Bentirran,
There is no doubt that BOSS messed up big time and was responsible for the students death. But I am not sure that this type of course has no place.

I think we may have slightly different philosophies about gearing up; me a bit on the light side and you on the heavier end of the scale. This type of survival course has always appealled to me for many reasons including a desire to learn the everyday knowledge and skills our ancestors used and we have since lost.

Learning primitive skills will surely make one's survival abilities stronger and learning to make do with little or no gear might be very useful in a real SHTF situation. That said this type of course should be an advanced course and the instructors should have had back-up emergency gear and plans for when and if something goes wrong. Heck they should have had some way to "pull the plug" and get a medivac to airlift the sick student out. The school's primitive philosophy should not be so written in stone as to kill or endanger the students.


I just went and re-read the story. The most disturbing thing is that they should have given him the emergency water they were carrying. Their unwillingness to let the student fail caused them to fail as trip leaders.