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Mount Washington Hiker Cole Matthes revealed what got him into the circumstances requiring a team of men to save him in an 11-hour rescue.
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“I am extremely grateful to all 11 of the men who saved my life Saturday and am also extremely sorry that they had to risk their lives to save me,” Matthes told the Associated Press. “I certainly made poor decisions and was underprepared for this hike.”
Both he and the rescuers say that without help, he would have died within hours.
Matthes drifted away from the trail as temperatures plunged, and ferocious winds made it near impossible to see. He hit a patch of snow-covered ice and slid hundreds of feet down a ravine.
HIKER RESCUED FROM MOUNTAIN WITH 90-MPH WINDS, BITTER COLD ATOP MOUNT WASHINGTON
New Hampshire Fish and Game conservation officer Levi Frye, left, and Jeremy Broughton, from Androscoggin Valley Search and Rescue, prepare to head out on a rescue mission at the Cog Railway base station, Saturday, Feb. 17, 2024, in Mount Washington, N.H.(Sgt. Glen Lucas/New Hampshire Fish and Game via AP)
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The 22-year-old from Portsmouth, New Hampshire, said in an online interview that he has plenty of hiking experience but not during harsh winter conditions. He set off in spiked snowshoes planning to complete the challenging 9-mile Ammonoosuc Ravine Trail loop, which has an elevation gain of 4,200 feet.
New Hampshire Fish and Game said that as conditions worsened, Matthes ignored advice from other hikers to turn back prior to his fall.
“While I did see a group of hikers turn around at the Lake of the Clouds Hut, I decided to continue with other hikers,” Matthes said. “I was not hiking alone at that point and the weather conditions had not reached their peak.”
Mattes tumbled a little before noon, banging himself up and twisting his ankle before he called 911.
SKIER TRIGGERS AVALANCHE ON MOUNT WASHINGTON, SUFFERS LIFE-THREATENING INJURY
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Snow covers the rails on the train tracks leading to the summit Mount Washington above the Cog Railway base station, Saturday, Feb. 17, 2024, in Mount Washington, N.H.(Conservation Officer Brad Jones/New Hampshire Fish and Game via AP)
Ryan Presby, who manages the Mount Washington Cog Railway, told the AP he took the train up three times with rescue crews. As winds hit 90 miles per hour and temperatures plunged, he worried the train’s diesel engine would gel and the train would seize. He told rescuers to jump out as quickly as possible when they reached their destination.
Levi Frye, a conservation officer with Fish and Game, was among the first group of three rescuers to jump off the train. He said it was immediately clear they needed crampons for the ice and fierce wind.
“We were fighting it the whole time. It was certainly capable of knocking you off your feet, especially with a heavy pack on,” Frye said. “The visibility was so bad on account of all the snow getting blown around.”
Rescuers used a system called leapfrogging, utilizing the trail’s marked rock cairns. One person would stay at the first cairn while another would try to locate the next cairn. The third person stood in the middle to keep in contact with both.
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New Hampshire Fish and Game conservation officer Brad Jones prepares to set out on a rescue mission at the Cog Railway base station ,Saturday, Feb. 17, 2024, in Mount Washington, N.H. (Sgt. Glen Lucas/New Hampshire Fish and Game via AP)
Staying safe meant finding a balance between not getting too cold and not sweating too much, because it was even more dangerous to have sweat freeze, Frye said.
By the time the team reached Matthes a little after 6 p.m., it was already dark.
“I was extremely relieved once the first team of rescuers arrived,” Matthes said. “Even with my shelter, I wouldn’t have lasted through the night in my condition.”
MISSING HIKER FOUND DEAD NEAR ARIZONA PEAK
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Ski lift can be scene on Mount Washington in New Hampshire.(Jessica Rinaldi/The Boston Globe via Getty Images)
Matthes’ boots were frozen solid, Frye said. The top priority was to strip him of his wet gear and get him into dry clothes. They gave him warm water and electrolytes and strapped his ankle as more rescuers arrived. By about 9:30 p.m., they felt he was stable and ready to leave. They got back to base a little before 11 p.m.
After being treated, Matthes said he declined the advice from rescuers to take an ambulance to the hospital because he thought it would be expensive. He drove himself there instead.
“I’m currently recovering from some frostbite on my toes,” Matthes said.
