Outdoor Incidents

Here you can post stories or information about outdoor/wilderness incidents. SAR missions, lost people, crimes committed back of beyond, and of course, the good news about people being found, rescued, or getting out by themselves.

A lot can be learned by reading what has happened to others. Maybe it will help someone else right here!

Please reserve this space for reporting only. Opinions and discussions can be posted elsewhere.

Thanks for reading!

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Cell Phone Helps Rescue Lost Snowmobilers
December 31st, 2005 @ 5:24pm
(KSL News) -- A cell phone came in handy during a search for four missing snowmobilers this morning, in the mountains above Heber City.

The search began yesterday after one of the men called to report the group was lost. The extreme weather conditions forced Wasatch County Sherriffs Office to temporarily call off the search late last night, but it resumed again this morning.

Help came around 9:00 when the snowmobilers called back saying they realized their cell phone also had a GPS unit. That provided Search and Rescue crews with the exact coordinates.

Lt. Ron Hazard, Wasatch County Search and Rescue: "They did everything right, especially staying put."

During the night, the men say they dug a snow shelter and even built a fire. Aside from being a little cold and hungry, all four men were fine.

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Men accidentally triggered deadly slide, report says
By Ben Winslow
Deseret Morning News
Published: January 7, 2008

Two friends of a man who died in a New Year's Eve avalanche likely triggered the deadly slide by accident when they tried to help him.
That's according to a preliminary report by the Utah Avalanche Center on the slide near the western Uinta's Co-op Creek that killed Dale Christensen.

"Details are still being sifted through, but what we know is this — at approximately 3:00, three experienced snowmobilers were riding in the area when one rider, Dale Christensen, started approaching the lower section of the slope and his sled quit running," the report said. "Two of his friends rode up to help and most likely triggered the avalanche."

The report said the two friends were partially buried in the slide. Christensen, 40, was buried about 3 feet deep in an area where debris piled up quickly.

"No one was wearing avalanche beacons, but several probes and shovels were among the group. An organized outside rescue found the buried rider about an hour later," the report said.

Crews tried to revive Christensen using CPR. He was flown by medical helicopter to a Provo-area hospital where he was pronounced dead. His was the third avalanche-related death this winter. On Christmas Day, a 53-year-old Oakley snowmobiler died near Windy Peak. On Dec. 23, a Colorado man was killed at The Canyons ski resort near Park City. That same slide nearly killed a boy.

The Utah Avalanche Center categorized avalanche danger in the Logan area and the western Uinta mountains as high on Sunday. The mountains around Ogden, Salt Lake City, Provo, Manti and Moab were all listed as considerably dangerous.

Backcountry enthusiasts are urged to check for updated avalanche conditions on the Web site utahavalanchecenter.com.

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HELENA, Mont. — Authorities in northwestern Montana have been unable to confirm reports that two other skiers were buried in a deadly avalanche near Whitefish Mountain Resort and are reassessing Wednesday whether the search should resume.
A storm Monday night and Tuesday dropped between 8 and 14 inches of new snow in the area where two backcountry skiers where killed over the weekend.

"Just the wind makes me real hesitant to get somebody else up there," Undersheriff Pete Wingert said Wednesday. "It's risky business for sure, so we need something in addition to just scene safety.

"We're looking for some more information, re-interviewing witnesses, that kind of thing," he said.

Authorities said they have contacted every motel, condominium rental agency, bed and breakfast, dude ranch, winter sport equipment rental agency, car rental agency, taxi company and shuttle bus company in Flathead County hoping to find out if anyone on vacation or without a car might be missing.

Two snowmobilers who witnessed Sunday's avalanche are adamant that two other skiers were caught up in the snow slide, according to authorities.

On Wednesday, avalanche experts were evaluating the route to the avalanche site, a 14-mile ride by snowmobile that crosses several potential slide areas.

