About Those Climbers
In the shadow of the Kim tragedy, we did not pick up the thread of the three climbers lost on Mt. Hood--one of whom, Kelley James, was found dead in a snow cave on Sunday. The other two have not yet been found, but despite their experience and the gear they carried with them, the prospects are horribly grim. We didn't think we'd have much to add in covering the story.
Obviously, this is very different scenario than the Kim family, and yet people are pretty pissed off about it--there's a shitstorm brewing over at Gothamist (one of the pair still missing is a Brooklyn man).
Many people seem to think that these men are selfish, with no regard for their families when they undertake something risky like climbing in the winter. However, unless they took up climbing after they got married, which does not appear to be the case, then their wives knew what they were getting into when they married them. It's probably part of why they loved them. You marry a firefighter, you know what you're in for. We live with the off chance that our beloved could hurt himself snowboarding or mountain biking--we're also thankful he has no apparent interest in more high-risk sports like mountaineering or clas-5 white-water kayaking. This is not to diminish what those climbers' families are going through because that is unimaginable, but it seems myopic for sideline observers to simply say these men were wholeheartedly selfish.
There's another line of griping about how much the rescue will cost in total once this is all over. On this Seattlest must call bullshit. Humans do a lot of stupid, asinine things that other people ultimately pay for somehow. These men were experienced, and while some have argued that they chose the wrong time of year for this climb, they took all the necessary steps to be as prepared as possible. We'll be curious to hear if any of them had climbing insurance to cover a potential rescue effort--while obviously (and perhaps problematically) not required, this is becoming more common. That said, they are active, intelligent people and I'd rather we pay money trying to rescue them than dealing with say, assholes sending text messages from their Blackberry while driving on the freeway or idiots trying to smuggle dope across the border in a blizzard.
