[QUOTE] I think he's peaked now, though.[/QUOTE] as long as he's not got an evil twin...
They've been charging for rescues in the French Alps for years now but you can either pay separate insurance or join the BMC and get it free.
I see nothing wrong in charging for mountain rescue, as most people would be insured they may as well recover it. And they arn't they are just thick cunts
I see nothing wrong with charging for rescue as long as the people doing the rescuing are being paid to do it. The fact is that in this country they're all volunteers and often end up out of pocket for assisting in rescues.
We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the Thick cunts in trainers and light clothing and no clue. The Spaniards are talking about (have may actually introduced) full charge, but at the discretion of the MR team. This could be up to ¤7K for a small rescue and ¤Fuckbettersellthehouse for a full-blown effort. Heard a bod from a MR team yesterday saying it cost an average of £250/hour to run an MR team and that's not including chopper, etc. My sympathies have always been with the MR guys as, apart from the genuine accidents, a helluva lot of callouts are caused by numpties. Fwiw, I've never ventured on the hills without a reasonable idea of where I'm going, how long I'll be, and somebody knows when I'll be back, etc. I've seen and heard of too many fatalities in apparently benign terrain and weather that suddenly turned nasty.
Did you realise that MR teams are called out to assist in recovering someone who might have simply been walking along a footpath, slipped and broke their ankle? They don't have to be on a mountain, they just have to need recovering from somewhere that a normal ambulance crew wouldn't be able to cope unaided. They're also called out to recover farm animals that have slid down a gulley, trail riders and mountain bikers who've either fallen off or broken down and nut jobs that have decided to sit on a mountain until they freeze to death. They must be dividing the annual cost of operating a team by the number of hours they're out doing the business so in an ideal World it'd cost £10k/hour. I've climbed plenty of routes on mountains where I didn't have a clue how long it'd take to complete and I've also bivvied on mountains quite happy in the knowledge that some interfering **** might see my car still parked up at midnight and assume I was in the shit. I've also seen people stupid enough to leave a note inside their windscreen saying when they expected to be back return to find a smashed window and their car emptied of anything valuable.
Yep. Some years back some mates and I were winter climbing up on trinity buttress, there was deep snow but it was a beautiful clear sunny day. Having walked in, early in the morning, and been on the cliff for most of the day. When we finally topped out, the summit was mobbed by just such a crowd of poorly dressed tourists. Some had managed to scramble up the pyg track through the snow, using steps made by earlier, properly kitted out, walkers/climbers. Having no proper gear they were getting very cold and struggling to reverse their footsteps. Its much more dangerous going down than up, in those conditions. As we were walking down, we came across this group stalled at the top of a big, steep snow slope. They were trying to go back down but could see it was too dangerous for them to try. After about 10 minutes of lending them spare ice axes and cutting steps and trying to generally shepard them down safely. We gave up and fairly forceably sent them back to the summit to walk back down the far safer tourist track to Llanberis. The inconvenience of a long delay and having to get a taxi back up to their car at Pen-y-pass, was preferrable to having one of them slip and kill themselves.
Given no others were even on the road, they'd contend that you yourself were in danger. -- Beav VN 750 Zed 1000 OMF# 19
Heh. It's a risk you take, or not. I stopped just dumping my car and wandering off when I nearly caused a callout. The local MR were on alert after a stupid pair of so-called 'guides' of a party of walkers left a heart attack victim and his sister for later recovery and they couldn't be found. The bloke croaked it and so did his sister from exposure.
Kinetic energy is the important thing, surely? Unless you're trying to work out how far a pedestrian's going to bounce after a collision, that is.
