Ken:
Oh Woe -- I haven't worked at the hut for 3 years now. No excuse, other than an attempt to make a little more money at writing bad government prose.
Yet another thought on endless SAR stuff. I think there's maybe too much attention on SARs for people being stupid. I've found that to be pretty rare. The trauma is often someone just slipping on a wet rock or sliding down a boulder or something. Usually just bad luck. Not sure of the percentage, but I think most (70% ??) is people getting sick. Most all of that is also just bad luck. HAPE, flu where someone's puking so bad they've really got to be out, heart problems with no previous history -- all that stuff isn't really anyone's fault.
So just pointing out we can spend a lot of time talking about rescues for dumb mistakes (the Grand Canyon example comes to mind), but mostly you've just got a lot of people and X percent of them are going to get sick or injured like in any population -- it's just a little harder to get them out.
g.
