[pct-l] Excessive Information Gathering on Hikers

[Tom Griffin]

If you haven't read Nadine's journal entry about this, I think it 
settles this contentious discussion. She is extremely grateful that 
people cared so much. She also explains the local political context. In 
the Seattle area we just had an incident where a woman was trapped in 
her car for eight days after running off the road into a brushy creek 
bed (she lived but the sheriff's office was criticized for not starting 
the search earlier). This put a lot of pressure on the authorities to 
start any missing persons search early. That incident also made the 
local TV stations hungry for more "lost" tragedies. Here is the most 
relevant excerpt from her journal:

"...from piecing it all together in the last day or so, i guess what had 
happened is that one of the other thru-hikers declared that the pct 
section was impassible and told the local trail angels that chris and i 
were still unaccounted for. they in turn called 911, and the officials 
started up a full scale search in response to some political pressure. 
several tragedies had occurred out here in the last couple of weeks. a 
woman who had driven off the road and hadn't been found for 8 days... a 
father and his 12 year old son were found dead on a glacier nearby after 
spending 4 days missing before the search parties went after them. they 
didn't want to let this one get away from them... so they pulled out all 
the stops to find us. and they did an amazing job, and it all amounted 
to a great training exercise. it was the media that went overboard by 
sensationalizing the whole thing.

in the end, i think the search parties were immensely relieved that we 
weren't in any danger in the first place. the first words they said to 
us were, "hey, mind if we all get a group photo?".

the hikers, rescuers, angels and everyone involved showed 
incredible selflessness and diligence in taking care of their own... and 
i'm even more awed by the power of community. the dinsmore's (trail 
angels) of skykomish are parents to us all out here. i just have to stop 
and appreciate how significant it is for anyone to CARE so much about 
total strangers.

maybe there is hope for us after all."

The full journal entries are at <http://blog.gopacha.org/>.

I just want to add to the many voices thanking the Dinsmores, Sauffleys, 
Heitmans and all the other trail angels for all that they do for the PCT 
community. As Nadine said, "maybe there is hope for us all after all."

Tom "Bullfrog" Griffin
Seattle
PCT Pages: http://griffinte.home.comcast.net/pct.html