Hacker News Reader

Comment by grecy | Hacker News Reader

These kind of hyperbolic statements don't do much to educate, they're over sensationalized.

> These quickly get in trouble and either die by bears, by drowning, by freezing or they are rescued by park rangers or other rescue personnel–but often, not before risking their lives and/or spending a lot of government money on helicopters and overtime

Since 1992, only two people have died trying to reach the bus, they both drowned in the Tek (which was hard for me to cross, at 6 foot 2 and 185 lbs). One in 2010, and one last year.

As for the number of rescues:

"The state carried out 15 bus-related search and rescue operations between 2009 and 2017, authorities say" [1]

[1] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-53106441

For what it's worth, I lived in the Yukon for 4 years. I've been bison hunting at -45C, I've spent months hunting, hiking and fishing all over the Yukon and a ton of time in Alaska too. I know what it takes.

View on HN

You're completely right to point this out, but this particular subject and individual seems to be a fulcrum for the sort of people who say things like, "kids these days...".

The most common thing I hear, by far, from members of the public at search and rescue fundraisers is, "why do you go to all that trouble for stupid people?" It's a question almost always delivered with the self-satisfied smugness of someone who has no idea that they're already suffering the atrophying effects of not venturing outside of familiar territory often enough.

McCandless surely made mistakes and errors in judgement. He certainly underestimated what he was getting in to. In that, he has something in common with hundreds of thousands of casual hikers, mountain bikers, kayakers, and visitors to national parks every year. There are vanishingly few entries in the annual Accidents of North American Mountaineering where the people involved are unimpeachable in terms of their preparedness or skill. In almost every case, there's something that someone could point to that the victim did wrong, and if not, then there's always the fallback that they were dumb to be doing it to begin with.

If he hadn't died, nobody would know his name. Statistics caught up to him. Statistics will catch a few other people every year while far more visitors to the same area will escape without consequence.

The dynamics of this subject on HN in particular are really sort of obvious, given that McCandless has come up at least half-a-dozen times on HN over the years, a site not known for its enthusiasm for the outdoors. The treatment here is often about as embarrassing as someone might imagine the topic of machine learning to be on a forum for mushroom pickers.

No doubt it's a polarizing topic, and I understand why people (especially Alaskans) get angry about him going into the wilderness unprepared.

The bus was moved for "public safety", which raises a bigger question of safety, and personal choice. Should we stop people climbing mountains, paddling whitewater, skydiving or even just eating bacon all in the name of "public safety"?

Who gets to decide that we're much better off sitting at a desk for life and never doing anything "risky"?

Some people have decided a long life is better than going after your dreams, even if that long life is unfulfilling and full of regrets. That's fine with me.

I'm perfectly happy to let people live whatever life they choose, and it feels strange people won't let me (or get angry about Chris) living the life we want.

We all have many choices in this life, and it seems people get angry when others make different choices than themselves.

Please consider that when people put themselves at risk it's rarely just them.

There are collective costs to people getting hurt and needing to be saved, and it's not a black/white thing: we enforce safety belts, we remove dangerous rocks and trees looming on roads and so on all the time.

The bus was evaluated as an hazard that encourages unprepared people to do something and get hurt, it may be a bad call, but it's not just a restriction of "people should be free to choose".

You are mixing things that should never be mixed: when you pay taxes, road maintenance - including removal of rocks and trees - is a service that you paid for and you have to get. Enforcing safety belts is not a service for you, it is a measure imposed by coercion by the state that believes it knows better. There is no similarity between these.

Of course they are not the same thing, they are just instances of the authorities deciding that X is unsafe.

Also, the fact you pay for road maintenance does not indicate what maintenance is.

People could be on the "I like looming rocks, they give character to this road, instead use my money to lay new asphalt instead of wasting it on landscape" camp.

But the state thinks it knows better than you that exploding looming rocks is more important than letting you drive faster.

Your "personal choice" may end up risking the lives of search and rescue personnel, and costing the public hundreds of thousands of dollars.

