I would like to make a few comments, not all directed specifically at your particular post.

1) I was once a "newbie" and my gear was not based on fear mongering. It was heavy because it was all I could afford! As a teenager, I had to babysit and deliver papers to earn the money. If I had to wait until I earned enough to buy the high-end gear, I would never have started!

I think it is typical when you start any sport, that you buy "entry level" gear and if you then do not continue, no great loss, and if you like the sport, you upgrade and refine based on your personal experiences. I was lucky that I started out in an organized group with good training and dedicated mentors for us beginners - so I was taught what were essentials and what were not. My essential gear was a bit heavy and perhaps a bit overkill, but I did not take lots of extra junk (early on I was told I did not need to bring fresh underware for each day!).

2) I do not think you can separate cause and effect with hypothermia and poor judgement. They have feedback. A little cold-- you think less clearly-- you think less clearly and do not do what is proper to re-warm so you get a little more cold -- and so on. Tragedy happens as the end product of numerous compounding factors (small mistakes and uncontrollable factors) that feed back on each. It is often hard to pinpoint one factor. Even mild hypothermia is a compounding factor in a lot of outdoor accidents.

3) As for backpacking being "safer than driving a car" (not your comment but another poster's comment), it takes a very narrow definition of backpacking to assert this as a fact. In some environments, backpacking is NOT as safe as driving; in some it is. OK - I do 8-10 day off-trail trips, never see anyone, go over Class3 passes, expose myself to quite a bit of objective danger, climb a few mountains on the way -- am I backpacking? Is winter backpacking as safe as driving a car? Is winter a time of year or a set of condtions?

4) Every newbie (and experienced backpacker too) should read statistics on accidents - not as a part of fear mongering but to try to learn a little from others misfortunes. Accidents in North American Mountaineering is on my yearly reading list - I learn something each year I read the new report. I do not think that focusing on safety is fear mongering. Granted, the outdoor industry would have you believe that you must have their latest gizmo in order to survive! But that's advertising. Nobody really believes all that!

5) Any tragedy such as this is really sad. My heart goes out to loved ones who are stuggling with the loss, regardless of the cause.