About 20 searchers looked for about four hours Tuesday afternoon — after groomers scraped 5 to 7 feet of snow from the search area — but found nothing, Wingert said.

The search has been taking place on Fiberglass Hill, a popular area on a ridge near the Whitefish resort. Officials have not said what triggered the slide that killed Anthony Kollmann, 19, of Kalispell and David Gogolak, 36, of Whitefish.

Kollmann's family said he was an avid skier while Gogolak had spent several years in the restaurant business in San Francisco and had recently moved to Whitefish. Gogolak was skiing with his brother-in-law, who survived the avalanche, authorities said.

Gogolak's father is former NFL kicker Peter Gogolak, who played for the Buffalo Bills of the American Football League in 1964 and 1965 and for the New York Giants of the NFL from 1966-74. He was the first "soccer-style" kicker in professional football and is the Giants' all-time leading scorer with 646 points, according to the team's website.

Avalanches have killed at least 21 people across the West since Dec. 2, according to the National Avalanche Center. The national annual average for avalanche deaths is about 25. Thirty-five people were killed nationwide in avalanches in the 2001-2002 season, the most on record, according to the U.S. Forest Service.

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this seems like a bad idea to me.

you are gonna have people freaked out (even more than they currently are) and why devote a string to dwell on the negative.

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"paranoia strikes deep
into your heart it will creep
it starts when you're always afraid"
(For What it's Worth, Buffalo Springfield)

Ed G - I agree - while there have been a number of bad (tragic) incidents this year, I think that we should focus on the positive.
Things like keeping an eye out for each other while in the backcountry, learning to read terrain and avoid avalanche and other potential dangers where possible and plan our trips so the odds of something going wrong are at a minimum.

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This section is not meant to create undue fear. It is meant to make people aware that things happen out there - because they do. Ignorance is bliss...(but it'll kill ya if ya aint careful!)

When there are success stories to report, they have a place here to.

I started this topic to open new avenues for discussion. Perhaps allowing the many VERY experienced members of this forum to share their wealth of knowledge to educate the inexperienced about how to avoid some of the not-so-good things that are reported.

I hope you will offer your expertise.

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1/08 Skiers found Safe!

Three skiers from California are safe after spending a late night lost in the Utah mountains.

Search and rescue crews were called out to the Powder Mountain ski area just after 9 p.m. Monday night when the group hadn't contacted a friend.

Ski patrol searched areas of the mountain where skiers commonly get lost and found the group at midnight.

Police say the skiers got stuck in a canyon and became disoriented.

THEY MADE A SNOW CAVE AND WERE PLANNING TO STAY THE NIGHT.

Rescue teams went in to help walk the skiers out.

No one was injured.

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Great news. Sounds like the skiers did it right: somebody knew where they had gone and when to expect them back, and once they knew they were lost they stayed put and sought shelter from the elements.

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Maybe they read it here!!! Wouldn't THAT be a feather in our collective Trailspace.com cap?!

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January 22, 2008

A CANADIAN man survived 96 hours pinned under his quadbike in the Rocky Mountains by eating rotting animal carcasses, drinking melted snow and thinking of his grandchildren.

Ken Hildebrand was trapped face down for four days and three nights in the Crowsnest Pass area of southwestern Alberta, where he tried numerous ways to free himself in below-freezing temperatures.

Throughout the ordeal, he kept wolves and coyotes away by blowing on an emergency whistle.
"I thought of my family and God and that was it," Mr Hildebrand, a paramedic, said from his hospital bed in Lethbridge, Alberta.

He was finally rescued from the wreck on a little-used trail in the foothills by hikers.

Mr Hildebrand, who declined to give his age, was taken to a hospital in the Crowsnest Pass then transferred to Lethbridge, where he has spent the past eight days being treated for leg injuries and frostbite.

He said he was checking animal traps on January 8 in an area about 130km southwest of Calgary, where ranchers had complained of wolves preying on livestock.

The quadbike hit a rock, throwing him off and falling on his legs.

