15 Minutes

Ok this will be my first and hopefully only post in which I vent about something.  For anyone who's seen the news over the last week and heard about the lost hikers in Denali National Park let me get something off my chest.  These two girls were found alive and well and 15 miles outside of the search area for one reason, they never stopped moving!  Rule number 1 in Backpacking, if you get lost, turned around, injured etc you STOP you make  camp, ration out your food and wait for help to arrive.  These girls decided to add a side trip to their overnight backpacking which is what got them in trouble.  There is a bus north of the park in which Chris McCandless (Into the Wild) lived.  It's a big topic around here and getting out to it is on everyone's To Do list.  However there is no map which tells you exactly where it is.  These girls decided to start from at least 50 miles away and hope to find it.  I'm sorry but up here the wilderness is not forgiving and you'd better have a damn good idea of where you're going before you go.  

They were supposed to be at work on Friday and instead blew off work to find the bus and got themselves lost.  They walked until they got into cell service and called to announce they were lost.  This was 4 days after they were supposed to be back and 3 days after a massive search had been organized.  They said in their tv interview that they didn't know people were out looking for them.  Believe me everyone here was so thankful that they were found alive and well but that same night theses two girls were out at the local bar sharing their tales.  I'm sorry but you're parents were flown up here in hopes that they wouldn't have to identify your bodies and now you're going to out to the bar to drink big blue margaritas and share your story of stupidity?

On the way out of the bar one of the rescuers told me that the Today Show was coming up here to interview the two girls.  That for me is that dumbest thing I've ever heard.  Why why are we rewarding people's stupid with 15 minutes of fame?  The guy that went out hiking in Utah, fell and got his arm stuck in between a rock and had to cut it off, he got a book deal and worked the tv circuit for breaking every outdoor rule there is!  He didn't have food or extra water with him, he didn't tell anyone where he was going or when he would be back so no one went to look for him and he had to drink his own urine to survive.  I'm sorry but you should NOT be rewarded with a book deal for that.  It's the same story with these two girls, they were called "experienced backpackers" pfft please if that were true they would have found them Saturday on the edge of the park and taken home no questions asked.  Instead they walked ignored all helicopters flying over and made it impossible for the rescuers to find them.  I think I'm going to have to give the Today Show a piece of my mind about how rewarding people's ignorance is what creates more incidents like this.  Because believe me the Today Show's not going to sit there and say, "So at what point did you realize you should have stopped walking and just waited for help to come instead of walking to a potential death?"  

The two girls work next door to us at a competing property and no one was happier than we were to hear they were found but we have NO sympathy for them.  If my parents had been flown up here I wouldn't have left them a few hours later to get a beer and a free T-shirt.  I have to wonder if they are just in shock about what they've been through or whether or not they actually grasp how much danger they were in.  I'm inclined to believe it's the latter of the two. 

Ok so that's my peace comment away I'm open to other view points but this is how I feel about that!