After being battered by 70 mph winds, blinded by whipping snow and nearly frozen in temperatures that plunged to 20 below zero and beyond, Kate Matrosova must have realized early on she had no hope of completing her solo climb of four of New England’s highest peaks, and instead shifted to survival mode.

The 32-year-old New York woman was less than halfway into her planned hike on Feb. 15, only reaching a barren expanse between 5,367-ft. Mount Madison and 5,774-ft. Mount Adams in New Hampshire’s Presidential Range by mid-afternoon, with even more formidable summits ahead: 5,712-ft. Mount Jefferson, and 6,288-ft. Mount Washington, notorious for having what many call “the worst weather in the world.”

Somewhere in that desolate, gelid zone above tree line, The Boston Globe reported, Matrosova pushed the button on a personal locator beacon, which triggered an alert at Tyndall Air Force Base in Panama City, Fla., where emergency satellite signals from all such devices are monitored. Operators in Florida then called phone numbers registered with the beacon, including the cellphone of Matrosova’s husband, Charlie Farhoodi, who had dropped his wife off at the head of the Valley Way Trail in Gorham at 5 that morning and who planned to pick her up at 6 p.m. near the Cog Railway parking lot at the base of the Ammonoosuc Ravine.

Farhoodi then called 911, launching a perilous rescue mission that experienced climbers, led astray by erratic emergency signals, were forced to abandon late into the night after hours of slogging through waist-high drifts because conditions had become so hellacious.

“It was cold — one of the coldest nights of the year — and the wind was howling,” Max Lurie, who responded to a Mountain Rescue Service call and began his ascent around 10:30 p.m., told The Globe. “I don’t go up there when there are conditions like that. My first thought was that it was really inappropriate for anybody to be up there.”

Sgt. Mark Ober, a member of the New Hampshire Fish and Game’s Advance Search and Rescue Team who received Farhoodi’s 911 call, agreed.

“Nobody attempts that at this time of year, in those conditions. Certainly (not) alone.”

The weather was even more wretched, with 140 mph gusts and 30-below temperatures, when rescuers resumed their search the next day, when they eventually located a huddled figure far off the Star Lake Trail. It was Matrosova. They weren’t sure if she had lost her way or been blown off course, but that didn’t really matter. Matrosova was dead.

Her death is tragic on two levels. Her Facebook photos showed a vibrant, vivacious young woman, happily hiking in the mountains, spontaneously jumping for joy, embracing a husband — now widower — and it’s hard to reconcile those images with the horrid, dismal end to her life.

It’s also difficult to comprehend how someone could have acted so rashly by putting not only her own life in danger but the lives of those who valiantly tried to rescue her.

As one who has long embraced the majesty of the Whites in winter I’ve tramped over the same trails, but never would venture solo in such unforgiving conditions. I’ve also turned back, or not set out in the first place on more than one occasion.

In addition I have misgivings about cellphones and emergency locator beacons because they imbue a false sense of security. As Matrosova’s disaster illustrates, when conditions are really atrocious you can’t expect even the best rescue teams on the planet to bail you out.

Her locator beacon also was rated only to 20 below zero, so in all likelihood the lower temperatures produced errant signals that led rescuers astray.

While we mourn a young woman whose passion for adventure clouded her judgment, we must remind ourselves that it is possible to possess that same spirit without becoming possessed.

Adventure must be a celebration of life, not an invitation to death.