Hey Glock,

Try not to be too defensive. I think the problem is that Chris and others in the SAR biz have seen countless ninnies touting their skills and then later either getting themselves killed foolishly or needing to be bailed out, thereby risking the lives of the SAR team. Personally, I have no reason to doubt that you have the skills, experience and physical abilities that you claim you do. I think it is great that we have that much more experience on the forum.

Just understand that because of the impersonal nature of the forum, it is sometimes difficult to separate the bogus from the genuine. It is also easy to make the wrong first impression as Chris pointed out. As a libertarian I appreciate your disgust with government agencies, but realize that some of the folks here either are or work with people in that business, who have little to no say in the overall policies of the departments. They are just doing their jobs trying to save the morons who get themselves in trouble.

In short, your post would probably have been better received had you not made the nannies remark (however correct it may or may not be) and Chris probably knee-jerked a bit with the Aron Ralston remark. No biggie. Things like that happen on a forum.

As to your original point about being in good physical condition, I absolutely agree with you. Although some fat reserve can come in pretty handy in a prolonged lack of food situation, good fitness will allow your body to convert what resources you have more efficiently into energy that can be vital to survival. Being able to climb a rock face or hike many miles can come in really handy as well.

Just as sitting in front of the computer reading about method of starting a fire isn't as effective as actually going out and practicing it, many other survival skills will suffer if you don't have the fitness to practice them.

I wonder how many of the heat exhaustion victims treated by our list members during the recent blackouts were what could be classified as unfit? I imagine that folks that were in shape made out alot better than the couch potatos when it came to walking out of the city in the heat. Of course, the really smart ones had bikes (sorry, had to get that in there <img src="images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />).

Best of luck on your canyon hike. Wish I had the chance to go...

Greg