Last week,
the Department of Environmental Conservation’s Forest Rangers and the State
Police launched an overnight search and rescue mission to look for an adjunct
SUNY Potsdam professor, Ningyun Cai, and her two young sons on Mount Marcy. The rescue, which involved more than 30
forest rangers, conservation officers and state troopers, took place in
whiteout conditions with wind gusts up to 40 miles per hour near the summit of the state’s highest peak. It was initiated
after Cai and her sons, age 7 and 11 were disoriented in a snowstorm and
couldn’t find their way back to the trail below tree line, where they had
stashed most of their gear.
Although
backcountry rescues due to freak accidents are somewhat inevitable, rescues
such as this raise the question of what can be done to reduce the amount of
rescues done each year for people who are ill-prepared for the terrain or
conditions as well as how to fund these highly expensive rescues. To reduce rescue frequency, many people
advocate for increased backcountry skills and wilderness first aid education
among backcountry enthusiasts, but this is potentially problematic in it’s ability
to reach its intended audience. Many visitors to the Adirondacks may only be in town for a weekend and might not have time to spend a day or two (which is
probably the absolute minimum for the amount of time it takes to get even
remotely comfortable with wilderness skills) getting the proper education about
wilderness safety. In addition to a lack of skills and education, many people
blame a lack of proper equipment as a reason that a rescue was needed. While it is true that many rescues,
especially in the winter, are done for people who lack the proper equipment, it would be hard to police the gear required without
having a TSA style bag check at each trailhead where rangers check personal backpacks
for the proper gear.
When it
comes to funding rescue efforts, many people argue that the rescued party
should have to pay for the rescue. While
the costs of backcountry rescues in most other parts of the world fall on those
being rescued, this is not common practice in the United States. Some rescues are unfortunately unavoidable,
regardless of skill level or equipment carried, as no amount of warm clothing
is going to fix an unexpected heart attack in the backcountry. While many argue that rescues done for the ill
prepared should be funded by the rescued party, this is problematic because it
would require a very strict set of regulations about preparedness that would
need to acknowledge an infinite amount of possible rescue scenarios to
determine if the party was in fact unprepared for the conditions and
terrain.
Perhaps the
major recreation organizations in the Adirondacks and the DEC should work
together to develop an easily accessible program with readily available online
resources to educate and prepare people for the backcountry, especially in the
winter. If courses and small group hikes were more available and more highly advertised
to the general public, we might be able to avoid many search and rescue
missions.
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