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Subject: Beating dead climbers
Sorry Bart,
You're wrong on this one.
I've climbed for 40 years, regularly use a GPS,
and have carried sat phones
on remote climbs and treks. Nothing's a magic
bullet. And every time someone
is involved in a search or rescue, the sideline
benchwarmers all point to some
tech toy they think will solve the problem once
and for all.
I didn't mean to act like Mr. Know-It-All - because
I don't climb.
If they took every precaution but then
terribly bad luck hit, that's not crazy.
Yeah, these guys climbed into a bad weather forecast,
Well, pardon my ignorance, but wasn't that stupid?
Isn't that like crossing the street on a red
light because you don't want to wait?
...but ALL rescuers are volunteer climbers themselves,
who do it for the same reason
that climbers climb: adventure.
Rescue teams move in large groups, and rarely expose
themselves to any significant risk.
That's confusing. Weather is bad for the
original group, but the rescue group
is not
taking a significant risk to help them get off the mountain?
Nobody is on that mountain who doesn't want to
be, and that includes the chopper pilots
from the 304th rescue squadron, a national guard
unit out of Washington. Mountain flying
is their biggest wet dream. Sheriff and national
guard personnel are in support duties only,
coordinating the operations center. On the mountain,
it's climbers helping climbers, for free.
Hmmm, this may be like a soldiers-in-battle thing
that's hard to understand unless you've been there.
As to GPS.
For all most of us know, these guys had one.
Rescuers knew where they were.
Hell, the victims probably knew exactly where
they were, but that didn't matter.
Just because you're not lost doesn't mean you
can get where you want to go.
There are things like cliffs, weather, crevasses,
or avalanche danger.
...but you said rescuers rarely exposed themselves
to significant risk.
You and I might disagree on the meaning of the
word, "significant."
Yeah, they made mistakes, but they've paid the bill in full, thanx.
If you mean the climbers paid with their lives
- isn't that crazy?
There are vastly different degrees of risk.
Driving your car is a risk - driving your car
drunk is crazy.
To a civilian, it seems like those men, in effect,
drove drunk
I'm not trying to be a smart ass, I'm asking for an explanation.
Are you a Star Trek, Next Generation
fan?
They had a Holodeck on the ship for recreation.
You could put in coordinates for dates and
places and create a situation.
Worf, the Warrior, used to program the Holodeck
to put him in battle with 4-5
fierce warrior competitors and, just for grins,
he would disable the "Safety function"
to enable the cartoon enemies to actually
be able to kill him.
He did this to add risk, to heighten the tension
and to pump the adrenallin.
But isn't that crazy?
To me, it seems as though they disabled their
safety function. If some daredevils want
to climb Mt. Hood in December - why don't his
rescuers don't hold that against them?
And the only taxpayers who footed any bill live
within the county, paying for sheriff expense,
which means maybe the cops won't get to buy a
new fleet of F350s this year.
Frankly, you could have national guard choppers
evacuate every rescue victim
in America AND give them a limo ride home with
a well-stocked bar, for the
money the national guard spends in Iraq every
week.
Too bad New Orleans couldn't borrow some of those
choppers after Katrina :)
FYI, the most common cause of rescue call-outs,
even backcountry rescue call-outs,
are alzheimer's patients, 'despondents' (suicides),
and more mundane stuff like hunters,
snowmobilers, and powerboaters. Hiking and technical
climbing rescues are relatively rare.
One of the reasons people think climbing is soooooo
dangerous is that they, the public,
WANT climbing to be dangerous and foolhardy.
That way they have some drama in their lives,
if only as spectators, and they get to feel superior
to those 'stupid people.'
I'll bet you've been on a climb with some handjob,
hot-dog bonehead who thought he was
Superman and you kept an extra eye on that guy
just to protect your group - am I right?
Wouldn't he say the same things to you that you're
saying to me?
That there's nothing wrong with a little risk,
a little excitement?
That's because most Americans are fat, lazy, protected sofa surfers - basically domesticated livestock.
But why can't the thin, energetic guys climb Mt.
Hood in non-blizzard months?
What I'm hearing is that people should consider
fewer safety measures, as tho safety is a bad thing.
They need a straw man to whip, but they also love
to hang on every little development in a search like this.
It's like watching football, or gator wrestling:
vicarious adventure, drama without effort.
Sincerely,
Johnny Utah
Johnny, maybe some of us were born to be The Flying Wallendas,
...and some of us were not.
Thanks for the insight.
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it on The Bartcop Forum
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