He tried into the night to pry the bike off with an axe to no avail. He also attempted to lift it up by pounding animal bones into the ground, but his awkward position made that impossible too.

"So I'm in survival mode now," he said. "I had to use what I had at my disposal."

He stayed alive by eating the animals he had collected, although the rotting flesh made him sick, the Calgary Sun newspaper reported.

A hospital official said Mr Hildebrand's injuries were not life-threatening, but the newspaper, quoting an Emergency Medical Services official, said one leg that was pinned might have to be amputated.

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3:16 p.m. January 26, 2008

LOS ANGELES – As a fierce storm barreled toward Southern California on Saturday, searchers found the body of a third avalanche victim and rescued a missing snowboarder who survived a frigid night in the San Gabriel Mountains.
Taking advantage of a lull in a week of storms, searchers combed the area near the Mountain High ski resort in Wrightwood. The body discovered Saturday morning was one of two people reported missing Friday after a trio of avalanches swept off-trail canyons. His identity was not immediately released.

The missing snowboarder was found also on Saturday after spending the night on the mountain. Officials were “confident that there's no one else that's been missing” and called off search efforts, said Los Angeles County sheriff's deputy Luis Castro.

Oscar Gonzales Jr., 24, of Westminster, told the Riverside Press-Enterprise that he got lost when he left the marked ski trails at the resort.

“I made the wrong decision about going out of bounds,” Gonzales said. “I hit a rock.”

Gonzales said he was not hurt but he walked at least 13 miles overnight to keep warm, thinking of his 5½-year-old daughter, Jaden Ann.

“I didn't think about anything else,” Gonzales said. “I couldn't stand leaving my daughter.”

Gonzales told the newspaper that he eventually found an old airplane fuselage and slept there until about 4:30 a.m., when he went to an open field and waited until he was rescued by a sheriff's helicopter.

The avalanches a day earlier killed Michael McKay, 23, an off-duty member of the resort's ski patrol, and Darin Bodie Coffey, 31, both of Wrightwood.

Both were skiing out of the resort boundaries.

Eric Coffey told KNBC-TV that his brother was skiing with two friends.

One friend was on top of the slope and “he yelled avalanche,” Coffey said.

The other friend turned around.

“He got buried, and then he popped out,” Coffey said. “My brother just got buried.”

Coffey's roommate declined to comment when reached by phone but said that the skier's friends planned to gather Saturday night at pub near the resort.

Avalanches are unusual in the San Gabriel Mountains, authorities said, but so was the 3 feet or more of new snow that hit the region in a matter of days this week.

Avalanches are “a freak occurrence” in the local mountains, said Pete Olson, president of Mt. Baldy Ski Resorts.

“We depend on snow-making, and snow-making doesn't lead to avalanches,” Olson said. “It usually doesn't snow enough to make anything happen up here.”

The tragedies didn't keep skiers and snowboarders from swarming to the resort 80 miles east of downtown Los Angeles.

About 6,000 people jammed the slopes Saturday, officials said.

Meanwhile, large swaths of California braced for another bout of heavy rain. Flash flood watches were in effect through Sunday evening because of thunderstorms, possible hail and winds gusting as high as 50 mph.

National Weather Service meteorologist Richard Thompson said up to 8 inches of rain would fall in the hills outside Los Angeles starting Saturday evening and area ski resorts could be pounded by as much as 3 feet of powder.

“There's going to be very significant impacts,” Thompson said. “Debris and mudflows will be a great concern.”

Several storms have been squeezing rain onto Southern California since Monday. Some areas have received more moisture in that time than during the entire rainy season last year.

In the mountain resort town of Lake Arrowhead, crews struggled to restore power to more than 2,000 customers who had been in the dark for two days after an earlier storm knocked down power lines.

In Orange County, residents of five canyons that were denuded by wildfires last year were urged to follow a voluntary evacuation order because of the risk of mudslides.

