A Cautionary Tale
There's something so invigorating, inviting, exciting and memorable about the great out-of-doors. It enables recreational nature-lovers to re-invest themselves with their environment, celebrate their aliveness, exercise their options in enjoying life to its fullest. We are, for the most part, living in cities as we do, encapsulated in grim concrete for most of our lives.The occasional escape into the living green presence of nature - or, winter-wise, the white blanket of nature at rest, brings us huge pleasure and reminds us of our attachments to nature.
But nature in the raw, isolated and quite far from peoples' familiar surroundings must be respected for other things it offers; the unexpected, the unanticipated, conditions that can be dealt with only with great difficulty, even for those with experience.
Nature must never be taken for granted. We puny humans must never forget that nature is not at our beck and call, and we do not control nature. Nature is there, it is the primal force beyond our familiar civilized world to which we occasionally return, briefly.
Our forays into nature needn't necessarily be tentative, but they do require that we be alert, guarded and prepared for exigencies. Only the most intrepid, resolute, courageous, prepared and mentally and physically fit extend themselves to mount the tallest mountains on Earth, overwinter in Antarctica, dive deep oceans to discover bacterial presence in the unimaginable heat of the interior crust of this planet.
For the rest of us, ordinary mortals, quests of discovery are more modest.
We clamber fairly reasonable ascents, not really heeding warnings posted below urging return to base if weather turns to our disadvantage. Thanks to the pervasive satellite communications technology, stranded hikers and climbers and boaters are now able to send messages, urging rescue.
But we're not always able to communicate with high-tech equipment and sometimes, stranded, lost people etch out temporary S.O.S. signals, hoping for discovery and rescue. And sometimes, even though potential rescuers do see those plaintive appeals for assistance, reaction is not always what we might hope it to be.
As was the case for a middle-aged couple from Quebec, visiting Kicking Horse Mountain Resort in Golden, British Columbia, for a romantic get-away for two avid skiers. Setting out geared up for a casual skiing adventure, they ventured beyond the marked safety area, and soon became lost.
They became disoriented, couldn't find their way back, and spent ten days lost, desperate, hungry and miserably cold. Hoping against hope to be rescued. Carving out a succession of large S.O.S. pleas in the snow.
Which were indeed seen on several occasions by helicopter pilots flying overhead, and duly reported, but unfortunately, not carried forward to a successful search-and-rescue conclusion. That old story of the chain of responsibility.
The RCMP, when alerted to the S.O.S. attempted to ascertain whether there had been any reports of missing skiers, and found none. The resort hadn't exercised due diligence in seeing to the safe return of guests, and hadn't realized anyone was missing.
The volunteer-operated Golden and District Search and Rescue team waited for authorization by the RCMP before proceeding, and that never arrived.
The 44-year-old wife died of exposure to the cold. Her 51-year-old husband, with sufficient energy to ski down to the area where the rescue helicopter landed, had a brief stay in hospital to be treated for frostbite.
Their romantic get-away simply did not materialize. Instead they experienced the horror of a nightmare they were unable to wake from before disaster struck.
Labels: Environment, Nature, Realities
posted by Pieface @ Thursday, February 26, 2009
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