I think Doug made a good point. All too often people get caught up in the "short hike" syndrome and it is these trips that get them into trouble. I subscribe to a heavily filtered Google news alert service that reports on lost hikers, SAR rescues etc. In reading these news stories everyday, this syndrome is all too often prevalent...
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Earth and sky, woods and fields, lakes and rivers, the mountain and the sea, are excellent schoolmasters, and teach some of us more than we can ever learn from books.

John Lubbock