Canyon residents have received similar orders several times in recent months as winter storms came through, but few have heeded the request.

“Our fear is that people will become numb to these notices and look at us like the boy who cried wolf,” Capt. Mike Blawn of the Orange County Fire Authority said. “But what we want them to remember is that in the end, the wolf came.”

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Sorry, I don't have a date on this - it's recent though - may be it's in the german text!

German Family Rescued After Using Light from Cell Phone

A family of four and a dog were rescued after getting lost in darkness while hiking in the snow near Immenstadt , Germany . After calling for help from the Bergrettung (Mountain Rescue), they were told to point their cell phone display light to the sky. The rescue helicopter crew spotted the tiny light (using night vision glasses) from a distance of 2 kilometers away, and were able to rescue the family which was stranded at 1000 meters above the valley.

For those who read German, the full story can be found at:

http://www.dcrs-online.com/news/nachtsichtgeraet-entdeckt-familie-in-bergnot/00002870.html

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Quote:

German Family Rescued After Using Light from Cell Phone

Interesting. I find myself not carrying my cell phone in the Sierra, because it doesn't get service there anyway. Maybe this is a new reason to carry that extra 3oz...

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A flashlight probably would have served the same purpose, but my guess is that they didn't have one. The cell phone was a priority though. A sign of the times, don't you think!?

As for the Sierra, Take the phone. Even if there is no signal, turning a phone off and on may ping - a signal that can be tracked by the carrier, and trangulated via satellite.

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Over this last weekend, two skiers disappeared near (or in) Alpine Meadows ski resort (Tahoe north, next to Squaw). They have been found. However the news reports are more than a little confusing and contradictory. On Sunday, when they had been missing overnight, the media were reporting that these 2 "very experienced backcountry skiers" had chosen to depart on a backcountry ski tour, leaving from Alpine Meadows (several people were quoted as stating this). They were out for 2 nights, and were found by a helicopter on Monday. The search had been started on Sunday, mostly with foot searchers. The report that first appeared in the media on Monday morning was that they were found about a mile from the resort. The local sheriff was reported as seriously considering charging the skiers for the costs of the search, which included lots of helicopter time (county sheriff's office is in charge of S&R in California in most areas outside National Parks). By last night's TV news reports, they were found seven miles from the resort. In the interview shown on several stations and quoted in the newspaper, the skiers stated that they had accidentally strayed beyond the resort boundary, and that if there were any area boundary signs, they were unable to see them because of the blowing snow (there was a major storm in the area Friday through Sunday evening, with some short clearing spells).

So which is it - intentional backcountry excursion or accidental passage of the area boundary in time of low visibility (calls for the question of whether the resort should have shut down under such conditions)? And, which is it - they were found about a mile from the ski area, or seven miles (a bit of difference, there)? Happily, they were safe, having had some food along and fairly warm clothing for the conditions (apparently some minor frostbite was the extent of their physical injuries).

This highlights a major problem with relying on media reports to understand and discuss outdoor incidents - the media, largely through having reporters inexperienced in and unfamiliar with backpacking, hiking, skiing, climbing and other backcountry activities, misreports the incomplete information they have available.

Regardless, though, this has been a tough winter, with lots of avalanches and lost backcountry travellers. As I write, there are 3 snowboarders missing in the Yosemite backcountry. Apparently, they were dropped off to slide to some destination yesterday, but never appeared at the rendezvous point. A search is underway.

Be careful out there!

EDIT - the snowboarders were found near the Merced River and helicoptered out this afternoon.

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At least one hiker I know of was found in the local hills by a helo and night vision goggles that picked up the light from his phone.

As far as the Alpine Meadows incident, this link should take you to several stories on the SFGAte website.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/qws/ff/qr?term=alpine+meadows&Submit=S&sa=Search&st=s
In the latest story, the two say they went the wrong way in a whiteout and then skied/walked about 7 miles, spending two nights in snow caves they made. It sounds like they just got off the lift and didn't really know where they were, but took a chance they were headed in the right direction in whiteout conditions.

