Heartless hikers fail to help injured man

If a tree falls in the forest and lands on a guy, shouldn’t you call for help?


A 37-year-old-man from Austin, Texas, was airlifted to a Durango hospital Saturday more than 24 hours after after being injured by a falling tree in the Weminuche Wilderness in southwestern Colorado. 


Incredibly, three sets of hikers encountered the injured man and his wife, yet failed to call for help despite promises to contact emergency services.


The Durango Herald reports that the couple eventually hailed a group of conservation corps workers who used their satellite phone to call search and rescue. It’s the third medical emergency corps workers have handled in the last month.


In The Colorado Independent story, You’ve got to fight for your right to die in the woods, we reported on a recent rash of backcountry risk-taking by ill-equipped mountain hikers, rafting accidents on snow-melt-swollen creeks and two skier deaths due to avalanches. But all this man did wrong was trust other hikers to help him out of his act-of-God predicament.


Common decency obliges people traveling through remote areas to help each other out of intractable situations.


The hikers who blew this man off should have their boots repossessed.

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