Search-and-rescue teams have been busy
the past few weeks in the mountains of Southern California, looking
for lost hikers, and instead finding corpses. Six times since Jan.
1, men described by friends and family as “experienced” outdoor
travelers have slipped from icy trails and suffered injuries that,
if not fatal outright, proved to be so in the frigid overnight
temperatures. Six other lost or injured hikers have been rescued.
The precipitous ranges of this famously balmy region
often surprise people. It may be T-shirt-and-shorts weather at the
Rose Parade on New Year’s Day in Pasadena, but on the nearby slopes
of 10,064-foot Mount Baldy there will be snow on the ground and a
sub-freezing chill in the air.
This contrast often
catches novice backcountry travelers unprepared. Unlike the Rockies
and the Sierra Nevada, their distant geological cousins, the San
Bernardino, San Gabriel and San Jacinto mountains do not advertise
their altitude and meteorological impulsiveness with year-round
snow fields, glacier-sculpted slopes and crystalline alpine
streams. Most of the year, these mountains appear to be as dry and
hot as the nearby desert.
Tourists in Palm Springs may,
in fact, ride a tram directly from the sweltering outskirts of town
to a lodge in the pines at 8,516 feet; it is common on summer days
to find them shivering there in their skimpy resort wear, like
tropical songbirds blown off course and deposited in the French
Alps.
Public response to the recent series of
misadventures in the local mountains has been of two varieties. The
first is a repeated admonition by representatives of the U.S.
Forest Service, which administers the most popular mountain
recreation sites in Southern California, to “never hike alone”
because it is foolish. The other is a barely concealed public
indignation over the “squandering” of money on efforts to find and
rescue lost or injured hikers.
Hiking alone does increase
the risk that an otherwise trivial problem — twisted ankle, a
tumble into a stream — might become a deadly mistake. I’ve
written three hiking guidebooks, and in each I have warned
inexperienced travelers to avoid hiking alone in the backcountry.
I also disregard my own warning. Not only do I hike
alone, I go on multi-day backpacking trips alone. I kayak alone in
the ocean. I go mountain biking alone. I canoe alone on rivers and
lakes. I go cross-country skiing alone. I’ve traveled hundreds of
backcountry miles in environments ranging from Death Valley to the
Northern Rockies without a companion and without incident.
Some of that is due to luck. I am fortunate never to have
run afoul of cosmic coincidence: standing beneath a tree limb at
the precise moment when the accumulated stress of 300 winters
finally sends it crashing to the ground; crossing a talus field
below a cliff just as a10-ton lump of granite succumbs to gravity.
I have never found myself in the position of Colorado climber Aron
Ralston, who hacked off his forearm with a pocketknife to escape a
boulder that had pinned him deep in a Utah slot canyon.
But the fact that I have traveled alone in the wilderness for
nearly three decades without trouble is due also to planning and
prudence. Like most experienced backcountry travelers, I calculate
risk and take steps to minimize it — not to eliminate it,
which is impossible, but reduce it. I turn back from summits when
thunderclouds gather. I bring maps and know how to use them. I
carry food, water and good clothing. I retreat from big,
ill-tempered animals. I tell people where I am going and when I
will return.
And I certainly do not need government
nannies telling me what is safe or closing trails for my own
protection. I travel alone because I enjoy solitude, and I go to
places where screwing up can get me killed precisely because of
that risk, which is what distinguishes nature from a theme park.
Those who seek to eliminate danger from wilderness have no business
managing it.
There are fools in the woods, but there are
far more of them blundering down city sidewalks. So I don’t
begrudge the costly rescue efforts mounted for missing hikers, any
more than I begrudge sending paramedics to traffic accidents caused
by lousy drivers, or stationing lifeguards at beaches frequented by
poor swimmers.
Until society imposes a universal
folly-based exemption from compassion, it owes the same
consideration to off-road travelers as to their less adventurous
fellow citizens. Life is risk, and the freedom to choose some
dangers over others is precious.
John Krist is
a contributor to Writers on the Range, a service of High Country
News (hcn.org). He is a reporter and columnist for the Star in
Ventura, California.
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