They had no b/c gear,such as a shovel and no GPS. This implies no map or compass either-they were going the wrong way from where they thought they were headed.

They were lucky; I think one can reasonably presume if the storm hadn't let up, rescue would have been more problematical.

I think the lesson here is that if you are unsure of where you are going, don't go there.

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How about when the general media (not specialty outdoors ones) inevitably describes a victim as an "experienced" hiker or climber or skier or whatnot? In most cases they give no evidence one way or another and often don’t differentiate between hiking, climbing, mountaineering, and so on. They simply quote a spouse or friend who says the person is/was “experienced.”

I can’t help but wonder about the person’s background and experience level, as well as other factors. Does an “experienced mountain climber” mean they occasionally hike mountains in summer, or that they have experience climbing Himalayan peaks?

Last month a man the Boston Globe described as an “experienced climber” died in an avalanche on Mount Washington while climbing Odell’s Gully in Huntington Ravine.

In the article, the wife described his death as “a freak accident” and said her husband did not take excessive risks. But, the avalanche danger was rated as high that day, meaning natural or human-triggered avalanches were likely, and there had been significant new snowfall.

I feel for the man and his wife and family. It was a very sad and unfortunate event, but hardly a freak accident.

Obviously you don’t want to criticize the victim. I think it can be too easy to second guess other people's decisions. But hopefully others can learn from and not repeat the same mistakes.

If you’re interested the article is here: http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2008/01/21/experienced_climber_dies_on_mount_washington/?p1=Well_MostPop_Emailed4

I have a friend who is a very experienced whitewater paddler. He’s been paddling for decades and has done many long paddling expeditions. He’s joked to me that he and his paddling buddies have promised to say of each other, “he was very experienced” should anything ever go wrong. In his case, it would be true.

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Feb. 7, 2008
Lets hear it for survival TV!

CEDAR CITY, Utah (ABC 4 News) - Tom and Tamitha Garner, who have been missing for more than a week from a trip from Nevada to Utah, have been found alive and well near Modena Canyon in southern Utah.

Thomas and Tamitha Garner vanished more than a week ago during a weekend road trip to photograph wild horses. Searches of the backcountry and mountains in southwestern Utah and eastern Nevada have revealed no sign of the couple. They were last seen in Panaca, Nev.

The couple also had their dog with them. Iron County Sheriff Mark Gower told ABC 4 News the dog was also in good condition.

The Garner's family had an emotional response in Kearns Wednesday evening when they received news of the rescue.

Leroy Davenport, a man who was involved in the search for the Garners, died last week after going home and feeling sick. Members of the Garner's family expressed their condolences to Davenport's family on Wednesday.

Tamitha's brother Jack Retallick told ABC 4 News the couple was found near Highway 56 near Modena Canyon by a county road worker on Wednesday. The Couple was taken to a Cedar City hospital.

Sheriff Gower told ABC 4 News the couple became stuck in the snow and after several days decided to hike out of the area, which had been hit by several snow storms.

Gower says the couple was suffering from hypothermia, dehydration and frostbite, but was otherwise in good health.

At a press conference held Wednesday night in Cedar City, Tom and Tamitha told members of the media they used skills they learned from survival television shows to keep as warm and dry as they could.

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Man falls 500 fet into strip mine!

