Hey friends.

I suspect quite a few of you read the article in the Oregonian (or O-Live) about Derek Mayomac, the young man who broke his ankle while descending Mt. Adams and was missing for five days in the wilderness. If you want to read the article, the link is here:

http://www.oregonlive.com/news/index.ssf/2008/10/missing_climber_found_alive_on.html

For those of you who haven't read the article yet, Derek was found and rescued a couple days ago by a tracking dog and a search & rescue team. (The dog's name is Trulee, for all you dog lovers.) When they found him, Derek was in the process of crawling down the mountain with his broken ankle dragging behind him. He did not have a bivouac kit or anything like that, so he just huddled between rocks at night. He drank water from streams and ate centipedes to keep up his strength. The dude must have been in remarkably good shape.

Mt. Adams is 12,277 feet high. Derek fell and broke his ankle at about 11,600 feet, as he was returning down off the mountain. When they found him he was at about 6100 feet. Most of the way down the mountain he crawled. When his knees became too raw and sore he turned around and scooted backwards on his butt.

If you read the article on O-Live you'll find about 40 comments from readers at the end. Some of the commenters raise an interesting point, which brings us to the subject of today's poll. It seems a few people are unhappy about taxpayer dollars being used to subsidize search & rescue teams. (See, for example, the comments of Coaststeve at the end of the O-Live article.) I guess helicopter rescues are pretty expensive.

People who complain about the use of taxpayer dollars to rescue lost or injured mountain climbers argue that a person who willfully engages in risky behavior without being properly equipped should not be bailed out at taxpayer expense. I am an avid outdoorsman myself, and frankly I am glad that county and state governments pay for search and rescue operations. But I became curious after reading some of the comments at the end of the O-Live article. So I decided to include a little poll with this fanpost to see how many people nowadays believe that hikers (or hunters/mushroom pickers/etc.) should be left to fend for themselves when they have an accident or get lost.