[pct-l] Sierra hikers misuse portable GPS trackers

[Jeffrey Olson]

I too find the fascination with technology, both electronic and gear 
related, to be curious.  It seems that the less experience a person has 
the more s/he deals with fear/anxiety with gear, which is fallacious.  
It's not gear that makes a person safe in the wilderness, it's a cool 
head in stressful moments, which comes from experience.  The hardest 
thing to do is to go to bed and stay there for two days while a storm 
blows through.  While I admire people starting a thru-hike with little 
experience to draw from, the naivety expressed can be dangerous... 


I remember in 05 on a long section hike I met three guys who had decided 
to go up the knife edge leading to Old Snowy and cross over the little 
glacier to camp in snowgrass flats (they were SOBO).  They got a mile or 
so above Elk Pass before turning around.  The story being passed around 
was they came back down wide-eyed saying, "You could die up there."  
They'd started at Stevens Pass and were just getting their feet wet.  
Later they developed some common sense...  They mailed gear home at 
every post office for the first month... 


Jeff, just Jeff, said in the cadence - "Bond, James Bond." 


Diane at Santa Barbara Hikes dot com wrote:
> People worry their heads off over taking a walk in a forest. They  
> make "bomb-proof" gear as if sleeping on a bed of pine duff is the  
> equivalent of going to war. People are so nature deficient they can't  
> even put it into perspective anymore. It's sad.
>
>   
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