Exactly! Nobody here is saying you shouldn't be prepared, but it DOES make a big difference what the chances are. People also get shot, but we don't walk around wearing bulletproof vest all day. There's a much greater risk of us falling on a slippery surface and splitting our head open, but we don't wear helmets. You get my point. Assesing the risk is part of being prepared. If you're preparing for an event that has a very small likelyhood of happening, you've just crossed the line from being prepared to being paranoid.



I would like to know what other people would have done in that situation, with what you currently carry in the car. For the sake of discussion and analysis, let's assume he did bring all this stuff with him, what would that have accomplished? We'll say he had the forsight to pack along a pair of snowshoes on a family vacation when he had absolutely no plans on being in the snow. I still don't see how that might have helped. He had already walked 8 miles, even if you increase that to 20 or 30 miles, how would that have guaranteed sucess? Maybe he would have reached that lodge that was closed for the winter, but he's still stranded outside. What good would a 4 season tent have done when they already have a pretty decent shelter (the car)? More food would have made them more comfortable, but they didn't die of starvation, so I still don't agree that it would have helped a lot. A signal mirror might be a good idea IF there was someone out there looking, but they already had a signal fire, which in this situation would probably be better than a mirror. Still nobody saw it. A map and compass would definitely be nice things to have, but I would assume he had a road map with him, and I know those cars come with a built in compass, but that still wasn't enough to save his life. In this case, you could almost say his being slightly prepared caused his death. Had he been wearing shorts and sandals, and been completely unprepared for the weather, he may have chosen to stay with the car instead of venturing out, and then been rescued with the rest of the family. Or he could have stayed with the family and all 4 of them have died. That's going to extremes though. We can critique and analyze every little action, but there are just too many grey areas to say what was the right and wrong thing to do without knowing the whole story.

It is a good idea to analyze the situation and identify any mistakes, but my point here is these aren't necessarily obvious mistakes. These are decisions that anyone could have made, they weren't because of ignorance or recklessness, for the most part they were calculated decisions made with the information that was available, but still ended up in tragedy. I honestly can't say I would be able to last any longer than he did, even with all my equipment. Of course, in my own little virtual world I imagine myself to be the great survivalist, building huge bonfires and shelters, hunting for food for my family, walking out to get help, etc, but the reality of it is that I may have done the exact same things he did, or gotten myself into worse trouble.