Noonday Hiker dies on Bondcliff

“Two hikers died in the White Mountains recently, one after seizures in the Presidentials, the other of a heart attack on Bondcliff trail. Bondcliff is a trail through the Pemi wilderness in the White Mountains. TT'ers who have hiked the Franconia Ridge will propably remember it... its the beautiful stretch of land to the right as you head towards Lafayette (the opposite side of the ridge from the highway).

I've cut and pasted a really sweet news story about the guy who died in the Pemi. He went by the name Noonday Hiker... I think I remember that name from a post somewhere. I found the article posted by Greg at Aplinezone.com.

Love of hiking was in Merrimack man’s soul

By LAUREN ROTH, Telegraph Staff
rothl@telegraph-nh.com

Are there mountains in heaven?

After Paul J. Creager, 35, of Merrimack died of a heart attack while hiking in his favorite spot on Saturday, his 7-year-old son Joseph asked his grandmother that question.

“He wants to know why his dad died,” said Creager’s mother, Anita. “He wanted to know if he’s in heaven with Grandpa. And if there are mountains and they can hike them together.”

Creager became a serious hiker after his father’s death, when he was a teen-ager. He promised his father, Edward, who was dying of cancer, that he would hike the Appalachian Trail for him. His father was a serious hiker, but hiking the trail was impractical with a wife and eight children at home.

And after five years of preparation, Paul undertook the months-long trek from Georgia to Maine in his father’s memory in 1994, completing it two weeks before Joseph was born.

Now Joseph rarely lets go of the picture that symbolizes that trip. It shows Paul holding a celebratory bottle of champagne in one hand and a hiking stick in the other at the trail’s conclusion at Mount Kathadin in Maine.

Paul was a dedicated father who had custody of his son and lived with him and his mother, Anita Creager said.

When he was 15, Paul told his mother of his life goal – being a father – she said.

Father and son took frequent trips together, camping, biking and hiking, especially to fire towers Joseph could climb.

His father scaled loftier heights.

He loved to climb mountains, hike long trails, snowshoe and mountain bike.

“I called him Paul Bunyan because he was strong. He could do just about anything physically,” said Frank Shlauter, who met his hiking partner more than four years ago in the facilities department at PC Connection, where they both worked. Creager was a maintenance foreman there.

“He was a working-class philosopher. He had a spiritual attitude about life,” Shlauter said.

“He was spiritual about mountain experiences,” he said. “Several times at the top he would set down on is knees and thank God for the beauty he was seeing.”

Though Creager was close with his tight-knit family, including seven siblings, he liked to take in the outdoors on his own or with one or two friends.

On Saturday he was hiking with another co-worker and outdoor enthusiast, John Baker, near the Bond Cliffs in Lincoln, which Shlauter said was Paul’s favorite area.

“He was an incredible hiker and backpacker. He was so strong,” Shlauter said. Creager went by the trail “handle” Noonday Hiker because he could sleep in late and still pass everyone else.

Paul had started out Saturday morning with a breakfast of what was available: egg salad and a soy burger. In the mid- to late-morning he started feeling ill and told Baker he would stop to rest for a while. He thought the food had disagreed with him.

But it turned out that a massive blood clot had broken loose and sealed off the blood supply to his heart, his mother said.

When John returned, Paul was throwing up. John wanted to go for help then, but Paul wanted to hike together to below the tree line. After they did that they came upon two passers-by who said they’d stay with Paul. It was about 6 p.m.

“We want to find out who they were so we can see if he had any last words for his son,” Anita Creager said.

John took off at a run for the ranger’s station, first 2 miles to the Wilderness Trail, then 5 miles down that, she said. They were hiking in the most remote place in the White Mountains, 7 miles from a road in any direction, she said.

“He ran 7 miles in an hour and a half, then came across a mountain biker. He asked the kid to go ahead to the ranger’s station and call 911,” she said.

But Paul had died at about 6:30 p.m.

A search party was formed at 8 p.m. and it took the team until 4:30 a.m. to get Paul out because the spot was so remote.

One of his last conversations with Paul sticks in Frank Shlauter’s mind today.

“He was saying how grateful he was for life,” he said. “And for him that was work, family and the outdoors.””

“I see two small consolations:

He seems to have lived his life well, and Bondliff would not be a bad place to die, but 35 is the wrong time - especially with a young son. Next time I set eyes on the Pemi, I will say a prayer for him and those that he loved.”

“As bad as the weather can get in the Whites, I saw a table once that showed heart attack was the leading cause of death.”

“?He wanted to know if he?s in heaven with Grandpa. And if there are mountains and they can hike them together.?

What a beautiful thing for that child to wonder. Brought tears to my eyes.”

“Touching story.. that's sad.”

“Death in the wilderness is always a possibility, even for people in good shape in the bloom of life. I always tell my family that if I go that way they should keep in mind that I died doing something I wanted to do in a place that I love.

We never know when, where, or how. We only know that we will one day pass. And we have our lives to live until then, so that whenever the time comes we can at least say we lived a good life.

Sounds like Noonday Hiker did that, even if it was way too young to go.”

“My husband was just telling me about a guy at his company that just survived a stroke. He is in the hospital for tests though. This fellow is only 42 years old, without an ounce of fat on him. He bikes 10 miles each way to work, and once biked 220 miles down to Cape May, NJ. So our biggest question is, if someone is fit, why would they have a blood clot or in this case a stroke?”

“This is so sad, just makes you relise that life is too short to not live it to the happiest and fullest extent that you can. and that it seems your time is already set for you, just know one knows when that time will come.”

“When its your time, its your time. I feel much the same as many here, that's too young, but going in the wilderness doing something you love sure beats a long slow good bye.”

“Whatever caused the clot, it's a shame it happened to him at such a young age. It was probably totally unforseen which makes the surrounding all the more fortunate. It could have happened stuck in rushhour traffic! I'm glad for him that it didn't. I wonder if they ever ahve found the two hikers that stayed with him?”