3 nights in Alaska

definitely a good argument for owning a St Bernard :-)

Pete2

Nuts!

Glad she made it through.

A very serious business, being exposed in those conditions. I assume the lady had some significant health/mobility issues as an underlying factor. Inexperience in the care/feeding of a sled? Maybe; they can be finicky buggers at times.

If the news report is accurate (!?) the first responders fired up a PLB to ramp up the search. This suggests extremely limited comms in the area.

Edit: +1 on "Nuts!"

Just one unnecessary mistake after another, progressively jeopardizing more lives along the way. Poor planning, poor judgement, leading to a potentially tragic ending.

It is still better to be lucky than good, especially if you are an idiot.

I wonder how much the rescue will cost them? Buying a decent radio system would've been cheaper. But you rolls the dice and you takes your chances I suppose.

"It is still better to be lucky than good, especially if you are an idiot."

well Benjammin ... let's contemplate this.
Maybe there is some sort of principle of Darwinian selection operating on Plant Earth. The lucky idiots are surviving ... and then mating and multiplying. Do you think it's possible that eventually the entire world will be populated completely by lucky idiots???

Hahahaha!
Pete2

The Denali Highway is a 135 mile road, mostly gravel open in the summers, with a fair bit of use by hunters in the fall going after the Nelchina Caribou Herd. Even in summer there are very few services out there (a lodge and a few campgrounds). It is very remote in winter, though snow machiners travel it.

A slightly different news report Wildlife trooper helps rescue overdue trapper, wife near Cantwell

I don't know what comms the troopers may have out there. If anything, they might have a repeater or two. I would speculate that if the Wildlife Trooper was in a dead zone and didn't have direct comms where he found the lady, he may have used the PLB as the quickest way to alert the RCC. The RCC can activate the PJs and Pavehawk from the Air National Guard who would be by far the best option for quickly getting advanced medical aid to the hypothermic woman. (Severe hypothermia is very tough to deal with in the field.) Once the RCC had a C-130 Herc overhead, the Trooper could talk directly to them.

Easy to say, but a radio is of little use if you are out of range of anyone, or if no one is monitorying that channel. An Iridium Sat phone would work. (Global Star sat phones don't work too well in Alaska, since GlobalStar's satellites are very low in the sky up here.)

Regarding costs, the RCC, C-130 Herc, Pavehawk, and PJ's do it for training. A win-win, in that the military gets the most realistic training possible for their primary mission, and the public gets help in difficult situations. The volunteer searchers are...well...volunteers who work for free. The only real cost in this case would be the Wildlife Trooper's time.

Without knowing more details, I can't comment much on the rescued couples preparation, or lack thereof. It is all too easy for us to use our 20/20 hindsight to Monday morning quarterback these cases. Note that the gentlman was able to get a fire going and stay put until rescued. Why the woman burned her sled I have no clue. I think that to be in your sixties and out living the trapping lifestyle is commendable.

This general model is widespread across the country, and works rather well in my experience.

You've never read Ringworld, by Larry Niven. In this universe, you could get an extra baby permit by winning a lottery. One character in this novel is a product of several generations of this.

That's what taxes are for. We get to pay for all that luck the idiots seem to find. Wish I were lucky, and not an idiot.