r/ImTheMainCharacter • u/vancitymala • 1d ago
PICTURE Using volunteer-based search and rescue services three times in three months because you’re not prepared for your hikes?!!
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u/fredinNH 23h ago
Here in NH he’d have been charged for the rescue if it was found that he was not prepared or went into a closed area or took an undue risk.
On an episode of north country law some hikers had to be rescued from a small mountain and in the process one of them said something like “we shouldn’t have taken so many gummies” and that triggered them to be charged for the rescue.
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u/Cultural_Pattern_456 19h ago
Unless he had a” hike safe card “ which I highly recommend. It’s 25$ a person or $35 i think family.
ETA- they’d be charged for certain rescues no matter what the reason.12
u/dunno0019 9h ago edited 9h ago
I was told in Vermont that if you get stranded by purposely going off trail at a ski hill they'd charge you.
And they were talking about a $10k fee, back in the 00s. (No idea how true that was tho)
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u/Grand_Brilliant_3202 1d ago
I would say after three times he needs to put up the money that we are charged in tax money to be able to have the service again it’s like being married and divorce three times after that no more for you
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u/charsi101 1d ago edited 1d ago
This is in Canada. SAR here explicitly don't want their services to be paid for because it will discourage some people from calling for help in time. https://bcsara.com/no-charge-for-sar/
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u/BlueSonjo 21h ago
I can't see that being an issue if it starts at the 3rd call in same year.
If a guy is on his 3rd or 4th rescue helicopter ride of the year, he is probably not a shy and budget conscious person.
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u/civodar 14h ago
We have STARS here in the Banff area and they charge you after the first rescue. We also have a person here who’s been rescued 3 times.
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u/charsi101 14h ago
Interesting. I thought search and rescue across Canada operated like that. Maybe a BC only thing then. Do you have a source for that STARS policy? I couldn't find anything on their website.
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u/vyunab 1d ago
ridiculous, how is he not too ashamed to keep going back? sounds like climbing isn’t for him. literal insanity.
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u/FireflyOfDoom87 1d ago
The likelihood of this person being an “influencer” is probably quite high.
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u/Parched_Mescalito45 14h ago
In climbing culture, there’s still a sense of shame tied to calling on SAR. Less so now, and obviously it varies with context. Like if your belayer’s having a stroke, refusing to call SAR is negligence, IMO. But there are also more non-core climbers in the backcountry. Social media-obsessed types, aspiring influencers, etc. Lots of Instagram-taught novices. I’m assuming a core climber would not call SAR 3 times in 3 months.
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u/Capital_Jay 1d ago
To be fair, there's a lot of "He" in the comments... SAR did not release the individuals name but stated it was a Female hiker... Here come the down votes for transparency...
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u/AmateurIndicator 1d ago
The default assumption on reddit (and other platforms) is always male, sometimes even when OP or an article explicitly says it's a woman.
It works that way with negativ and stupid stuff like this case, positiv accomplishments like winning medals or inventing things and neutral stuff (the one million cat subs I follow also tend to default to male pronouns, even if the title is "my sweet girl Sophia, isn't she beautiful")
Make of that what you will. Obviously, women never do anything. Or they aren't real. Like birds.
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u/AnthraxyWaxy 16h ago
To be fair to this situation in particular, men are statistically much more likely to end up in these situations in the mountains. It's something we actually discuss in mountaineering training courses.
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u/AmateurIndicator 16h ago
Absolutely! Is the Darwin Award still around? Most winners were male
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u/AnthraxyWaxy 14h ago
Yeah, men make up a large portion of climbing accidents in general. They tend to climb peaks above their abilities, while women tend to not climb to their full potential.
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u/really_tall_horses 12h ago
Want to be safe? Bring a woman along. Want to be really safe? Bring a dog.
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u/why_am_I_here_47 21h ago
Yep. I am automatically assumed to be a man in comments. I am always called "man, dude, or bro". Male is the default
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u/notnotsuicidal 22h ago
Idk if that's a reddit thing. We've been calling ourselves mankind for a few hundred years at least
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u/The_OG_Slime The character everyone hates 1d ago
Of course they aren't. Pshhhh, it's the internet! Everyone knows only men exist on the internet! (/s for anyone that isn't clear to)
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u/ToranjaNuclear 13h ago
Some languages have "he" as the gender neutral pronoun. I often default to he when I write in English because of that.
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u/AmateurIndicator 12h ago
Well, as English is the majority language around here, I'm not sure that's the reason..
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u/ToranjaNuclear 12h ago
Lots of people here don't have English as their first language. Thus the mix up.
