There's no equivalency there. "Carried risk?" if the highway patrol has kept the road open, there are assumed to be minimal risk. If, on the other hand, the climber is attempting to set a record never attempted in a space known for fatality, there is assumed to be maximal risk. What would you call a false equivalency? As for facts, find me one (1) instance where a request for help was made and there was no attempt. The ARA San Juan went down November 15th. We just stopped looking for it last week. Helping is what humans do.
Clearly there wasn't minimal risk as traffic backed up for miles. Lack of injury and death was due to assistance from rescuers. Where on the scale of "poor winter roads" to "month on the side of a Himalayan mountain" does it change from a reasonable risk where the risk to rescuers is acceptable to it being unacceptable? I argue that scale is very gray, and the grayness is why the two can be compared. What's considered as no attempt? The rescue last week never looked for the second climber.if the highway patrol has kept the road open, there are assumed to be minimal risk.
find me one (1) instance where a request for help was made and there was no attempt
"Clearly there wasn't minimal risk?" You're kidding, right? "rescuers?" But wait! There's more! This is the hill you want to die on? two thousand cars south of Madison with their heaters on, stuck in a traffic jam for twelve hours while volunteers bring them coffee and donuts? You're gonna draw an equivalency between this and a mountain rescue in a Himalayan winter? A traffic jam that the highway patrol accepts responsibility for and says "yeah, we should have closed the freeway oops?" Goddamn right it's a gray area. But the thing about gray areas? They have gradations between black and white. Buncha motorists on a road that everyone agrees should have been closed? White. Not even in the gray. Shall we go gray? James Kim was gray. Whipped out his map, saw a road, didn't check the conditions, found themselves on this in winter. The map said "Not all Roads Advisable, Check Weather Conditions" and they probably shouldn't have been able to turn onto a forest road and he's dead, and that sucks, and there was ample blame to go 'round but at the end of the day, mistakes were made (easy mistakes, anybody-could-make-them mistakes) and while S&R might consider the Kims to be foolhardy, they wouldn't be considered adrenaline junkies. Nobody looking for you after your rescuers have already mounted an attempt that shall go down as legendary? After it has been determined that you have ventured beyond the limits of human and mechanical endurance? Black. That color is black. My beef? By going that black, you drag people from the light into the shadows and it's bullshit that we celebrate those who do it rather than condemn them.
Food and other supplies were brought to stranded motorists while county crews worked to pull semis out of the mess. But the main problem was communication.
"I want to apologize to all the stranded motorists who were stranded on the interstate that day," says Wisconsin State Patrol superintendent, David Collins. "The interstate should have been closed on February 6th."
This might be where I see it differently. The way I see this scenario is the people pulled in are already in the shadows. Different shadows, neighboring shadows, but they're already well out of the light. And it's why I compare it to a winter storm. The county crews hauling supplies out to stranded motorists had to go a bit beyond their normal role, but it was seen as a reasonable request given the circumstances. Similarly, asking nearby elite climbers to help rescue other climbers was a bit beyond the norm, but I say it wasn't outlandish. Asking a helicopter pilot skilled at flying in the mountains in winter to fly them in was again uncommon but again not a major stretch. I trust those people, the rescuers, know their limitations and will say "no" when they need to. I think that trust is necessary across the spectrum of victims and rescuers. I do agree the celebration is bullshit in at least one way, though. That celebration is part of what drives these people to be there in the first place. It drives them too far.My beef? By going that black, you drag people from the light into the shadows and it's bullshit that we celebrate those who do it rather than condemn them.
One of the things they teach you when you learn to ride motorcycles is that it isn't one big mistake that causes an accident. It's lots of little ones. You're fine riding in the rain. You're fine riding angry. You're fine riding with a back tire a little flat. But riding in the rain with a flabby rear tire angry? You're shiny side down. It's like the lawyer's maxim for young subversives: break one law at a time because once you've been caught once, you're guilty of everything. When somebody gets stranded up the side of a mountain in peril of freezing to death, they've already made a long list of mistakes. That's on them. But when they need to be rescued, they've made those same mistakes for their rescuers. 3600 feet elevation in 4.5 hours at 6000 m at night in the winter. So that was 800 vertical feet per hour. It isn't comparable in almost every relevant way, but on my Basin hike a month ago I covered 848 vertical feet in 1:56 in the last push to the summit. On an official trail, in the daylight, at 1000 m. Oh, and it was 50 degrees warmer and I still got frostbite. I can't fathom being outside at that elevation in that temperature, and then add to that it's a rescue mission, not an ascent carefully planned for years. That was a choice made for somebody else. Yeah, they didn't have to. Nobody held a gun to their heads. But empathy made 'em do it.I had to convert that to feet: 3600. Holy shit. And they were doing this at 6000 m elevation, at night, in the winter. Adam Bielecki and Denis Urubko are climbers who deserve to have their names remembered for this, for doing the humanly impossible to save a life.