Climbers rescued on Mount Hood.

[Midnight Son]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070219/ap_on_re_us/mount_hood_climbers_55

Three climbers stranded on Mount Hood after a fall were rescued from a snow cave Monday after spending the night amid ferocious winds and blowing snow.

"Their condition is very good at this time," Russell Gubele, coordinating communications for the rescue operation, told CNN.

"They were located in the area where their mountain locator units suggested that they were, and we finally got some of our rescuers down there to them," he said. "They are fine. They are being warmed up right now and fed by our rescuers."

The three well-equipped climbers, two women and a man, fell off a ledge Sunday.

Gubele said the three were not badly injured and could walk out of the area themselves.

"They're going to walk down," he said, adding that authorities hoped to pick them up with a rescue vehicle.
He said the three were found inside a snow cave, huddling with their dog Velvet.

They had sleeping bags and mats, he said, and were under some rocks, huddled up trying to keep warm.
Gubele said the climbers' mountain locator unit helped rescuers find their position and they stayed in contact because the climbers had a cell phone.

"We knew where they were," he said. "The weather was really bad. It was a matter of getting the teams down there to them, which we were finally able to do in these severe weather conditions and extreme avalanche conditions."

I think this would be a good time for one of my rants about idiots who go mountain climbing during "severe weather" and "extreme avalanche" conditions but why bother? Natural Selection will get 'em someday. It's just a matter of time.....

[Mandrel]

I think people who do this kind of thing should have to have accident insurance if they want to be rescued. I wonder if there's a site somewhere with a yearly breakdown of how much it costs taxpayers to rescue these dumbasses who repeatedly risk their lives in search of thrills.

[DennyA]

This is, what, the third incident on Mt. Hood this season?

People, climb the damn thing in July.

Idiots.

[Beach123456]

I think people who do this kind of thing should have to have accident insurance if they want to be rescued. I wonder if there's a site somewhere with a yearly breakdown of how much it costs taxpayers to rescue these dumbasses who repeatedly risk their lives in search of thrills.
So what youre saying is that they should check the insurance and just say fuck it if they dont have any?? Yeah, thats gonna go over REAL well. I dunno about you, but personally thrill seeking is alot more fun than sitting around.

[JPR]

Thrill-seeking is a lot more fun as long as you know there's a safety net of some kind if everything goes wrong. I don't think they're saying not to save them, I think they're saying that the government should sue them afterward and take 50% of every dollar they make until the rescue effort is paid for.

[shift6]

Government subsidies for XXXtreme sports. THE TIME HAS COME.

[Qenan]

No need for insurance, just send them the bill.

[SpoofyChop]

No need for insurance, just send them the bill.

Let's get pork barrel spending under control before we cut out the miniscule percentage of our taxes that go to save climbers. :P

[Alan Dunkin]

Frankly I think the negative reactions are a bit overboard. Sure they didn't leave much margin for error (the December climbers barely had any margin at all), not to mention the idea that they needed rescuing (well, potentially) because it was cold, but because they freakin' fell. This can happen any time of the year, not just February.

Many rescue teams and rescue operations are volunteer efforts. The people that are apart of these mountaineering crews are mountaineers themselves; they know that anything could go wrong at any time. They'd want people up there trying their damnedest to rescue them. That's what they do. They want to do it. If nobody was paying they'd still do it. So instead of tacitly trying to kill them off, why not give them some money?

Government organizations do rescues because in part it's great training. You get all sorts of weather, all sorts of conditions and injuries - it works well because it's the best kind of training there is, and when they need to pull their buddies out of crappy situations, they have the experience to pull it off. Yes it still costs money, so what?

Finally, despite everything, you're rescuing citizens from situations that they might have got into, but you can't make that differentiation or charge them money all the time (well, they do on Denali actually). If you go out in a boat and it sinks, does the Coast Guard worry that you got yourself into the situation and not try to rescue you (or charge you)? If you get caught in a raging river, or a snowstorm, or a landslide, or a sinkhole, or a burning building, or taken hostage by Shining Path, or stayed during Hurricane Katrina, that the local or federal governments are actually going to charge you for your rescue (which is not to say the ambulance service and hospitals won't, but that's a different bucket of fish)?

The difference is: you climbed a mountain. Big deal.

--- Alan

[Midnight Son]

The difference is: you climbed a mountain. Big deal.
--- Alan

When I skydive I don't expect someone to catch me at the bottom. I'm taking the risk and I don't whine about it. Shouldn't cost too much to scrape me off the ground. A major rescue effort on Mount Hood is a bit more expensive and going out there in a storm during avalanche conditions puts not just your own life but that of rescuers at risk. See the difference?

