Real test starts here:
Telling questions:
You are hiking on a trail when you catch up to another party
travelling in the same direction but slower. Do you:
a) Pass them without saying a word.
b) Ask to pass.
c) Stay behind them.
Why? Name other conditions which may effect this answer.
SM: Walk alongside for a while, and chat.
You are packing with friends who are enjoying those dehydrated meals
(you know, the same ones you eat). As you are cleaning up for the
evening, you notice your friend throw that nice little foil and
plastic pouch into the fire. What do you do?
SM: Throw his rain poncho in the fire with the foil pouch.
Would you be backpacking|climbing, etc. if the equipment weighed
twice as much?
Sm: Yes, but I'd use a wagon instead of a backpack.
Would you be backpacking|climbing, etc. if you had to bring all the
water you were going to use on the trip in from the trail head? assume
4 liters/4 kg (1 gallon/8 lbs) per person per day.
SM: Sure.
Would you be backpacking|climbing, etc. if you had to pack eveything
including fecal matter out?
SM: Heck, no, that's nasty.
Driving home on a steep, twisty mountain road at night. You come
upon an accident. The fire danger is very high. Do you put road
flares out?
SM: I don't have time, I'm trying to get to my daughter's dance lesson. I
can't be troubled.
You, your spouse, and your child have an accident. Given an
equal probability of rescue, which you can only do once,
who do you save?
SM: What is this, a lifeboat exercise? I save myself, and send h elp for
the
others.
You witness two people wander onto a frozen lake and fall thru.
What is the first rule of rescue?
SM: Stupid can die off, it's Darwin in action.
Is the privilege of just seeing Yosemite enough?
SM: No, I want to swim in it.
How much would you pay for gas to visit the backcountry?
SM: Pay? I just take it from others cars.
You are on Mt. Everest. Two members of your international team
were climbing high. A tyrolean traverse was needed to return.
The German member thought nothing of this section and started
back, but his partner, the Indian member had trouble. The
German waited and stompped his feet until he could take it no
more. He went back to camp and got you the assistant climbing
leader. You rushed up high as quickly as your could with 6
other members. You wisely grabbed a set of ski poles as wands
to find your way back. Night is approaching and a storm is
coming. You reach the Indian; he is badly frozen but alive.
The members decide to try to lower into a crevice to escape
the storm. Hacking together available fixed rope, you lower
the stricten Indian, but you are 40 feet, too short. What do
you do?
SM: Get the lazy butt German back from camp. Throw him into the crevace,
and
use him to break the fall for the Indians.
See the film Back to the Future III. In one scene, the character
Marty gets some water. Would you drink it?
SM: Not seen the movie.
You are faced with making a dicey rock climbing move.
Your only real hold is a locker finger jam. If you bury your finger
in the jam and fall, you will most likely severely damage/lose the finger.
If you loosely grip the hold, you will probably fall.
How do you make the move?
SM: By sticking the German's finger in, and then climb up the German's
back.
A heel hook is the most secure way to make the move, but if you fall
upside
down while hooking, you may get hurt.
If you try to clip a fixed piece midway through a strenuous crux,
you will probably pump out and fall, but if you don't clip it you may
take a long whipper.
If you try to make turns while skiing an icy slope, you will probably
fall,
but if you don't make turns, you may develop a dangerous amount of speed.
SM: Well, glad I'm not on that slope!
True or false: The natural world exists and only has value in the
context of Mankind.
SM: If a tree falls on a mime, and no one is around to hear, does it make
a
difference?
If you take the bivy sack to the summit, you will probably need it,
but if you don't....
SM: You will have to radio for a helecopter to drop it off.
You are driving to the woods. You arrive at a broken traffic intersection
street light. Four cars arrive simultaneously from each of the four
directions. Who goes first?
SM: Aunt Clara. Cause she's not wearing her eye gl*****,a nd the others
know
her personally.
You are offered a class on wilderness medicine on a given weekend. You
were hoping to go backpacking that weekend. Do you take the class or do
you go backpacking (and hope you will not need the class before you have
another chance to take it)?
