How to Stay Safe While Mountaineering

Or white-water rafting. Or hot-air ballooning. It's easy.

Suppose that the national government is responsible for responding to calls for help. Calculate the average cost per person of rescue attempts over the past five years. Could be $50,000. Set that figure – not 10% of it – as the entrance fee for a license to climb/raft/float. Issue a receipt.

Now the climber can go climbing and when stranded the call for help goes answered.

Now this time the costs might be above $5,000 or they might be below $5,000, but in either case, the rescue takes place and the $4,999 is forfeited by the government.

I hope that the forfeit goes entirely to the team/body that effected the rescue.

My impression is that rescued climbers are full of joy; they don't seem to complain about being rescued and they went into this climb some weeks after receiving their license to climb, so they have had several sober moments to put costs in perspective.

The government can’t complain.

And we can go on using the entertaining accounts of mountain side rescues in the daily news.

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