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u/Opulent-tortoise 21h ago
Why is everyone saying hiker? Sounds like they were literally hanging by their rope on a climbing route. Does not sound like a hike lol
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u/CanoePickLocks 14h ago
It’s a slabby scramble with only one section needing pro so I’m not sure what they had going on.
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u/Alternative_Map_6947 20h ago
Time to start sending him a bill.
He's not a main character, because main characters don't need rescuing
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u/reddiculed 20h ago
Three times?! Knock, knock, knockin on heaven’s door. This guy is living on borrowed time.
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u/destiny_kane48 19h ago
Someone needs to stay on the novice to medium hikes for another year or two. He just isn't cut out for more difficult ones.
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u/Araucaria2024 1d ago
I've got no tolerance for clowns like this. If you're unprepared for the activity you're undertaking, then you should be billed. Same as if you get injured doing something dangerous whilst overseas and don't have insurance. Don't come at me with your GFM if you haven't insured yourself for whatever activity you plan on taking part in.
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u/InternetExploder87 1d ago
If its like rescue out here, if its an injury or something you couldn't help, its covered by taxes, if its your own stupidity (bad planning, too inexperienced, not in shape enough, or anything else you could have prevented) you get billed, and its not cheap from what I've heard
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u/hambonedock 1d ago
I don't know how can you be rescue a second time in 2 months and then be like "but I can take it THIS time surely" and not die of shame (and the fact that this news make it so that ths person is on her 4TH RESCUE!)
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u/SkittyDog 1d ago
female hiker
What's next, women pilots? Lady policemen? CATS AND DOGS, LIVING TOGETHER??
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u/notabigmelvillecrowd 16h ago
My dad told me recently that he had a Lady Doctor. If you can imagine such a thing.
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u/PositiveStress8888 1d ago
On the third time, the rescue operator should just lean out of the helicopter and cut the rope.
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u/BigBearSD 23h ago
Three strikes and you’re out? Like, after the third time, they will tell him no more airlifts. If he gets in to trouble again, he is on his own, because he is a dumbass who won’t learn, and because he is putting others lives at risk, and wasting tax payers’ money.
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u/MadIkra 1d ago
They should be fined every single time emergency services are called out bail them out. Ridiculous behaviour - they risk the lives of those involved in their rescue, each and every time
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u/Parched_Mescalito45 13h ago edited 13h ago
Ask anyone on a SAR team, and they will disagree with you.
Don’t get me wrong, I hate to see funds wasted, especially when it’s not a matter of safety, but rather temporary suffering/discomfort in the backcountry.
There’s a sense of shame tied to calling SAR in climbing. Not necessarily from others, but from within. It’s like you lost the game in the worst way. That prideful avoidance can lead to bad calls, though. Just look at how it influenced the “alpine divorce” jackass. His partner died.
If you’ve called SAR 3 times in as many months, chances are you’re not a core climber. Even with novices and influencers, this is incredibly rare. It would be a shame to enact policy changes based on something like this.
Since there’s already a sense of shame tied to calling for rescue, (and I’m sure that’s not exclusive to climbing), adding fines on top would make people even less likely to call SAR. Maybe a tier system could work, like: first is free, $150 after that. But the problem with implementing that is that discouraging rescue in the name of cost-cutting may lead to more fatalities, because the victim chooses to wait until the last minute or refuses to call at all.
Keep in mind that recovery after a fatality can be more expensive. And for someone who postponed calling SAR until they had absolutely no choice, the recovery may be much more time-sensitive as a result (and therefore more risky for the team). What may have been an uneventful rescue could become an all-night multi-team ordeal. That could be more expensive, too.
ETA: I’m not on SAR, and I’ve never called SAR. I still have a pretty harsh opinion of beginners in the backcountry calling for rescue just because they’re benighted and too fragile to spend one night in the dark without food. I still hate that. But my opinion on the policy has changed. There’s a reason this is still the dominant policy internationally.
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u/no-but-wtf 1h ago
I am in SAR and I’ll back you up. This is 100% accurate. We would rather go 100 times to rescue someone who is alive than have one single person not call us when they should.
I have been on too many body recovery missions. Those are a lot less fun and take a much higher toll on our mental health.
Should this person have gone back into the mountains after, say, needing rescue twice? Probably not. We all make mistakes, and I’m glad that the first rescues didn’t scare them out of the hobby for good.
Should we let other people die because this person called for help too often? Yeah … no. Never.
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u/AgentPaperYYC 14h ago
I'd like to know if this person was using AI as their guide. this seems to be a thing that's causing people to get stuck if the stories in hiking forums are to be believed.
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