[Stoat]

There was a blind man who sailed across the Atlantic (I think) by himself, too. It’s an ideological statement. There’s no reason they couldn’t have taken someone else along. From the article, I get the impression this hiker was simply bullheaded, and felt he was proving something by going alone.

It's all fine when disabled people can overcome their disabilities, but when it comes to placing themselves in the obvious path of catastrophe, the political machinery cranks up into high gear to make sure that nothing interferes with their goal of placing themselves and others at extreme risk.

In so doing, search and rescue efforts like this and so many others are undertaken which are all incredibly expensive as well as serving to pull hundredsof people out of their jobs and causing them to place their own lives on the line, all because it's become politically -incorrect to say "Um, no, you shouldn't do that" to anyone who is disabled.

Well, one hesitates to say, “Let him die alone, then,” but it’s a strong temptation.

I share the temptation.

There was a blind man who sailed across the Atlantic (I think) by himself, too. It’s an ideological statement. There’s no reason they couldn’t have taken someone else along. From the article, I get the impression this hiker was simply bullheaded, and felt he was proving something by going alone.

It's all fine when disabled people can overcome their disabilities, but when it comes to placing themselves in the obvious path of catastrophe, the political machinery cranks up into high gear to make sure that nothing interferes with their goal of placing themselves and others at extreme risk.

In so doing, search and rescue efforts like this and so many others are undertaken which are all incredibly expensive as well as serving to pull hundredsof people out of their jobs and causing them to place their own lives on the line, all because it's become politically -incorrect to say "Um, no, you shouldn't do that" to anyone who is disabled.

Well, one hesitates to say, “Let him die alone, then,” but it’s a strong temptation.

[Tax-chick]

make sure that nothing interferes with their goal of placing themselves and others at extreme risk

Well, that's the key, from an outsider standpoint. If it were just himself getting lost and killed, that would be sad, in a "too bad he wanted to die" sorta way. However, it turns out to be a huge effort and expense, putting others lives at risk, to save this putz from himself.

Of course, it's not just blind people who do this. A lot of rescue situations would have been avoided if the rescu-ees had used common sense.