THE TREK TO THE TOP OF MOUNT WASHINGTON
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A view of Mount Washington, standing at an elevation of 6,288.2 ft, in the Presidential Range of the White Mountains in New Hampshire on June 12, 2020. ((Photo by Joseph Prezioso / AFP) (Photo by JOSEPH PREZIOSO/AFP via Getty Images))
New Hampshire Fish and Game said Matthes did not have proper gear or equipment, did not plan for the weather or make good decisions. In some previous cases, the agency has sought to recover rescue costs from hikers they believed to be negligent, but so far they have not decided what to do regarding Matthes.
Matthes said he was aware of the financial risk when he called 911.
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“But I knew that if I hadn’t called for help, I wouldn’t have made it down,” Matthes said. “At the end of the day, I’m alive, and that’s all that I could ask for.”
By Jake Goldstein-Street (Washington State Standard)
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Dec. 25, 2025 4:55 p.m.
A road is covered by floodwaters after heavy rains led to historic flooding in the region Saturday, Dec. 13, 2025, in Burlington, Wash.
Lindsey Wasson / AP
U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. declared a public health emergency Wednesday over this month’s flooding in Washington state.
The action from Kennedy, the head of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, is focused on helping meet the needs of Medicare and Medicaid beneficiaries. As part of that, his agency is providing access to HHS emPOWER, which gives data on the number of Medicare enrollees reliant on medical equipment dependent on electricity and other health care services that could make them especially vulnerable to a disaster.
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The announcement could be a good sign for the state’s chances of getting a major disaster declaration from President Donald Trump to potentially open up tens of millions of dollars to deal with the flooding’s aftermath.
Gov. Bob Ferguson plans to ask for such a declaration in the coming weeks.
The flooding from heavy rain and overflowing rivers forced thousands of evacuations, breached multiple levees and damaged numerous highways. It still didn’t quite reach the levels some forecasts predicted. One person has been reported dead.
Kennedy’s order follows an emergency declaration from Trump that unlocked federal resources to respond to the storm.
John Knox, of the department’s Administration for Strategic Preparedness and Response, said in a statement that, “HHS stands ready to assist state and local response efforts in the state of Washington due to the potential health care impacts from severe storms.”
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Health and Human Services has also waived penalties for violating federal health privacy rules under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, or HIPAA, for hospitals.
“With today’s declaration and waiver, HHS is helping ensure that residents in the storm’s path have continuous access to the care they need during and after this storm,” Knox said. “ASPR’s highly trained personnel are prepared to support state and local actions to save lives and protect the delivery of health care services.”
The federal Disaster Distress Helpline is also available for crisis counseling. The multilingual hotline, open 24 hours a day, can be reached via call or text at 1-800-985-5990.
The declaration is retroactive to Dec. 9.
A windstorm forecast to arrive in western Washington on Wednesday could exacerbate problems, as saturated soil from the recent rain could make trees and powerline poles especially susceptible to falling over. But the wind is now not expected to be as intense as predicted earlier this week.
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Meanwhile, Washington Attorney General Nick Brown filed a lawsuit with other states against Kennedy on Tuesday for his threats against gender-affirming care providers.
Brown called Kennedy’s move “as cruel and unnecessary as it is illegal, but consistent with an administration that puts politics above health.” It’s Washington’s 49th lawsuit against the federal government since Trump retook office in January.
Washington State Standard is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501(c)(3) public charity.
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Federal immigration agents shot at a moving vehicle on Wednesday morning during an enforcement and removal action in Glen Burnie, Maryland, striking one person and injuring another, officials said.
A spokesperson for the Anne Arundel County Police Department said neither person had life-threatening injuries, and both were taken to the hospital.
Anne Arundel police responded to a report of a shooting involving federal agents at about 10:50 a.m. The Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents were the only officials involved in the shooting, police said.
Preliminarily, police said the agents approached a white van, but the vehicle attempted to run them over. The agents fired at the van, which accelerated until coming to a stop in a wooded area, police said.
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When asked for comment, Department of Homeland Security officials said both civilians involved in the altercation with ICE are in the U.S. illegally. They did not indicate whether either of the men had been arrested.
“Continued efforts to encourage illegal aliens and violent agitators to actively resist ICE will only lead to more violent incidents,” Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement.
Anne Arundel police said they will investigate the shooting, while the FBI investigates the alleged assault on the agents and ICE conducts an internal investigation.
