could not get out of her head for years. She was shocked to see that his back was deep purple in color.
“I’m skiing for help,” said McConnell. Jill told him that he could not go alone and that she would go too. Jack replied that was okay but to pack faster than she had ever packed before. Jill scrambled for anything warm she could find.
The two struck out in the darkness, hoping to find Ranger Bonnie Gafney and Steve Blankely who they knew were staying in the Cove patrol cabin three miles away. Unfortunately, they did not know exactly where the cabin was. Jack’s headlamp bulb burned out, so he stopped to replace it with another. The second one shattered, and the had only Jill’s fading light. To conserve its battery they skied in darkness, sliding backwards often and falling several times while following Bonnie and Steve’s dim ski tracks Those tracks finally ended, covered by the new snow that had been long falling. They yelled for Bonnie and Steve over and over to no avail. From a mile away John Marks’ screams cut through them like a hot knife. Jill was exhausted but kept up with Jack in terror of their being separated. In pitch darkness, she skied into low tree branches and fell again. The wind and falling snow were ruthless and unforgiving.
Unable to find the cabin. the two decided to return to Snow Lodge for help. The relatively warm temperate of 20°F. was their only relief.
Meanwhile Melanie and Andrea had begun desperate attempts to keep Williams alive. Every few minutes they gave him fruit juice or water. When that ran out they attempted to melt snow in a pan, but the wind kept blowing out the stove. They ended up melting snow in their mouths and spitting it into a cup.
Meanwhile McConnell and Jill were heading toward Grant’s Pass and Old Faithful, knowing their inbound ski tracks would be long concealed by the new snow. Jack McConnell, the strongest skier in the party, went first, breaking trail, Jill followed, but three miles out lost her energy. She fell, over and over, skis twisting under her, and heard herself yelling in the blackness for Jack.
Jill decided to stop and camp in order to keep from slowing Jack down. It was 10:45 p.m. The two made her a bivouac spot under a large tree. There she laid down to spend a cold, sleepless, lonely, and terrified snowbound night. The next day she skied out to Old Faithful. She wrote later that she hoped never again to feel so detached from life or to know such a great emptiness in her heart.
Through the night, Andrea and Melanie maintained their heartbreaking vigil in thick snowfall and with winds blowing so hard that the tent threatened to collapse. John Mark Williams never lost consciousness and remained coherent during the night. Between screams of pain he was able to carry on a conversation, and expressed concern that McConnell would not possibly be able to return to Snow Lodge in the midst of such a fierce storm. He was alert enough to tell Andrea where his first aid kit was located, and at times, he even sat up. He stated at one point that he didn’t believe a helicopter could make it to the site even if Jack were able to get help.
As the night stretched on, John often said he was “so tired” and continued to thank the two women for their efforts. He repeatedly apologized for the inconvenience and expressed concern about a coat he had dropped at the hot spring. “He had borrowed it from a fellow employee at Snow Lodge,” Andrea remembers, “and he was quite concerned that this employee wouldn’t get his coat back.
“I recall him saying that he was scared only twice, but a few times he said things like, ‘I’m fighting! I’m trying!’ He kept popping up and then flopping down, writhing in pain and occasionally sobbing in frustration.”
“He was so good about doing what we asked,” explained Andrea, “turning up on his side repeatedly so we could try and get the sleeping bag zipper up around his neck, and sipping the water we gave him slowly.”
The girls took turns all night long crawling out of the tent to gather snow in a small cooking pot. When the stove failed to light, they again melted small handfuls in their mouths, letting it slowly dribble back into a cup which they handed to John every few minutes. The storm continued to rage, the walls of the tent shuddered and the tentpoles creaked, threatening to snap in two. Melanie and Andrea fought to keep snow from blowing in and kept snow-filled water bottles next to their skin in hopes that their body heat would melt more snow.
Eventually, the powerful wind proved too much for the tent-door zipper and it broke. The two women were then kept twice as busy keeping snow out of the tent while preparing and administering liquids to Williams.
“Not once,” remembers Andrea, “I repeat, not once did he say he wanted to die, nor did he ever curse or get mad about this twist of fate. Not once did he say, ‘Why me?’ Instead,” she explained, “he kept thanking us. At one point he even reached up to barely caress a strand of my hair, and told me he loved me.” Andrea remembers wondering if Jack would get through.
Meanwhile, Jack McConnell skied on alone through the night through high winds and with no source of light, but fortunately with the blowing snow at his back. The snow was so deep, the wind so high, and the night so dark that it was very difficult to find the trail. McConnell had the presence of mind to leave the trail in favor of the Firehole River and to ski along the river, following its sound. He skied all night long and finally made it to Old Faithful Snow Lodge at 4:00 a.m. A massive search and rescue operation began to lurch slowly into operation.
[I will leave out the progress of the rescue operation, as you can imagine it was a lot of skiing and searching until about 11:30 a.m….]
Back at the tent, Andrea and Melanie were still trying desperately to help John Mark. Andrea was to remember it vividly:
I was sitting by John’s head and had just handed him the cup with a few sips of water. He drank them down, sat slightly up to hand me the cup and said ‘Thank you.’ As he flopped back, his eyes seemed to roll up and his jaw suddenly clenched. I feared he was going comatose and that he might swallow his tongue. I tried to pry open his mouth and force a yellow bandanna between his teeth when I heard this strange gurgling sound. I now know that his lungs were filling with fluid, but at the time I just thought he was choking. I had his head between my hands and suddenly I knew he was no longer breathing or moving, indeed he seemed suddenly at peace. I was looking at him in total disbelief and shock. I couldn’t believe he was really gone. I remember covering his nose and trying to breathe down his mouth, but nothing helped… Melanie and I were holding each other… I remember saying the words to the Lord’s Prayer, crying, and lying there in disbelief. We were so totally exhausted and so in shock we didn’t react for a few minutes. I remember closing his eyelids, kissing him on the forehead… The thought that he was really gone was totally unacceptable.
At 11:26, Bonnie Gafney topped over a small hill in thigh high-deep snow to see a blue tent on the beach, and notified headquarters. The two women heard her shout and crawled out of the tent, crying quietly, “Bonnie, it’s too late, nothing can help him now.”
Help had missed reaching Williams alive by an hour and a half. The pool he had fallen into was 187°F. and eight feet deep. One can argue that Williams’ burns were so severe that nothing could have been done regardless of time. According to the autopsy report they covered ninety percent of his body, and he died of dehydration from the burns.
Culled from: Death in Yellowstone
Vintage Medical Illustrations Du Jour!
Illustrations of various kinds of skin disease, mostly infectious, affecting the face.
Culled from: The Sick Rose: Disease and the Art of Medical Illustration
Andersonville Prisoner Diary Entry Du Jour!
This is the continuation of the 1864 diary of Andersonville prisoner Private George A. Hitchcock (see the archived version for all entries up until now).
Here’s today’s entry:
October 7th. Cloudy and damp. Had a suffering night from my teeth. Shep. is sick, as also many others, with chills and ague.
Culled from: Andersonville: Giving Up the Ghost