Posted by David Sherman on Friday, April 09, 2004 at 10:58AM :
In Reply to: Kids, 4X4, and ......... posted by Joe Lorenzino on Thursday, April 08, 2004 at 10:33PM :
When cell phones were just starting to get popular, there were 2 guys were up in a cabin on top of a mountain just outside of Everett and the weather got stormy and snowy. After a couple days they were running low on food. The trail is about 7 miles along a ridge to the road. The old lookout cabin is tight and sound, being lashed to the rock with cables and having withstood 50 years of serious wind, but you can reach out of the window on the east side and drop a rock 2000' straight down, so I don't doubt it's scary being there in a whiteout with a west wind howling. The 2 guys were scared to hike out so they called out on the cell phone and got the search & rescue to come up and "rescue" them. So now there's something like 8 guys hiking in and out in the snow and rain and wind to help 2 guys hike out, plus all the vehicles and support people. Maybe it was a good thing. Maybe the 2 guys would have froze to death or fallen off the hill if they'd hiked out on their own, but I know one thing -- if they hadn't had a cell phone they would have either sat tight and got hungry until the weather cleared or they would have made their best effort to hike out by themselves. Don't even get me started on GPSs.