When Washington Governor Bob Ferguson proposed the state’s first income tax in modern history, he said the word “affordability” five times.
Ferguson on Tuesday asked the legislature to craft a 9.9% tax on personal income over $1 million, which would revolutionize a state revenue system heavily reliant on sales and property tax. Although his fellow Democrats have for decades failed to push through an income tax, Ferguson said it’s “a different time right now.”
“We are facing an affordability crisis,” Ferguson said. “It is time to change our state’s outdated, upside-down tax system. To serve the needs of Washingtonians today, to make our taxes the more fair, millionaires should contribute toward our shared prosperity.”
Democrats across the US are increasingly exploring taxes as a way to capture the populist moment and address the country’s widening wealth gap. If “affordability” was the issue highlighted by Democrats who outperformed expectations in the off-year elections of 2025, the slogan next year could very well be “tax the rich.”
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It’s an opening Democrats see as the Trump administration this year paired tax cuts for high earners with reductions in Medicaid and supplemental food assistance. Raising taxes on the wealthy could also help solve a fiscal problem for states dedicating more resources to plug the holes from federal cuts.
“We have a federal government that has gone into super-villain mode, seeming to deliberately take from the poor and middle class to give to the rich,” said Darien Shanske, a tax professor at UC Davis School of Law. “This unnecessary emergency is laying down a gauntlet for states: Will they let this suffering come to pass and, if not, how will they pay for the triage? Taxes on the best-off are not just fair but also efficient.”
Read more: Millionaire Tax That Mamdani Loves Fuels a $5.7 Billion Haul
Progressive tax advocates often point to Massachusetts’ 4% surtax on incomes over $1 million, which brought in roughly $5.7 billion in fiscal 2025, far exceeding revenue projections in its third year of collection.
New York Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani campaigned on raising the city’s income tax on millionaires by 2 percentage points to 5.9%, which critics said would lead to an exodus of wealthy people.
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Colorado voters this year approved a measure to limit deductions for taxpayers earning at least $300,000. The revenue will fund a program providing free meals for all public school students. Colorado officials also advanced a ballot measure to change the state’s 4.41% flat rate to a graduated income tax, potentially raising more than $4 billion. That will likely go before voters in 2026.
Michigan residents could also face a ballot initiative next year to change the state’s flat 4.25% tax rate to add a 5% surcharge on individuals earning more than $500,000 and couples making more than $1 million.
Romney’s Call
Even 2012 Republican Presidential candidate Mitt Romney has joined the call. Last week, the former US senator from Utah penned an essay in the New York Times calling for rich people to pay more, mostly in the form of closing loopholes the wealthy use to minimize tax obligations.
“It would help us avoid the cliff ahead,” Romney said, pointing to government funding shortfalls, “and might tend to quiet some of the anger that will surely grow as unemployed college graduates see tax-advantaged multibillionaires sailing 300-foot yachts.”
Most of the populist proposals coming from the states would raise taxes on income. But the tricky thing about some wealth is that it doesn’t come from a paycheck and thus is harder to tax. Even a levy on capital gains depends on a taxpayer selling assets to realize that increased value.
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For example, former Microsoft Chief Executive Officer Steve Ballmer’s net worth increased by $706.5 billion on Monday, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. Even though his mansion sits across the lake from downtown Seattle, those gains wouldn’t be subject to an income tax.
That’s why some Washington state Democrats are still pushing for the US’s first wealth tax on unrealized gains. Under a proposal passed by the state Senate last year, portfolios of some publicly traded asset classes worth at least $50 million would be taxed at 0.5%.
Ferguson panned the wealth tax proposal last year, saying it would be irresponsible to balance the budget on a measure that would certainly face legal challenges.
One of the most common warnings from tax opponents is that once legislators have a new tax mechanism, they’ll either increase the rate or lower the threshold at which it would apply. Ferguson in his income-tax proposal nodded to that concern, saying the $1 million level should increase with inflation and be included in the statute or perhaps even a constitutional amendment.
Read More: Vegas Lures Millionaires Fleeing Wealth Tax in Washington State
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State taxes are also easier to avoid than federal taxes, because it’s relatively easy to move a primary residency. Washington used to attract taxpayers fed up with California’s high rates, but that has changed since the Evergreen State started taxing capital gains. Next year could be the year of the millionaire’s tax — in Washington state and across the US.