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/mine_fall;_ylt=ApxDwthmPnThoWUqOBbpcwBsaMYA

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This regards a newspaper article as reported in the Times Colonist newspaper Apr 24, 2008.
Apr 22 08 A grade 11 youth from Langley, BC slipped off a log at 2pm just east of Sombrio Beach, on the Juan de Fuca Marine Trail.
He is one of 70 students taking part in a program that incorporates Grade 11 English, Social Studies, and Biology in wilderness excursions.
He was injured as he tumbled down an embankment. He suffered a concussion, and some bumps and bruises. At 230pm a call went out to Juan de Fuca Search and Rescue members. About 45 volunteers including paramedics, doctors and nurses converged on the trail and made the three hour hike-in, carrying a stretcher, ropes and equipment.
When the rescuers arrived at 530pm a teacher versed in wilderness first aid was tending the youth. It took four hours to pack the youth along 1.5 kilometers (just shy of 1 mile) of trail blocked by blowdown trees and other hazards. The ambulance ride would take about an hour or more so hospital treatment would not have started until around 10:30pm. The search and rescue people did not get home until after midnight.

After reading this I could not help but to think what could happen if this had been a group of minimalist hikers who brag about how light their back packs weight. Could they survive an incident like this? Keep in mind that this is a coastal hiking trail (read lots of up and down) subject to weather events that may affect trail passage, such as blowdowns, slides, ect. His accident occurred about half way along the trail and equal distance between the two nearest communities.
For those who don’t know about this trail it runs between Jordan River to Port Renfrew. It follows 47Km of wilderness along the western shoreline of Vancouver Island. Some people use this trail as a warm up before the West Coast Trail, others use it to cool down from the West Coast Trail. For some it’s just a fun trail.

I also thought gee the youth would be in “some discomfort” for about 8-10 hours. I guess that this is my point when venturing out we must be prepared to remain outdoors for an extended time period. It may or may not be us that needs the help. First response may not end the trial, but merely the beginning of recovery. Also that the help received probably is not paid help but by volunteers.

How bout a great big cheer for the JDF Search and Rescue group who stopped their day, put aside their time with family and friends to help out this injured youth.

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Quote:

How bout a great big cheer for the JDF Search and Rescue group who stopped their day, put aside their time with family and friends to help out this injured youth.

Hip hip!...

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Hooray!

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In November of 2003 Carl Skalak was canoing in the Five Ponds Wilderness area of the Adirondack Park when a freak snow storm stranded him. He had a personal locator beacon and he was the first person to be rescued via a PLB in the lower 48 states. NOAA was very proud of theis rescue and still has a glowing write up about on the NOA website at:

http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories2003/s2124.htm

Unfortunately for Carl Skalark he went back to retrieve his gear that December. When he got to the place his gear was gone. He again became stranded beacuse of a snowstorm. He again used his PLB to be rescued by a helicopter from Fort Drum. But you won't read about the second rescue at the NOAA site because this time Carl Skalark was arrested and charged with two counts of 3rd degree falsely reporting and incident. He spent the night in jail awaiting arrangments to pay his $10,000 bail. The NY DEC felt that he had used the PLB unnecessarily on both occassions and was not in a life threatening situation at either time.

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Regarding the incidents on the San Juan Trail and aslo near Crowsnest Pass in B.C./AB, I am very familiar with both of these locales and would point out that the conditions of great difficulty described are in two of the most ACCESSIBLE, POPULATED parts of B.C.

There were certain opinions offered here concerning the dangers of B.C. wilderness trekking that directly contradicted and challenged my strong advice concerning how to travel safely in this part of Canada. Note that while that poster is gone, some of his "advice" is still on this site; read what it is REALLY like in our most popular hiking/camping areas and realize that people here die regularly in these areas.

In the rest of B.C., if you do go missing, you are almost NEVER found, due to climate, topography, lack of rescue facilities and the very remoteness of much of this province. SO, for your own sake, CARRY SURVIVAL GEAR, know how to use it and LISTEN to those of us who have spent decades living in the wilderness here as we may actually know whereof we speak. This is NOT sunny southern US, it is cold, wet, very rugged and even real pros go missing here every year.

That kid and the chap in the Crowsnest are LUCKY, usually incidents like these end with death and I have seen this many times. I will cancel a trip during the winter here after a certain level of avalanche danger is reached, toom many friends and colleagues have died because they took that last bit of risk to ski one more day........

