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Wow. Now imagine you were hiking in the mountains, you break your ankle, and need the help of search and rescue to get out of there. After you get a $15,000 bill for a Trauma fee from the hospital you get a $10,000 bill for a search and rescue fee from the state. Yes it's the Ticket Master business model.

If anyone hears that I'm missing in a forest somewhere, please do me a favor and don't call anybody.

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> If anyone hears that I'm missing in a forest somewhere, please do me a favor and don't call anybody.

Very well, in accordance with your wishes, we'll let you die in the wilderness in order to save you $10,000.

Fair jab. My point was that the Search & Rescue "pay to play" model seems unreasonable. It was originally intended to be used in cases of negligence/recklessness but is apparently being used in plain vanilla S&R activities somewhat randomly based on the whims of local authorities.

The case I'm talking about was similar to this article. S&R possible overreacted and charged a guy $9000+. There was no danger, just a miscommunication. That seems similar to this article where a guy got a minor scrape on his head from tipping over his motorcycle and an entire Trauma team was readied unbeknownst to him. Yet he still got the bill.

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