The search and rescue aspect is more interesting when it's the weekend hiker than when it's an 8000 m summit.

On the big ones, I think everyone knows they might die and that even if they got a message out that the answer might be "there's nothing we can do." When I read the article here that the Pakistanis wouldn't fly without the cash, it didn't bother me at all.

I'm kind of even ok with crowd funding the big stuff. It's removing financial barriers to someone achieving their dream.

It's the little nature areas an hour away where the really stupid stuff happens. There was a rescue in New York this summer where the rangers were called out to the same group twice. They had some stupid issue (dehydration or something avoidable), got assistance, continued, and then had more related problems (heat exhaustion or something). There was a winter one a year ago where two people were lost for two days. They remained stationary the whole time. It's easy to armchair quarterback, but at what point should they have said "shit, the summit is up, and the trail crosses the summit. We're freezing to death here, so lets go up and then down a different way." Even more, when should they have said "looking behind me, I'm losing the trail. We need to turn back."

Those are the ones that piss me off. They were 100% avoidable with some planning and awareness.