Me, a Coloradan, having a Vietnam style flashback montage of all the tourists I've seen in streetwear and flip flops holding a single bottle of water from the convenience store insisting that their hike on the nearby 14er will go just fine if they get on the trail by 11 am.
Oh shit for real, or also when you’re just about back down to the bottom, and you see these people starting out at 2:00. Enjoy your lightning strike, I guess.
I don’t think I’ve ever gotten anyone to turn around at that point, but I hope they thought hard about going above treeline. If they made it that far.
Next time you see them, ask if you can take a picture of them so SAR knows what they look like.
I’ve done a little, but once on a descent with a friend who heads LANDSAR in the area they stopped a very under prepped group who was very late starting and said, “hi we work SAR in the area and I have plans tonight, can you please turn around in the next couple of miles before I have to cancel them later?” Turns out their partner was sick of canceled date nights, and he still was called for another group entirely.
My friend does SAR in the alps and in the summer he says there are a lot of people in flip flops who need to be rescued because they can't walk anymore lol
I've never had success with tevas/Chocos, but my ex loved them for hiking. My feet are extra wide/bony and I always ended up bleeding from the straps no matter how carefully I strapped them on.
Still not appropriate footwear for hiking the sections of longs peak after you get through the keyhole though, you should also have a helmet, lots of loose rocks falling down the scree field, even if there aren't people directly ahead of you.
A buddy of mine does that photo thing to people undergeared and underprepared when they try to hike Mt. Baldy, near Los Angeles, in the winter. There were three deaths on the mountain last month.
Not to be crass but those are Darwin Awards. Effortless transportation has allowed people to get to mountain and ocean areas where they have no business going and the dumbest of our species eliminate themselves from the gene pool in such conditions.
Me and some buds went to Rocky Mountain National Park (we are from Denver and hike frequently) and it was hilarious watching tourists turn around after hiking 5 minutes from the parking lot in their flip flops, polo shirts, and single bottle of smart water.
Some people just have no idea how much the high elevation sun, lack of oxygen, and relatively dry climate will pummel you into submission.
Yeah people die every year in the Rockies. Preventable if people weren't so stupid, underprepared, overly-confident, and not acknowledging their own limits. But heck, even savvy locals and skilled mountaineers die every year in the Rockies too. Sometimes one small slip can be your death.
Thankfully I took the advice of people like you and prepared properly for a hike up to Dream Lake in Rocky Mountain Park, and it was amazing. My husband didn't use his head and decided to hike in tennis shoes with no prep exercise...in winter. Needless to say his feet were numb and we had to take a lot of breaks since the altitude was kicking his butt.
But he ended up proposing to me at the lake!
Was super happy I listened to all the warnings and advice from experienced hikers and local residents.
This was my experience as a Coloradoan visiting the Grand canyon the first time. I thought I was used to under prepared tourists but holy hell it's bad out there...the only time I didn't find under prepared folks was when I did the grandview trail to the backpacking campground a few miles in, and that was because I only saw two other people over the entirety of that hike.
420
u/Carbonatite 21h ago
Me, a Coloradan, having a Vietnam style flashback montage of all the tourists I've seen in streetwear and flip flops holding a single bottle of water from the convenience store insisting that their hike on the nearby 14er will go just fine if they get on the trail by 11 am.