Much Talk, Little Action on Charging for Rescues

At national parks and forests across the land, rangers are counting up the misadventures of 1998. As usual, the tally of search-and-rescue operations runs into the thousands, and rangers have tales of good luck and bad, of bravery (mostly among rescue workers) and ignorance (mostly among us civilians).

Sometimes these stories end in death--more than 90 visitors died in national parks in 1997. And occasionally, if park officials believe that a rescued visitor deserves to be hit up with bills for his or her own recovery, they end in debt.

But after a flurry of talk about billing reckless adventurers for their rescues--which can cost $10,000 or more per incident--park officials now say rescue billings are not a trend. In fact, most national park officials have found it difficult to collect on bills. Los Angeles County, which runs rescues in nearby Angeles National Forest, has taken such steps, but only rarely.

Still, before you venture into the wild, remember that death and injury aren’t the only troubles that risky behavior can bring.

Consider the two local snowboarders in their 20s who left the boundaries of the Snow Crest Ski Resort, about 30 miles north of Glendale, in February. They got stranded in a cave overnight, and more than 24 hours passed before a platoon of searchers found them. They came out healthy. But it didn’t end there.

Five months later, a jury found the snowboarders guilty of misdemeanor trespassing (when they strayed into forbidden territory) and the district attorney’s office sought payment for the county’s costs. The snowboarders were each assessed an $800 fine and ordered to pay $3,500 of the county’s rescue expenses.

“We don’t want to discourage people from using a beautiful national resource,” said deputy district attorney Lonnie Felker, who prosecuted that case. But “if they know that what they’re doing is wrong,” Felker said, state law provides that lost or wounded hikers, climbers, boarders and others can be billed up to $5,000 each.

But most national parks have had little success in recovering costs.

In the early 1990s, after a spate of rescues on Mt. McKinley in Alaska’s Denali National Park, some involving poorly prepared and under-equipped climbers, park officials wondered aloud about get-tough tactics. But that raised questions of insurance (for mountaineers, there isn’t much) and whom to bill.

“It’s pretty subjective,” said Denali lead climbing ranger Daryl Miller. “Are you negligent if you got lost with a compass?”

About 1,200 climbers try to scale the 20,320-foot McKinley in a typical year, and figures since 1989 show that one in 70 either requires rescue or dies on the mountain. In 1998, Denali rangers reported nine major search-and-rescue operations--their fewest in seven years--and three fatalities, at a combined cost of $181,163.

Rather than hand out rescue bills, Denali has tried to reduce risks by requiring registration 60 days in advance and assessing all climbers a $150 fee to underwrite education efforts.

Mt. McKinley, risky as it may be, accounts for a small share of the roughly $3.5 million spent yearly on searches and rescues in national parks. Most rescues are made in areas like Yosemite and the Grand Canyon, where hikers are less experienced and enormous visitor traffic meets perilous geography.

At Yosemite National Park, destination of 4 million travelers yearly, rangers made 140 search-and-rescues in the first 11 months of 1998. The cost: about $410,000.

The last time the park billed someone for a rescue was in 1996, park spokeswoman Christine Cowles said, when a pair of Austrian rock climbers went up without proper equipment, even though they knew a storm was coming. When the storm arrived, the two had to be pulled off the rock by helicopter, at a cost of $13,325. After a U.S. magistrate found the pair guilty of “creating a hazardous condition,” the park service sent the two visitors a bill for that amount.

“We’ve been trying to collect it, but legally we don’t have much leeway” for collecting from foreign nationals, Cowles said.

In Sequoia and Kings Canyon national parks, which get about 1.5 million visitors yearly, rangers logged 55 search-and-rescue operations in 1998 and spent $217,145 on them in the last fiscal year. One of the most elaborate searches, said spokeswoman Kris Fister, involved five August days of “ground-pounding” for a Ventura father and son lost on a Kings Canyon backpacking trip. Fister said the two took no unreasonable actions and were found without major injuries. The tab for helicopter air time, rangers’ work hours and other efforts was $71,870, which the park service absorbed.

At the Grand Canyon, where many of the 5 million annual visitors underestimate the demands of canyon hiking, authorities make it standard to bill ailing hikers who are carried out by ranger, mule or helicopter. Of 397 search-and-rescue incidents within the park in 1997--which cost a combined $595,637--about 215 were medical evacuations billed to hikers. The usual bill, covering transport to the canyon’s South Rim clinic, is about $2,200. Over the years, rangers say, about three of every four evacuated hikers have paid their bills.

In Angeles National Forest, where 32 million visitors last year communed, mostly in the San Gabriel Mountains, lost and wounded visitors keep eight nearby search-and-rescue teams busy. The L.A. County Sheriff’s Department, which covers the forest and other remote areas, conducted 307 search-and-rescue missions in 1997.

The district attorney’s office decides when to seek a court order for payment after a rescue. Over the last 15 years, county officials estimate, the county has brought no more than a dozen such cases.

“If it’s completely accidental and people didn’t do anything stupid,” said a sheriff’s spokesman, “then they won’t be billed for it.”

Reynolds travels anonymously at the newspaper’s expense, accepting no special discounts or subsidized trips. He welcomes comments and suggestions, but cannot respond individually to letters and calls. Write Travel Insider, Los Angeles Times, Times Mirror Square, Los Angeles 90053 or e-mail chris.reynolds@latimes.com.