It strikes me as odd that a summit attracting some 10,000 climbers a year would not have well established procedures for handling the inevitable rescues that such a crowd will generate. Well understood routines for dealing with climbing accidents should have called out helicopters more quickly than the time interval in this situation. I would hope that there is rigorous critique of actions and corrections/updates to procedures to be followed in the future.

In a sense, SAR can be a victim of its own success. A good, well conducted rescue gets time on the media, leading to the expectation that volunteers are lurking just around the next bend in trail, poised to spring into action. I actually had a victim, hiking on a long trail with no equipment whatever, tell me that he did so because rescues were so prompt and well executed

Believe me, when you are called for the third operation that day late in the evening, you may not be as spry as you were on number one. Every organization has limits to its capabilities.

There can be good outcomes from botched SAR operations. My very first SAR experience was a horribly screwed up mess, further hindered by an epic winter storm that further impeded operations. The newly elected sheriff took stock of the situation and developed a much better and effective response, although that didn't happen overnight.

It is important that folks venturing out take responsibility for their actions and prepare for emergencies/unexpected events. our SAR outfit has always spent a lot of time in public outreach/education. In the long run, that is more efficient that sallying forth to clean up the messes. You can do a lot of public outreach for much less than 10 mil....