[Alan Dunkin]

No.

There is no difference.

If you skydive, your parachute opens and land in a tree on the side of a cliff, you'd want to be rescued. True, there are some activities you just can't be rescued from, like skydiving.

Many times it's not a question of wanting to be rescued or taking excessive risk (which I don't think this case was one of incredibly excessive risk), you may still wind up in that situation.

Hood volunteers are just that. Volunteers. They understand the dangers more than you do. Again, they do it because they want to. If they thought it was too dangerous, they wouldn't do it. That simple. Risk is a part of the job. You're not putting those rescuers at risk, the rescuers are putting themselves are risk for being a rescuer. Why would you want to be one otherwise? "I want to rescue somebody only when it's convenient to me." It doesn't quite work that way.

Just because it's more expensive means it should be abandoned completely? So, let's say that Coast Guard SAR open ocean missions are the 2nd most expensive. Well, they'll be first most. We should abandon those because they're the most expensive.

--- Alan

[Midnight Son]

I think we reward stupidity too much in this country.

[John Merva]

I think we reward stupidity too much in this country.

I don't think rescuing people is rewarding them for their stupidity.
I also think that letting them freeze to death is too harsh a punishment.

[RepoMan]

The climbers were volunteers. So are the rescuers. The climbers know there's no obligation for the rescuers to rescue them. The rescuers know they should abort if conditions are nonsurvivable.

That's why the other three climbers two months ago all died -- they got trapped in conditions from which rescue was impossible. These folks this week were luckier, and the rescuers felt like going for it, so they did.

[FIDGAF]

At least the Dog made it too.

[Midnight Son]

At least the Dog made it too.

The Dog was the hero!

[Bee]

I don't think rescuing people is rewarding them for their stupidity.
I also think that letting them freeze to death is too harsh a punishment.

Obviously you are a softy.

[Alan Dunkin]

The Dog was the hero!

Actually this seems to be very much the case, reading more into the story a bit more and watching the 17-minute press conference, the dog very much played a role and at some point led the combined group (clipped onto a rope); the dog actually made it out better than the other 3 who fell/slid 4-500 feet.

Apparently the idea had been to climb up with gear for supplies for 2 nights, camp on the mountain Saturday night and determine what the weather would be like on Sunday for the summit. They actually knew it was very possible bad weather would hamper them on Sunday so they could turn around easily if it got bad and they knew they didn't have a big threshold for error. He said they saw by Saturday night the weather was getting bad already when they made their planned snowcaves.

So apparently they weren't experienced mountain climbers but rock climbers, which is a bit different. Still, they had a plan, a turnaround, a failsafe and packed proper equipment, though the one dude admitted after saying they had experience in navigating in whiteouts that "we didn't think it was going to be that bad."

Also read an interesting article about the December climbers; the coroner determined by Kelly James (the guy they did find in the snow cave) didn't have any injuries. They had an ambitious climb (start at their cabin at 6000 feet, ascend via the north ridge, then descend the south ridge to Timberline in 12-14 hours). The day they started weather reports had predicted the weather would deteriorate late that day, and had been forecast up to a week ahead of time.

Photographs recovered from a camera found on James indicated they had either started on their route late or were lagging a bit, perhaps around 2 hours. Apparently they realized at some point they couldn't make the summit and back down by sunset (4:27PM) so instead of turning around, they cached the bulk of their gear and went extremely light. One photo around that point showed James only carrying a daypack and when his body was found, he had no sleeping back, bivvy sack or down jacket. Another photo shows the climbers ascending in late afternoon with heavy clouds rolling in, and a rescue worker, inspecting the route a week later, uncovered a layer of ice and believed they may have got caught in rain.

Where they might have been caught out in the open in near-freezing rainstorm, it would be more dangerous to go down then up, so they went up, managed to summit, then descended the east face to get out of the wind and build a snow cave (big enough for all three). It was only some 40 hours after the storm had hit that James had called his wife but sounded extremely confused, and probably froze soon thereafter. Rescuers saw that some few hundred feet below the summit a ledge had been hacked out of the snow and ice, big enough for 2 people, and on it sat 2 ice tools, half a foam pad and some roap (a climbing anchor was spotted by helicopter nearby). There was also another set of tracks that led off of the summit in a totally different direction, an icy chute that suddenly drops into a glacier 2500 feet below.

--- Alan

[John Merva]

Obviously you are a softy.

I guess so.
More a survival of the fittest man are you?