Common Errors Lead to Serious Consequences

These common errors lead to serious consequences... These are based on actual rescue missions.   Please take NOTE:

• Climbing Mt. Shasta alone. I couldn't find anyone to go, and I was only going to go a short ways.
• Climbing or traversing ice fields alone or with a partner who has little or no ice axe arrest skills.
• Leaving your partner behind to "wait" for you. Usually because they can't continue for whatever reason. If your partner "can't make it". . . return with them to base camp.
• Not wearing a life jacket. Most drowning victims are "good swimmers", and they were going to be in the water for only a "minute or so" (crossing a river or lake).
• Leaving your equipment or summit pack behind (including medications) because it was heavy, you didn't think you would need it, and you were just a little ways from the top.
• Novices climbing too difficult a route, thinking it didn't look that hard, but pushed onward beyond their physical ability to the point of no return.
• "Desk job" workers trying to hunt too far in too rugged terrain without first building up their physical stamina and condition.
• Getting disoriented in a white out blowing blizzard snowstorm. It came up so suddenly and you end up a "ridge or two" away from your believed location. You didn't think the weather would change that fast. After all, it was 70 degrees in town!! .
• A VFR (visual flight regulations) pilot trying to just "make it" to the next landing field through a summer squall and thunder storm. Better a day late!!
• Climbing UP a steep rock surface is a lot easier than trying to climb back DOWN without proper equipment. Think!!
• While hiking around the lake, you couldn't have been more than a few hundred yards from the child. . .and you told them not to go near the water. It happened so fast.
• A snowboarder looking for that thrill of all thrills...back country deep powder...ends up head over heels. Literally. The only thing visible is the bottom of the board.