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Most people living in urban areas these days have the idea that dialing 911 will get the paramedics and rescue professionals to them within 5 minutes. That is the time often quoted in news stories and the standard first aid and CPR classes. They also believe that a "walk in the park" is easy and safe. Here are some facts about the SFBay Area, which has a population of a few million with many parks and open space preserves. To emphasize, this is a major urban area in a populous state. I have seen similar situations in a number of other states.

1. In most of the MidPeninsula Open Space Reserves, East Bay Regional Parks, dozen or so State Parks, Santa Clara County Parks, San Mateo County Parks, etc., there is no cell phone contact available in well over half of the park. It is necessary to travel in some cases an hour or more on foot (somewhat shorter on mountain bike or horseback) to get to cell coverage or one of the increasingly rare pay phones. In parks like Henry Coe, it may take 3 or 4 hours to get in contact. Thanks to budgetary cutbacks, there are one or no rangers on duty in most of the parks, so no one to contact in person.

2. Once contact with an emergency group is made (911, sheriff, police, fire, park ranger HQ), the nearest EMT or paramedic is often 30 min or more away from the nearest trailhead by winding, narrow road. Once at the trailhead, there may or may not be a road traversable by 4WD to get to within a mile of the incident area. Keep in mind that helicopter access must be authorized by a designated, on-scene authority (sheriff's department for most of California), which requires still more time.

3. We have had numerous incidents (at least one a year) where someone disappeared, and their body found a year or more later, in parks that are very popular. In one park that I hike at least twice a week, there have been two such incidents in the past 10 years. In one case, the person hiked the trail several times a month. He was a diabetic and apparently went into a diabetic coma. His body was found in brush about 100 meters off the trail. The other was an apparently healthy runner who ran another of the very popular trails on an almost daily basis. In a case similar to the famous Jim Fixx, he apparently had a heart condition. Again, his body was found months later a few hundred meters off trail. Both of these were health conditions, but other incidents in the Bay Area involved people making intentional off-trail excursions, some of which involved either encountering "herbal farmers" or some of the "farmers" themselves (One of our state Parks, Big Basin Redwoods, is currently closed to any off-trail excursions because of the "farming" situation).

In other words, the incidents have involved health problems, illegal agricultural activity, off-trail excursions where the person apparently got disoriented and suffered a disabling injury (panic at being lost?), a couple cases of suicide, and various other factors.

The point here is that apparent proximity to emergency services is no reason for complacency or hubris. At the same time, many of the continuing incidents involve people with no training or awareness that they are in a wilderness situation (gee, I am within 10 miles of my house and there is a Mickey Dee within 2 miles of the trailhead). Although we do have and see mountain lion and rattlesnakes (the most dangerous of the local wildlife), few of the incidents involve them (the closest in the past 20 years was a woman near Sacramento, about 80 miles from here, who apparently had found a lion den with a couple kits, and was visiting it to observe the kits - momma lion didn't take kindly to the visits). There are lots of other animals which could do harm (coyote, bobcat) and lots of very steep terrain (we see people falling down cliffs on a weekly basis), as well as coastal waters with high waves that sweep people away on a regular basis.

Despite kutenay's advice (among others) to carry survival gear, gear would have not helped in some of these incidents (the heart attacks, diabetic coma, encounters with the pot growers and meth labs). As for staying out overnight, we do, after all, have very pleasant weather year around, so you aren't going to die of hypothermia. But people do go out with woefully inadequate water supplies (I regularly encounter people on our hotter days, 5 or more miles out with just a 1 pint bottled water container - hey, there are no drinking fountains out there, folks). Even in an urban area, we have lots of extremely remote areas with great difficulty of access for emergency services.

The main problem is simply ignorance on the part of many park visitors.

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I like to remember the Scout Motto, I think it says it all, all the time.

“BE PREPARED”

Prepared for what?

Everything.

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