[pct-l] Two Hikers Rescued on San Jacinto

[Charles Doersch]

Speaking for myself and my 4-man tribe, as 2012 thru-hikers-to-be (yet no
novices at gauging our own "skill sets and strategies" against prevailing
conditions no matter what they may be) -- we have found this board useful
when it provides insight how others are dealing/have dealt with prevailing
conditions and unforeseen/unforeseeable conditions.

I'm also a university professor, and am wayyyyy too familiar with the
culture of blaming that seems to inevitably develop here and there in
organizations (universities seem to do this big time). This kind of rhetoric
and reasoning quickly devolve, in my experience, to nastiness at the
personal level, and (if taken seriously) paralysis at the organizational
level: organizations become paralyzed by all the "what if's" -- and must
make all their decisions on anything they do, say, or suggest based on
worst-case scenarios, and they must presume largely inflexible, unadaptable
responses by group members to the predictable or unpredictable that may
occur. That demeans us all.

No, I do not hold an organization (those holding the ADZ bash) responsible
or irresponsible for not knowing ahead of time what conditions might
day-to-day occur in various stretches of the trail .... and I don't hold
them responsible or irresponsible for whatever successful or unsuccessful
problem-solving strategies I utilize facing those challenges.

@postholer, with all due respect: You have posted: "Choosing an artificial
start date a year in advance and calling it
"Annual Day Zero" as the ADZ does without knowledge of future trail
conditions IS irresponsible."

Your reasoning then can be laid out as following: "It is irresponsible to
choose a start date in advance without knowledge of future trail
conditions."  [A is irresponsible unless B]

The corollary of your reasoning is, since we all know that no one can know *
future* trail conditions, that no start date can be chosen responsibly.

Well, as any of us can see, this is nonsense. And I'm sure that's not what
you mean. But it is where your line of reasoning seems to have led -- at
least here.

It seems self-evident that those of us who start our hike on any date --
whether a group of well-meaning folks imply by setting an ADZ date that a
certain start date is often taken  -- take responsibility for our own
decisions.

I'm not entitled to omniscient advice.

HYOH.

~Charles Doersch



On Mon, May 2, 2011 at 3:02 PM, PCT List <pctlist at gmail.com> wrote:

> Choosing an artificial start date a year in advance and calling it
> "Annual Day Zero" as the ADZ does without knowledge of future trail
> conditions IS irresponsible.
>
> Suggesting a March start date in one of the heaviest snow years on
> record IS irresponsible.
>
> I am ill-equipped to make judgements on the intelligence of the hiking
> community. From your statement you seem to be the authority on that as
> well.
>
> -postholer
>
> Greg Hummel writes:
> It seems that you are implying that just because someone suggests a
> particular starting date, that the aspiring hikers have no
> intelligence to judge their own skills and strategy whether to follow
> the suggested date or modify to their particular skill set. I think
> you under-estimate the intelligence of the aspiring thru-hikers and
> are omitting the plentiful caveats that Ned has made to his advice. We
> are all ultimately responsible for our actions!
>
>
> S
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