You get the benefits of your risky fun but a large part of the costs are externalized.

I don't want to live in a risk-less, fun-less society either but there are limits. As long as society is footing the bill, society has an interest in imposing limits.

I'm perfectly happy letting you do whatever you want, as long as you are not endangering the public, and you bear the costs. I'd be all for a system where you can opt out of health and safety restrictions, with the caveat that it also opts you out of health and safety programs, like publicly-funded search and rescue.

Public safety costs are a sunk cost (staff are on call, vehicles are paid for), they will exist regardless. Society should bear the cost of reasonable exploration efforts by citizens, even by those who are unknowingly underprepared. That is a muscle we should be expected to flex as humans. The best way to learn is to do.

I would agree that after your second or third rescue though, you're becoming a nuisance and should bear some of the cost.

> Public safety costs are a sunk cost, they will exist regardless.

No. Overtime, helicopter flight hours aren't a sunk cost.

> Society should bear the cost of reasonable exploration efforts by citizens, even by those who are unknowingly underprepared.

The issue here is in that one important word: reasonable. Exploring your neighborhood? Certainly. Exploring a mine shaft without a rope? Maybe a bit less so?

> The best way to learn is to do.

Or ask people that know stuff. Or read a book, or a pamphlet. There's plenty of options other than "whatever, the other will take care of me, I don't want to think and prepare, preparation is boring".

> Or ask people that know stuff. Or read a book, or a pamphlet. There's plenty of options other than "whatever, the other will take care of me, I don't want to think and prepare, preparation is boring".

These are all valid forms of education, but all suboptimal to going through the motions. You should strive to be prepared, but also assume you don't know everything you need to know and de-risk accordingly.

Of course, but the original comment was about the guys doing virtually nothing to be prepared, that is "I'm going to live in the remote wilderness. I have a sleeping bag and a pound of rice, what else could I possibly need".

There's always some risk in everything, it cannot be avoided, but we really don't need people to learn by doing it from zero understanding of that risk, we have plenty of things they can learn from the comfort of their bed. If they then still want to go do the real thing, they'll be much less likely to require rescuing, because they will not just walk into the woods without a map going "I'll just use Google Maps if I get lost".

You posit two examples at pretty far poles of the risk equation. How about doing winter hiking up high peaks in the Northeast US? Or whitewater kayaking? Or rock climbing?

I'd say that also depends on how you're prepared. If you don't want to prepare or think safety is boring and you want that extra kick of adrenaline, sure, go for it, but I'd also prefer if you make sure that you're not going to be requiring a rescue operation and a life time of support for that little extra kick.

Or we could just tax it accordingly so it gets pretty expensive to do, but the risk is priced in. Want to remove the helmet and swimming vest or go winter hiking naked? Sure, just pay here and off you go.

I'm assuming people are at least reasonably well prepared (while understanding that many aren't). But there is a level of danger in any case.

You should read the linked PDF about the people the comments were about. It's not about the reasonably well prepared people. Reasonably well prepared people don't go into the woods unprepared to live off the land with no tools, no shelter, no knowledge what is edible and what is not, and no way to deal with bears.

What's reasonable about it? Those places have been explored. There's far less dangerous ways to experience nature and the wilderness too.

I also don't see how the cost is sunk, it's proportional to the number of rescues they have to carry out, plus you risk the rescuers lives.

> Your "personal choice" may end up risking the lives of search and rescue personnel,

This is the standard answer everyone gives, and it makes no logical sense. I worked search and rescue, and have plenty of friends that have it as their full-time occupation.

Search and rescue personal are trained professionals, who willingly signed up for that career, and who love being in the back-country. They know full and well what they're getting into, and going out and rescuing people is the definition of their chosen career. If there was nobody to rescue, they wouldn't be able to support themselves doing what they love.

In fact when there are no rescues for a while they go out in their helicopters and practice all the "dangerous" stuff putting their "lives in danger". So even if there was nobody to rescue, they'd still be out there.

