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[at-l] Cell Phones -- Perception



At 02:57 PM 1/17/2005 -0500, RoksnRoots@aol.com wrote:
>In a message dated 1/17/2005 2:48:06 PM Eastern Standard Time,
>jbullar1@twcny.rr.com writes:
>*
>The world changes. That's life.
>*
>
>          The heck with AT wildness or organized protection of it in other
>words...

Let me see if I understand this ... Our National Park system is under 
funded, the administration is opening up virtually all of the national 
forests to logging and mining, air quality standards are being made 
voluntary and you are worrying that if hikers carry cell phones and use 
them to call home or call for help when they get in trouble, it will 
diminish the trail experience. Get a grip dude.

No one on this list nor even the entire list collectively, is in any 
position to roll back the popularity of cell phones. If that is your goal, 
you missed the boat. That tsunami is already miles inland. If your goal is 
to ban them from the trail, how do you propose to enforce it? Do you really 
think there is money for cell phone police at every trailhead? The *only* 
power/influence we have individually is to influence whether cell towers 
get built on trail lands and talking to us on AT-L won't do it. You need to 
address those comments to the appropriate politicians and regulatory agencies.

Phones on the trail BTW aren't the force driving the building of towers. In 
fact they are an extremely tiny factor. They are far too few to be an 
economically viable market. The real force driving it is communities on 
this side of the mountain wanting to phone people on that side of the 
mountain or in the next community down the valley. We have one of those 
battles going on in the Adirondacks right now. A county wants to build 
radio towers on a pristine peak for their emergency  communications system. 
That sounds worthy but... the reviewers in the Adirondack Park Agency 
(which has the 'Dacks equivalent of zoning authority) says they are 
ignoring better and less intrusive alternatives. Unfortunately the issue 
may end up being decided politically rather than through the established 
public hearing/review process.

This thread started with a story about two inexperienced hikers who got 
caught in a bad situation, realized they were in trouble and after hiking 
several more miles to a road where their cell phone would work, they 
managed to get themselves rescued. You then "posed" that they had 
deliberately gone unprepared with the full intention of using the cell 
phone to get themselves out of any mess they got into. I called you that 
distortion of the facts. Would you be happier if they had been found frozen 
to death with a dead cell phone in their hands? Hypothermia isn't fun. I 
sincerely doubt that anyone in their right mind would choose, if they were 
aware of the risks in advance, a brush with death by hypothermia on the 
chance that they might get a signal on their cell phone over being properly 
prepared.

I'm happy they survived. I'm happy they are smarter today than when they 
set out on that ill fated trip. I'm happy that they are in a position to 
tell other inexperienced people what happened to them and hopefully smarten 
up others. It may not have been the equipment they should have had but they 
used what they did have and they learned from their mistake. If it makes 
you unhappy, that's your choice. There are far worse problems facing what 
remains of wilderness in this country than being annoyed by someone else's 
cell phone. One of my spiritual teachers once said that it is easy to go 
within in a cave on the mountaintop. The trick is to learn to do it in the 
city on a busy street. If all it takes to spoil your time in the woods is 
what someone else carries in his/her pack, that's sad. You have a lot of 
work to do.