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Hiking without adequate clothing, food, a map, a compass or, by his own admission, a proper respect for the elements, he was plucked off the top of Mount Washington last year, covered in snow and ice and unable to move his legs, after a frantic 911 call on his cell phone.
It was a long and risky rescue in whiteout conditions that public safety officials said was made necessary by Dahl's lack of common sense.
Since then, the 64-year-old retired dermatologist from Maine says he has endured hundreds of media accounts, letters, and electronic ''nastygrams'' scorning his actions.
''There's been enough dumping on Dahl,'' he said in what he called a rare interview.
Yet a year after his misadventure on Oct. 23, 1999, Dahl isn't hiding from the limelight. He's taking his story public, delivering a spiritual message about his rescue to business, medical, and civic groups, including a gathering in Stowe, Vt., earlier this month.
He maintains an elaborate Web site detailing every mistake he made during his mountain trek and its potential cosmic meaning. And in April, Dahl returned to Mount Washington with a television crew to film a reenactment of his rescue. It is expected to be broadcast on The Learning Channel early next year as part of its ''StormForce II'' series.
The notion of Dahl as spiritual guide strikes those involved in his rescue as odd, if not arrogant.
''If he has to do this, he should talk about what to pack on a climb, and I don't mean a cell phone,'' said Eric Aldrich, spokesman for the New Hampshire Fish and Game Department, which after the Dahl rescue instituted a policy of billing ''reckless'' hikers who get in trouble and need help. (So far, it has collected $6,000 from four hikers, with half of that amount coming from Dahl.)
''It's unbelievable that he doesn't seem to accept that he did anything wrong,'' said Rick Wilcox, the head of the Mountain Rescue Service of North Conway, which took part in Dahl's rescue.
Dahl, however, sees himself as a man with a calling.
''I don't control it,'' he said last weekend. ''My near-death experience on the mountain has a life of its own.''
Dahl's Web site (www.mtwashingtonmisadventure.com) offers him as a motivational speaker whose main message, he said, is ''to live fully here and now because death is real and may come at any time.'' He also advises people not to ''flog themselves when they goof up.''
An experienced hiker, Dahl lives in Winterport, Maine, where he retired from his dermatology practice eight years ago.
He set out to climb Mount Washington last year in part to test the effects of not eating carbohydrates before strenuous exercise.
His would-be partner backed out at the last minute, citing the weather. Forecasts that day correctly predicted 80 mile-per-hour winds and 20-degree temperatures. So Dahl climbed alone, continuing even as it rained and hikers coming down the mountain urged him to turn back, he said.
He says he had a plan: to descend via the Mount Washington Auto Road, which didn't work out when he misread a trail sign, missed the road, and became lost in a blizzard. He said he was also ''really surprised'' by the amount of snow and wind.
When Dahl became lost and could go no farther, he made his call, but misreported his location, according to Wilcox.
As a result of the error, it took rescuers much longer to reach him than expected.
Dahl notes that he wasn't totally unprepared: He did pack an aluminized bivouac sack and he used it. Worried about the two-hour delay and fearful that they might miss seeing him, Dahl poked a hole in the snow covering his bag and stuck his head out. A massive gust of wind filled his sack, ripped it off his body, and blew it down a ravine, leaving him to face the night in his hiking clothes.
Dahl's body temperature had sunk to 97 degrees by the time he was found about 100 yards from the auto road. The rescue team leader, Michael Pelchat, had decided to make one more 15-minute pass before calling the rescue off because his crew was suffering the effects of hypothermia and exhaustion.
Wilcox called it a ''threshhold rescue,'' in terms of whether to proceed, and said of Dahl, ''We were right on the edge of losing a guy.''
More than a year later, Dahl is often contrite, saying he is ''grateful to my rescuers.'' But he is angered by the charge, made by his rescuers last fall and repeated in interviews last week, that he used a cell phone instead of good sense to survive in dangerous conditions.
Wilcox, of Mountain Rescue Service, said he was concerned that Dahl's example would encourage people to pack a cell phone instead of taking proper precautions when hiking.
The incident, he said, ''was the fifth or sixth cell-phone rescue we had to deal with. Afterward, I always ask the people what they would have done if they hadn't had a cell phone. And they always say they would have come down earlier. I really think cell phones impair decision-making and give you a false sense of confidence.''
Dahl said such comments do not apply to him.
''I didn't know I had it with me,'' he said of the phone. ''So it didn't affect my judgment because I wasn't planning on using it. But it happened to be in my bag and, yes, it saved my life.''
He denies that he was reckless, preferring to emphasize his bad luck.
''I make no excuse for my bad judgment and bad luck,'' he said. ''Had I died on the mountain, would I have deserved it? Yes, I would have.''
Dahl said that he hopes the television special will save lives by encouraging people to take more precautions than he did.
And he says he hopes it will also encourage people to begin a spiritual journey that will enable them to live each day to its fullest and to love and forgive themselves.
Wilcox, who has climbed to the summit of Mount Everest, said that he finds Dahl's attitude since the rescue disturbing.
Dahl showed bad judgment ''and is wicked lucky to be alive,'' Wilcox said. ''He had no clue where he was on the mountain. This is the death zone of Mount Washington, and he was totally poorly equipped - no map, no compass, cotton pants. The bottom line is that it was 100 percent avoidable with a little common sense.''
Dahl said one reason he keeps retelling his story is religious. He calls himself a fundamentalist Christian and says that one of his grandfathers was a Norwegian-born Baptist minister who, according to family tradition, ''traced himself to John the Baptist.''
He also says that he went to a Bible camp in New Hampshire in the 1950s and, as he lay on the mountain awaiting his rescue or death, he wondered if he ''was going to die in the place where I was born again.''
Dahl said that, in his presentations, he recounts how, as he slipped toward death, he imagined encounters with the ''mountain guides'' who have enriched his life.
Dahl said that when he hears people in the audience crying as he speaks, he knows that, despite the humiliation, he has taken the right path.
This story ran on page B12 of the Boston Globe on 11/26/2000.
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of The Globe Online
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ernie Dahl got famous for all the wrong reasons.