Following on from your logic, it only makes sense we should ban open fireplaces and cigarettes in houses because that's the leading cause of house fires, which then put fireman's lives in danger.

> and costing the public hundreds of thousands of dollars

Please don't exaggerate, it detracts from the discussion.

The average heli rescue costs around $10k (heli's are smack on $1k/hr), and in many jurisdictions if the person getting rescued was doing something stupid, they foot the bill, not the public.

> Following on from your logic, it only makes sense we should ban open fireplaces and cigarettes in houses because that's the leading cause of house fires,

That's an amusing example to me, because indoor and outdoor fireplaces of any kind are in fact banned in my city, since it's densely built with lots of wood buildings, and because of air quality concerns, my city has deemed they are not worth the risk.

> which then put fireman's lives in danger.

And yes, the firemen will be the first to give you an earful if you don't respect the fire safety code.

> following from your logic [...], we should ban [...] cigarettes

Nice strawman though. I said it was in society's interest to set limits, I made no argument as to what exactly the limits should be. That's not my decision or yours, as long as it's public resources that are at stake, it should be a democratic process.

> The average heli rescue costs around $10k (heli's are smack on $1k/hr), and in many jurisdictions if the person getting rescued was doing something stupid, they foot the bill, not the public.

In that case, as I said, if they are footing the bill, I really have no problem with it.

Here in Vancouver, we're really close (15 minute drive for a lot of people) to dangerous mountainous terrain that is really popular with inexperienced hikers and so generate a high volume of search and rescue calls.

The S&R folks are really adamant that they do not want to charge end-users for rescues, because that means that people will wait longer before calling them, resulting in more deaths and even higher overall costs because the rescues become more complicated.

That's a decent point, and I expect they know better than me since I'm no S&R specialist.

Also worth pointing out that as frequent as things like avalanches and outdoor rescues may seem — the higher risk is often driving the highway to the trailhead. It's a risk that we've come to accept as a society. We don't even think about it anymore.

Many who spend their lives in the mountains say that with proper training they'd rather do the risky activity (where there are many known ways in which risk can be mitigated) than die in some random / tragic car accident (where you can do everything right but still die).

BTW, fellow Canadian (Calgary) here, "hey" from the other side of the Rockies :-)

> and in many jurisdictions if the person getting rescued was doing something stupid, they foot the bill, not the public.

“Are liable to the public to reimburse” rather than “foot”; the distinction is critical because the rescued individual may not have the resources to actually pay or may be impossible to collect from. The more expensive the rescue is, naturally, the more likely this is to be the case.

FWIW search and rescue in most of the US (and, I think, Canada) is volunteer-based and funded mostly by donations from the community. Some areas have laws that allow for them to recover rescue costs from people found to be in some way negligent. Even the most notorious of these areas (New Hampshire) doesn't tend to charge exorbitant amounts of money.

This is overall a really good system and the volunteers love doing it and are happy to do it. It struggles a little bit in areas with communities that can't afford to donate much to a SAR team.

To me, the logical compromise would be to require upfront payment of a bond that is (a) forfeited if you need rescue, and (b) doubled if you don't follow basic precautions before heading out.

Liberty can't be unconditional when your actions affect others. I see no philosophical objection to saying "you're free to do X, but you're the one paying the cost if it backfires."

> Should we stop people climbing mountains, paddling whitewater, skydiving or even just eating bacon all in the name of "public safety"?

Probably not, but neither should we be leaving bait out for them either.

They didn't infringe on anyone's rights here. The mountains and whitewater and sky and bacon are all still there. They moved a bus.

> The bus was moved for "public safety"

They removed the bus so it couldn't act like a moron magnet anymore. They didn't remove the location, they didn't fence it off, they didn't ban hiking. They didn't even impose an IQ test or a basic competency quiz for hiking. Anyone who wants to go out there and re-enact the McCandless Experience is still free to do so, and they're even still free to call SAR when their horrible lack-of-a-plan begins to cause them the predictable amount of personal discomfort.

