I think I’ve finally figured out the difference between lemmings and people.
Against all reason, lemmings jump off the cliff.
People jump into the mountains, also against all reason.
Then, the sun goes down. They get lost. And because they’re dressed in capri pants and cowboy boots – and street shoes, high heels, gumboots, sneakers, purses, cotton hoodies, no jacket, and the proverbial Pekinese lap dog – they’re in danger of freezing to death and have to be saved by North Shore Rescue.
Lemmings, at least, have fur. They’re always appropriately dressed.
I mean, really. Who are all those people wandering around in the wilderness in their summer clothes, completely unprepared …for anything?
Do they stand there and look up at the snow-capped mountains and say to themselves: “Today, I’m going to put on my T-shirt, capris and cowboy boots and go get lost”?
You wouldn’t think so, but it happens nearly every week. Check that. North Shore Rescue is involved in an average of 79 events a year, so it happens more than every week.
The latest are a couple of intrepid explorers who had to be rescued Dec. 1 on the Dog Mountain trail, 600 metres from the Mount Seymour parking lot.
As usual “they were not properly dressed for the conditions.”
A team of 12 rescuers had to be deployed to save these people from themselves. The resources expended on saving people from themselves are not insignificant. North Shore Rescue is a volunteer organization, but it still spends $400K a year on training and equipment, and the volunteers average 500 hours a year wandering around in the dark looking for people who are lucky they don’t get lost on the way from the bed to the ensuite, never mind the deep winter woods.
In their defence, The Dog Mountain trail is characterized as an easy, two-hour hike with minimum elevation.
It’s also clearly seasonal, i.e., June to October. It takes a certain kind of intrepid explorer to set off in the late afternoon, out of season. The same kind of hero who thinks the Grouse Grind is closed for everybody else, that “Bounds” are just a handy way to go “Out of Bounds” when you’re skiing or snowboarding, and that it’s OK to go for a hike any time of the year in cowboy boots.
There is an argument, a strong compelling argument if you ask me, to make these people pay for their inclination to wander off the grid into trouble. And when the rescue helicopter costs $2,500 an hour of taxpayers’ money (ahem, that’s yours and mine), it makes dollars and sense.
But North Shore Rescue points out that people delay calling for help for themselves or their loved ones because they’re afraid they’ll be forced to pay for their rescue. Never mind what that says about how they value their lives, it also puts the rescuers at greater risk, as timing or weather conditions are often no longer on their side.
So North Shore Rescue continues to bail out these boneheads, and I guess that’s better than leaving them out there to figure out how to find their own way back to the Mount Seymour parking lot, even though it is only 600 metres away.
The problem with this beneficence is that it allows the above-mentioned boneheads to think that if it all goes round in circles, they just dial 9-1-1 and wait for the guardian angels. Of course, because they are boneheads, it’s likely their phones aren’t charged or they haven’t figured out that reception on Crown Mountain is spotty, at best.
As long as we live five minutes from a hinterland that goes all the way to Alaska, some fool is going to wander off the beaten path once or twice a week. And, life being a series of bitter little ironies, I’m aware that the next fool could be yours truly, after twisting an ankle while running somewhere in Lynn Canyon. At least I think it’s Lynn Canyon …didn’t I turn left back there at the mossy tree?
Hmm … they’re all mossy trees.
Journalist and communications consultant Paul Sullivan has been a North Vancouver resident since the fall of the Berlin Wall and the rise of Madonna. He can be reached via email at [email protected].
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