I'm a personal responcibility man myself. I think people who go up mountains have a responcibility to protect themselves, and since SAR is a reality that isn't going away, I think people also have a responcibility to the SAR personnel. Legislation isn't going to do that, even legislation designed to put more responcibility on the climbers by requiring them to pay for rescue. People who are afraid of being rescued for whatever reason may hide and endanger themselves and more rescuers. Blackhawks cost about $6 million. How much insurance can you take out? Enough for a helicopter? How bout $32 million for a Chinook?

I don't know what the answer is. Or even what the question is? Or even if there is a problem. Yes, there have been a couple of highly publicized rescues lately, a few fatalities and occassionally a SAR member is injured or dies. But how many people actually have to be rescued each year? Does anyone know? I'm sure the number would seem high. Probably a few thousand. But how many people go out each year, more importantly how many times? A few million? A few tens of millions. That many people walking to the bathroom is going to result in a few fatalities let alone going out into the woods or mountains. DO the rescues really constitute a problem or are they just a natural side effect of people doing any sort of activity. Compare the relative number of people who die during outdoor activities today with the number of mountain men who died. Did personal responcibility keep those people alive?

I don't know these questions, or what the best questions should be. But I think there is a lot bigger discussion over these last two cases, Kim and the Mt. Hood climbers, because of the media coverage. Every other week someone posts a newspaper article about someone being found alive or a body found and the discussion lasts a couple days at the most. Does someone in the media have an agenda that they are useing these cases to support? This isn't a conspiracy theory. But an observation. These cases have received a huge amount of media coverage then those in the past. I can't see anything special about the events themselves, so the question arises "Has something changed somewhere else that is affecting the media coverage?" Just something to think on.