I'm on a forum that's very outdoorsy (it's for an outdoor hobby and most of the best locations to do it are in BFE) and this story hit there too. While there's less ivory tower smugness, possibly a reflection of user demographics, McCandless is not exactly a popular figure over there either. It's understandable for an amateur to be under-prepared because you don't know what you don't know. It's understandable to be experienced and get into a crap situation because you planned to wing it and one of the variables you based your assumptions on changed. It's much less forgivable to be an amateur and also plan on winging it. The dude knew he hadn't lived in that environment before. He knew that he couldn't get food the ways he was accustomed to. He tried to dodge the stupid tax but he was so flagrant about it that luck couldn't justify not auditing him.

The quote is from an essay by an Alaskan Park Ranger not a "member of the public".

When people get into trouble, there is usually a something that could been done either in preparation or by exercising better judgement. McCandless didn't just miss a couple of esoteric preparation steps, he failed to take extremely basic precautions like bringing a map or sanity checking your plans with someone who has experience in the area.

As explained in the essay that quote is from, Alaskans get frustrated by the glorification of McCandless because he didn't show basic respect for the wilderness he claimed to love.

> The dynamics of this subject on HN in particular are really sort of obvious, given that McCandless has come up at least half-a-dozen times on HN over the years, a site not known for its enthusiasm for the outdoors. The treatment here is often about as embarrassing as someone might imagine the topic of machine learning to be on a forum for mushroom pickers.

Give the comments in this thread a read rather than projecting your own misconceptions and you will find there are a number of people with personal experience with wilderness and the Alaskan wilderness is specific.

>In almost every case, there's something that someone could point to that the victim did wrong

In fact, with many accidents, it's often a matter of compounding mistakes. (The victim didn't have a lot of experience, went out in worsening weather, lost the trail, and didn't have the gear to survive overnight.)

On the other hand, it's easy to identify "mistakes" in retrospect. Someone got caught in an avalanche so they "clearly" shouldn't have been somewhere that they could get caught in an avalanche--even if the danger was just moderate and the danger in that particular area is often moderate.

Which also speaks to your statistics comment of course. There are various levels of danger to many activities and you can reasonably reduce your chances of something going wrong but not eliminate them.

And, also of course, many people who don't participate in many of those activities see them as unreasonably dangerous. And, depending upon their political views, may think rescuing mountain climbers or even winter hikers as a waste of societal resources.

> In fact, with many accidents, it's often a matter of compounding mistakes.

Yep! One of my favorite elements to many backcountry accidents is what mountaineers call "summit fever". It's a prevalent bug in human psychology. It gets people into trouble in the wilderness all the time, and it has a close cousin in tech circles, the "sunk cost fallacy".

I was on a day hike up a mountain several years back with a group of friends and acquaintances. Some of the folks had really been wanting to get to the top of this particular mountain -- it's known for its views. It was late spring, and we had beautiful weather until we got maybe 3-4 miles in, closing in on the top. At that point there was thick snow still on the ground, it started to get foggy, and (I can't remember exactly why) the trail became harder to recognize.

We were equipped for a quick afternoon hike, nothing more -- some of us I think just had t-shirts and shorts -- and some of us started to get nervous. Others really wanted to keep going to the top, especially since we knew we were close (though not how close).

We did end up turning around and heading down after just a few hundred feet of walking in the snow. I wonder about our decision from time to time -- were we smart or overly cautious? Would it have been fine or a disaster? I guess there's no easy answer -- you can't know what would have happened.

It was the right call because even if you were overly cautious, you can always go back again.

Not necessarily. You could die and never get the chance, or whatever. There's certainly a cost that you're assuming by not going forward. Not saying it's super high, but it's non-zero.

