High-Tech Gear = High-Level Trouble for Wilderness Naifs

It’s never been so easy to get into so much trouble in the back country.

Outdoor adventurers with enough money and daring can go places and do things that were once out of reach for most. With four-wheel drives, better snowmobiles, lighter snowshoes, global positioning devices, climbing gear and other gadgets, almost anyone can get in over his head in a hurry.

And once they’re out in the wilds, too many recreationists carry a false sense of security along with all their high-tech gear. The cellular telephone has become standard equipment in many backpacks; never mind they don’t work unless there’s a repeater in the line of sight.

Emergency dispatchers have endless stories about people who call for help but can’t say where they are.

“I don’t know. I see a lot of trees and rocks,” they say.

“I call it the 911 society,” says Tom Muntz, a California Highway Patrol pilot who flies rescue missions in the rugged back country of the Sierra Nevada. “People say, ‘I don’t have any responsibility for taking care of myself because I can just call 911.’ ”

Already this winter, 13 snowmobilers have died from avalanches in the United States, up from only five last year and five the season before that, said Karl Birkeland, an avalanche specialist with the Gallatin National Forest in Montana.

Others have died of exposure after being lost or trapped in the unforgiving winter wilderness.

Fortunately for many others who wound up in trouble, rescuers have a few high-tech tools of their own, including infrared heat sensors, avalanche beacons and helicopters.

All that stuff is costly to deploy, however. And it still can’t keep people from going places they probably don’t belong.

“So many of these different technological wonders don’t do you any good unless you practice with them and you maintain your proficiency,” said Ken Jourdan, deputy chief of the California Office of Emergency Services law enforcement branch.

“I don’t care what the technological tool or gadget is, I have a problem with relying on that one piece of equipment and getting yourself in trouble because of it. When that unit fails, you have got to be able to do the job without it.”

The outdoors have never been more accessible or popular, particularly for those in the West. Sales of outdoor recreation equipment are soaring, and the number of people visiting state and national parks is up too.

Snowmobiles are lighter, more powerful and better at accessing steep terrain. All-terrain vehicles are dropping in price, allowing more people access to remote canyons, desert land and mountain regions where they break down or run out of gas.

Even experienced backpackers and skiers are taking advantage of the new technology and falling into its traps as they work their way deeper into the trees and granite of mountain ranges or the arid flatlands of the desert.

Global Positioning Systems are sold at most major sporting goods stores, but can be complicated to use. The GPS land navigator calibrates a person’s exact position to within 100 yards worldwide, in any weather at any time of day or night. It has been touted as the compass of the future, the best method for plotting routes and a way for people to figure out where they are when they get lost. But it can’t take the place of a map, and can be useless without one.

Avalanche beacons are also great tools, but you have to know how to use them.

The beacons are electromagnetic transceivers that people can use to detect each other’s signal when someone is buried. They work as long as at least one person is practiced in deciphering and following the beeps and able to dig the other out.

Kemp O’Neill, a 37-year-old contractor in Livingston, Mont., found that out the hard way. He was snowmobiling with seven friends in January when an avalanche pushed him 75 yards downhill, then buried him.

The only one in the group who knew how to use their avalanche beacons was five minutes away. O’Neill lay under the snow 12 minutes before that person arrived, located him and cleared off his face so he could breathe.

Even after they dug him up, O’Neill was out cold for five minutes and his lips were as blue as his coat.

“We were not as prepared as we should have been,” he says now. “There was a lot of dumb luck. I had the feeling there was an angel on my shoulder the whole way down. It just wasn’t my time.”

The newest gadgets on the market are Personal Locater Beacons. Like the emergency locater transmitters used to find airplanes after they crash, PLB’s send signals to a satellite, which are relayed back to dispatchers with the person’s location. They are used in Canada, but many search and rescue personnel oppose their wide use in the United States because they worry about being overloaded by false alarms.

“There are not enough search and rescue teams to begin to answer the false alarms that are going to come from this thing,” Jourdan said.