but because climbers can generally effect self rescues as well, so rescuing climbers is a tiny bit of the Yosemite SAR work so why should people get overly upset about it?
I'm not sure I accept that. Both climbers & hikers get themselves out on their own. I don't have a great feel for it, but I suspect there isn't much of a difference and perhaps a slight tilt to climbers needing assistance more (as a percentage of climbers vs. hikers). As mentioned above, there's tens of thousands of hikers out there and maybe only 2,000 climbers per year (in Yosemite).
Still, it doesn't matter. The point of the article, I think, is to show the costs involved with all SARs and that climbers don't account for a dramatically different cost. The problem seems to be that whenever there's some level of seriously technical response (climbing, winter conditions), the newspapers or comments often question the cost based on the "weirdness" of the activity. Also, of course, many hiker rescues are too mundane to receive coverage and the public perception is skewed... .
g.