Most people have a blind spot in poker. They think they won simply because they took the pot, when in reality they lost because the pot odds were too low to give them a positive expected value. The problem extends to analyzing hands after the fact. It's too easy to see the final outcome, and say, oh, I knew I should have folded, when the reality might be, no calling was the right thing to do given the information you had at the time. Playing a lot of poker taught me to ignore the feeling that I played wrong simply because I lost the pot, and instead analyze what happened, and whether or not I missed some key piece of information, or misinterpreted some behavior.

I would say, based on the information you had at the time. You made the smart play. Don't second guess based on possibly being closer than you realized, you were far enough that you couldn't see the end, that means (and most people don't realize this) that without any other information, you had even odds that you were at no more than the half way point (in terms of either time or distance). Maybe you can look back, and can say, "oh, I knew x at the time, I just forgot to take that into account, and it would have been enough to change the risk/reward equation. But any other analysis is dangerous to dwell on.

Interesting perspective, thanks.

You do the right thing. Nature can be cruel and merciless. And hypothermia is not just for winter.

There are countless histories in the Alps and the Pyrenees of weekend hikers that go up in t-shirts and shorts, and then suddenly the weather change... One of the members of the team fall with hypothermia and an heli need to be dispatched. Taking out resources for other rescues and putting the life of the rescuers at risk.

There are discussions in some European countries if the rescued people shall pay in case of fragrant unpreparedness, because it has begun to be quite common.

You said it's famous for its views, but I bet the view sucks when it's so foggy you can't see the trail.

Absolutely true :) I'm sure this had some effect in convincing the eager ones to turn around.

Saw this outsode the wilderness plenty of times as well. Hiking back down from half dome. At 5pm, miles from the summit groups in flip flops and a small water bottle, clearly exhausted and not sure what they were in for, asking if the were close. Nope, turn around folks and enjoy your walk.

I don't think this was just a case of statistics where someone caught a bad break. He had no workable plan for surviving out there, and he had no resources for self rescue. In my mind, a good outcome would have been the statistical oddity.

Did you show up at the Yukon without a map? Did you go hunting at -45C without a jacket? Did you try to fish without a rod?

No one is saying it's impossible to do what Chris attempted, but lots of people do say that he might not have died if he planned ahead a bit.

He died because he confused two similar plants. Probably having done some research contributed IMO.

I think it's pretty clear this isn't just about the bus.

It's the general issue of people who have the idea to live in or travel through the wilderness (worthy, IMO), but attempt it without a reasonable attempt at preparation.

It's worth calling out.

These people endanger their own lives -- I think unintentionally in most cases.

And they endanger the rescue workers whose job it is to help people in trouble, whatever the reason.

Hopefully calling this out will catch the attention of at least some of the right people, and there will be a few less of them and their rescuers injured or worse.

What are you on about? The ranger is not talking about the bus, he's talking about ill-prepared young men visiting Alaska's wilderness in general.

It's people being ill prepared in general. When I lived in Colorado I did a lot of hiking, and was always prepared to spend the night if needed.

Now I live on the coast and the most cut off I feel is when I go offshore fishing (particularly in a smallish center console). Even though you have a few friends with you, once you get 30+ miles offshore all you see in any direction is water. Going offshore fishing is more about preparation than almost anything else.

That quote is not referring exclusively to people who try to reach the bus and there's nothing hyperbolic about it. Alaska State Troopers conduct several hundred search and rescue missions each year (https://dps.alaska.gov/AST/SAR/Home), that number probably goes up when you include federal and state park rangers as well.

The ranger wasn't referring just to the bus but to all the people who do things like this.

This is off base - the article is about McCandless and people like him, not specifically people who have later gone to find his bus.

It's opinionated, but not far out there. He (McCandless) died due to a combination of poor preparation and compounded mistakes; it was almost certainly avoidable. There is an interesting question of how much responsibility individuals should take for this sort of thing.

Even if the ranger were referring only to the bus, does two search and rescue operations per year not prove the point?

>Since 1992, only two people have died trying to reach the bus

He wasn't just speaking of the bus, he meant the whole state of Alaska

Reply on news.ycombinator.com