SM: Take the entire class of students with you on the trip.
Would you defend your family, even if it meant breaking the law?
SM: And if you don't defend, will you be here to regret it?
Would you defend your house, when only property and not life was
threatened,
even if it meant breaking the law?
Would you defend your environment, even if it meant breaking the law?
Your new husband is from Alaska, "the frozen state," do you move up there
and join him?
SM: No, I go see the Bishop, and get the church disciplinary court in
action. Mormons don't do fag butt.
Your new wife is from New York City, the concrete jungle. Do you move
there to join her?
SM: No, I let her stay there. Unless she wants to live in Utah with my
other
six wives.
You are snowmobiling in Yellowstone in winter. You see a bison break thru
the ice into the frozen river. Assume you have a rope. Do you rescue the
bison? A ranger comes by, what do you think the ranger would say?
SM: No, I don't risk my butt for stupid animals. The ranger would call in
an
air strike.
You come across a pair of turkeys busyly making sure that there will be
a new generation of turkeys. Do you watch quietly, make some noise (so
that they know you are there) or leave (letting them have some privacy)?
What if they are human instead of feathered?
What if the story involved bears|bares instead?
SM: I shoot them and we have turkey for dinner.
If a tree falls in a forest and no human is around, does it make a sound?
If a tree falls in a forest and no human is around, does it have data?
At what age, or how do you tell, when you become too old to drive?
SM: About 95, and then cause I can't see the road.
Rappeling has been justly flamed in many recent posts - but I have to
respond a little. Not every group of rappelers you encounter out are
necessarily rap-junkie nerds. I helped teach a vertical techniques
class to a group of cavers a couple weeks ago - and vertical techniques
for cavers means rappel and jumar practice. Your choice - you are
several hours underground, following a good breeze down a streamway, and
you come to the top of a pit of unknown depth. Typically, it is smooth
walled and overhanging. Rappel or downclimb? Remember, this is a stream
passage - whatever you do, you are going to be in the water. Ok, so you
rap the pit...on the return trip, you are now confronted by an
overhanging,
smooth walled, waterfall - that happens to have a nice static rope hanging
down in it. Climb, perhaps using the rope as a top belay, or jumar?
Second scenario: El Sotano de las Golondrinas, Mexico. Here you have a
pit some 200 feet in diameter, opening to the surface, which bells out
quickly below the lip. On the near side, the bottom is 1100 feet straight
down. The walls of the pit are pretty solid near the top, but very rotten
in several layers. Downclimb or rappel? You rap, of course, assuming you
planned ahead and brought adequate rope (we had a 1500' PMI when I was
there a few years back). You rig off a block that hangs over the edge, and
never touch the wall after the first five feet - by the time you reach the
bottom, the walls are many hundred feet distant. Ascent: climb or jumar?
Jumar, of course - but if you are going to be doing much of this kind of
thing, you are going to develop some strange systems for climbing rope.
Two jumars and a pair of etriers just don't cut it after a couple hundred
feet of free hanging rope.
Do you trench your tent?
SM: No, but I do sometimes wiggle my worm.
You are skiing in mountainous backcountry with a group of five skiers.
The
trail emerges from the trees on a sidehill. Trees are absent above and
below
the trail, but reappear about 150 feet ahead. What do you do?
Suppose you are on the return leg of a 15 mile loop. What do you do?
Consider equipment you may have and weather conditions over the past month
when solving the problem.
SM: Plant trees.
You are to lead a backcountry skiing day trip. The trip is only 6 miles
long, round trip. The elevation is over 11,000 feet. The sky is clear.
Two members of the group show up expecting to ski in blue jeans. Do you
allow them to go?
SM: Sure. If they get cold and die, that's fine.
Your car dies in a desert, 30 miles from the nearest town. It is early
morning and the temperature is already over 100 degrees. No one will miss
you for the next week (you are on vacation). No one is likely to drive
past
in the next week either. You only have 1 quart of water. Do you stay
with the car or start walking to town? Do you drink the the water as
you feel you are thirsty or do you try to ration it?
