Check out the Nat'l Geo article. It brings up most of the points that we did - Aaron was not a rambo hero but rather an arrogant fool that needlessly put many SAR workers at risk due to his own macho disregard for normal safty precautions.
From the article:
Did Climber Have to Cut Off Arm to Save Life?
Cliff Ransom
National Geographic Adventure magazine
July 24, 2003
....
Once Ralston made it to the hospital, his story was broadcast from England to Brazil. What do you think those reports left out?
What bothered me was the way the media made him out to be quite a hero. But they never talked about how the guy got himself into trouble because he really made some poor decisions. What's kind of irritating is that rescuers have to go out and deal with those types of situations—a lot—and most of the time they're preventable. When one person, in this case Aron Ralston, gets himself into trouble, a bunch of SAR volunteers' lives may be placed in jeopardy in order to help him.
Can you explain that point?
Even when you have trained experts that are conducting rescue activities, the environment that you're working in—whether it be the top of Mount Everest or the North Pole or out here in the middle of the desert, out in the middle of canyon country—is a dangerous environment. No training or equipment can completely remove the danger from the wilderness. If a SAR volunteer is conducting a nighttime rescue, walking along canyon rims with no moon, he can step through a slot just as easily as anyone else. That's something that the public doesn't seem to give much thought to. Because one guy (Aron Ralston) got himself into a particular situation, 15 or 16 SAR volunteers will be placed in a similar, potentially deadly, scenario.
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