Do you stay or do you go???

[outdoor_lover]

https://www.cnn.com/2023/09/19/us/arizo ... zgUsj9Iu-c

Apparently, they all left. There may be more to this story than meets the eye, but I don't think the story is that inaccurate. When I suffered a traumatic knee injury on a hot, humid day in MN, I literally went into shock and was freezing my pumpkin off 30 minutes after it happened. I would hate to think about being alone with that in the middle of the wilderness because my companions wanted to press on. The only person left behind was the injured party. I just find it difficult to believe that not one other person would stay, at least until help arrived. If everyone wanted to continue the trip so badly, they should have all stayed until the rescue was complete, that way no one who stayed would have to abort their trip, or hike alone to "catch up" with the others.

I've been in this scenario on the other side, but it was a day hike. Some of you were with me. It was a heat exhaustion case on a shuttle hike. We had only been hiking for about 45 minutes when one of our party went down. It took a bit to determine the cause, because it wasn't a hot day, it was still "winter" basically. We got the person cooled down, but knew that it would be reckless for her to continue. She was feeling good enough after a bit, she felt like she could hike back out, but as a group, we decided that she wouldn't be doing it alone. One of our party accompanied her back to the TH, and the rest of us continued. They met us for lunch at the end of the hike and she was fine by then.

What do you think? Would you stay or would you go? I went, but only because my companion was being escorted out and was in very capable hands. But I never would have let her walk back out on her own, I was ok with aborting the entire hike and I think everyone felt the same way. But when one person in our group volunteered to go back with her, the rest of us were also ok with continuing.

[chumley]

edit: In related news, the Phoenix Fire Department is looking into permanently closing all hiking trails within the Phoenix metropolitan area in an effort to avoid a similar incident.

[cactuscat]

The guy has been trying to set the record straight for days, but the real story doesn't get as much traction.

https://www.12news.com/article/life/inj ... ItmSYj2BTI

[ShatteredArm]

@cactuscat
The correction doesn't get as much traction because there's nothing to really be outraged about now... Other than the fact that people were way too quick to jump to conclusions, and SAR made an asinine assumption about the group.

[chumley]

It’s not a terrible idea to apply what you learned from this to other things that you read. Ultimately the original post was a failure of journalism. A news outlet posted a story based on a single source and made zero attempt to corroborate the story or seek confirmation from another source. This happens every day across the full spectrum of news.

It is also worth remembering that whether someone works for a SAR team, sheriffs office, forest ranger, phx fire, or any position that we might consider to be “credible”, they are ultimately just human beings, subject to the same potential for errors, exaggeration, emotion, etc. as everyone else.

[ShatteredArm]

@chumley
SAR made a completely asinine assumption that they made a call at 6pm...and then left. Like, they just started hiking right as it started getting dark, apparently. That's what the Sheriff's office reported, and what the media picked up on. Can't really blame them for that. The real problem is that people just wanted to be outraged about something. It was pretty obvious to me that they couldn't call for a rescue at the location where the injury occurred (although it turned out to be for a different reason), and that they didn't just "call for a rescue and continue their hike" - despite any "failure of journalism", or terrible assumptions by SAR or Sheriff's offices.

[rcorfman]

Kyle even made a video because of the crap the group of hikers have been receiving. This viral news story you saw is 100% FAKE - here's the truth

[chumley]

Kyle

Who?

[CannondaleKid]

Who?

The video is on the "Kyle Hates Hiking" YouTube channel.