To The Rescue
Three climbers were already dead on Oregon’s Mount Hood when a helicopter coming for survivors crashed and tumbled 1,000 feet down a steep snowfield. The accident, captured on video in horrifying detail, seemed to symbolize the costs and risks of alpine search and rescue. A new study by the American Alpine Club, however, says such dramatic and dangerous operations are the exception, and argues that state laws allowing climbers to be billed for their own rescues are misguided. The report says American mountaineering deaths and injuries are declining, even though the number of climbers is increasing.
Hikers, hunters, boaters and swimmers all require more rescues than climbers, the study says.
The 7,000-member American Alpine Club, based in Golden, Colo., plans to use the report to lobby against fee-for-rescue legislation and to counter negative publicity surrounding spectacular mountain accidents.
“Over the years we’ve come to see a pattern emerge — that after a major climbing accident, there was media coverage that painted climbers as risk-taking daredevils who put tremendous costs on the public and risk on the rescuers,” said Lloyd Athearn, deputy director of the club and author of the study.
He called the 2002 crash on Mount Hood “exhibit A.”
Three parties of climbers were near the summit of the 11,240-foot peak when the top group tumbled into the others, and nine people plunged into a 25-foot-deep crevasse. Three died and three were seriously injured.
Remarkably, all six crew members survived the crash of the Air Force Reserve helicopter that was attempting to pluck injured survivors from the mountainside.
Five states — California, Hawaii, Idaho, New Hampshire and Oregon — have laws allowing agencies to charge for rescues under certain circumstances. But none of the states has ever billed a climber, Athearn’s study says. Oregon’s law was passed more than six years before the Mount Hood tragedy.
Climbing rescues cost less than many people realize, Athearn said. The military doesn’t charge to help out because it considers the rescues as a training opportunity, and most mountain search and rescue teams are volunteers who don’t expect to be paid.
Their attitude is, “I don’t want somebody’s money, because someday they’re going to come and help me,” said Charley Shimanski, a member of the Alpine Rescue Team based in Evergreen, Colo.
The study suggests that charging for rescues could actually worsen the danger for climbers and rescuers because some people might put off calling for help.
Shimanski recalled one Colorado rescue in which the call came in so late that search crews had to grope through darkness to rescue a high-altitude hiker with an injured ankle.
When the hiker’s wife was told there was no charge, she said, “I wish I’d have known that. I would have called you a lot earlier,” said Shimanski, the education director for the Mountain Rescue Association, which opposes rescue fees.
The Oregon State Sheriffs’ Association supports Oregon’s fee-for-rescue law as a way to reimburse taxpayers for rescuing people who were unprepared or negligent.
“It’s just a tool that’s there. It just doesn’t hurt to have a tool or two in your belt,” said Art Martinak, the group’s executive director.
Athearn also cited humanitarian reasons to make rescues free.
“Someone is in trouble, you help them,” he said.
Gavin James of Farmington, N.M., who was rescued in January after three frigid nights in the mountains of southwestern Colorado, said he doesn’t believe people should be charged for rescue if they made an honest mistake.
James had skied outside the boundaries of the Durango Mountain Resort and got lost trying to find his way back. He wasn’t billed, but he said he plans to donate “a whole bunch of money” someday to his rescuers.
“From my personal experience, I would have paid any amount of money to get out of the predicament I was in,” he said.