SM: Never gonna happen. Desert, and one quart of water? Get real.
You started walking on heather moorland on a bright, 50 degree F day
in Spring. 10 miles out, it turns to driving sleet (30 mph wind with
half-frozen rain) and you cannot see where you are going. The only
shelter is in the peat hags, which are full of water. What do you do?
SM: Call for AAA, and tell em my car broke down.
You tend to participate in activities above your skill level, i.e.
ski black slopes as an intermediate skier, do not attend cl*****,
or use gear designed for teh activity (i.e. backpacking w/ only an
old sleeping bag, a zippo lighter, a bag of tortilla chips and
a Sunday paper).
Is ths acceptable behaviour? Does the 'go with the flow' attitude
enhance or detract from the experience? Does the 'well, I won't hurt
anyone else if I screw up' attitude remove moral culpability?
SM: I'm not an idiot like that.
Five guys are crossing a glacier near the Chinese border, a kind of
neutral
strip. They spent 2 months for getting a permit to there - they had to
convince the Border Guard. Suddenly a military helicopter drops them a
capsule. Inside is an order to come back. Should they go back =?
SM: Absoloutely. Chinkies tend to shoot your ass to death if you don't.
A band of four is swiftly skiing across a treeless rugged backountry
towards
the ridges of Ural. They do it for 4 days, crossing numerous passages. All
of a
sudden, one of them tells to their leader that he has a stomach ulcer and
it just turned worse. =?
SM: suggest he take it easy on the cheese and pepperoni for a couple days.
You just went to sleep at your tent in a nice valley of Caucasus. Suddenly
a ranger wakes you up asking for help and good anesthetics: somebody up
there fell and has a vertebrae problem. Surprisingly you have what they
haven't.
SM: No surprise. I'm prepared for most things.
A night ascent -> that lady with crushed vertebrae is not to be
brutally trans****ted -> there's a chance to get a copter, but no
walkie-talkie. These poor rangers have a car radio below in the valley.
You spend the rest of the night to get there. There really is one ranger
in the car, and he's absolutely drunk, barely able to say something.
he says: tha-yk! you guys yek! would you -wmmm? drink too - =?
SM: Mormons don't drink alcohol.
You got a ticket to a plane that flies from the city of Norilsk to a
frozen
lake at Putorana Mountains, some 300 miles ahead. The plane appears to be
out of order, so you are told to be ready to use the next flight - which
is
2 weeks later. Meanwhile, your permit is issued by the Border Guard and
expires a month later. It's possible to get to mountains by ski - their
foothills are just in 140 miles from you. =?
SM: Well, sounds like a good hike.
You just broke/lost your compass in the middle of an eight hour (or
eight day) hike and you are in a maze of twisty little valleys very
similar. How can you find your way out? (assume going down stream
will not get you to civilianization in a reasonable time.)
SM: Use other compass.
Should a less-visited park such as Isle Royale, which could probably not
be sup****ted by visitor fees, exist?
SM: Not on tax payer dollars.
Smallpox has been largely destroyed - should the virus be given
endanged species status? (Would an infected person then be denied
treatment?)
SM: No.
You become injured on a remote, solo climbing trip, and find yourself
trapped on a high ledge. You cannot expect rescue for many weeks. A
small seep provides you with water, but you ran out of food several
days ago. You have an op****tunity to kill the a condor...
SM: Dead bird!
A certain small cave contains a rare subspecies of salamader, known
nowhere else in the world. a) The entire population in the cave is
destroyed when the small entrance is blocked by a careless bulldozer
operator cutting a logging road. b) The entire population in the cave
is destroyed when the entrance collapses after an exceptionally
heavy thunderstorm. Remark on differences between a and b. The cave
salamander fills a dead-end ecological niche - the survival or loss
of the cave ecosystem will have no impact on even the local surface
ecosystem. Does this in any way affect previous remarks?
SM: No, evolution is seldom kind.
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