[at-l] Re: paying for rescue

[dlc <dlc@nrtw.org>]

 >* Message posted to AT-L from the National Scenic Trails Website
 >* by our guest Jack Tarlin <baltjack@hotmail.com>.
 >* Please use <mailto:baltjack@hotmail.com> to reply to the sender.

 >In just the past three weeks, we've seen a handful of incidents where 
people went woefully ill->equipped, and ill-prepared into the Whites, and 
in several of these cases, it was clearly and >patently obvious that they 
felt that carrying a cell phone m
 >ore than made up for their failure to pack necessary winter gear, or to 
behave appropriately >and sensibly in the high country.

Okay, I don't know how I feel about this whole issue, but I will say for 
the record that the second time I was on Mt. Washington this summer (long 
and not particularly interesting story of why I was there twice), it was an 
absolutely gorgeous day and many of the people hiking up the trail (I went 
up over Lion's Head, since I'd done the AT to the top the first time) were 
in shorts and a t-shirt, with very little else with them.  Talk about being 
unprepared.  While I was still up there a thunderstorm came in.  Although 
it rolled through quickly, it could just as easily been much worse, a 
possibility none of those people were prepared for.  The FIRST time I was 
up, it was a gorgeous day the day before (when I went over Madison), but 
was SLEETING and raining and mighty chilly that day when I was on 
Washington.   So my point is that the weather up there is unpredictable, 
which, of course, we all know, but seems to have escaped some people.  They 
don't even give a forecast for the mountaintops for the next day in the 
Whites, it's so unpredictable.  And yet, when it's nice (momentarily) 
people are trekking up there in shorts and t-shirts.  So I don't know if 
New Hampshire's "new" plan is the solution, or what the solution SHOULD be, 
but it's obvious that there is, indeed, a problem.

--Sometime
ME->VA '99
GA->VA '00?

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