71–80 of 99 posts
That autoplay video almost gave me a heart attack.
I really enjoyed this story. However I did struggle on one part: > Whitson, his 13-year-old son and girlfriend, Krystal Ramirez, had decided to spend Father's Day weekend backpacking the Arroyo Seco River. It took me longer to parse this sentence than I should perhaps admit to. The first couple of reads lead me to believe his son and girlfriend were the same person.
> Whitson, his 13-year-old son, and girlfriend Krystal Ramirez had decided to spend Father's Day weekend backpacking...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It is a fascinating story and the persistance of the author in trying to find the family is remarkable but its totally different than this story. The Germans were completely unprepared for their adventure without the correct clothing, not enough water, and apparently little or no knowledge of where they were going or where they were. The family in this story were prepared, knew exactly where they were going and where…
I think this is almost a phenomenon. Europeans have trouble imagining the vastness and untouchedness of American national parks. In Europe almost all hiking trails are close to civilization and well-marked. If you expect the same in America you're in for a surprise.
I don't mean to be rude but: why is this here? It would be a neat project to map out the changes in the types of stories and comments on HN over time. Over the years, HN has grown more and more in the direction of reddit front page and become less and less like an irc channel where people talk about technology.
> Please don't submit comments saying that HN is turning into Reddit. It's a semi-noob illusion, as old as the hills. (c) https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html , should be in FAQ too ;-)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think this is almost a phenomenon. Europeans have trouble imagining the vastness and untouchedness of American national parks. In Europe almost all hiking trails are close to civilization and well-marked. If you expect the same in America you're in for a surprise.
I actually found the trails in Norway to be surprisingly UN-marked, natural, and, frankly, more difficult than advertised. They'd tend to just go straight up a cliff face rather than being curated, built, and maintained.
I don't mean to be rude but: why is this here? It would be a neat project to map out the changes in the types of stories and comments on HN over time. Over the years, HN has grown more and more in the direction of reddit front page and become less and less like an irc channel where people talk about technology.
> less like an irc channel How many IRC channels have you hung out in? Every channel I've ever been in with any sort of community has stuff like this pop up pretty regularly (things that may be "off-topic" by some definition, but are interesting, and spark some interesting conversation). Channels where there are hard and fast rules about keeping the discussion strictly "on-topic" don't tend to be channels I hang out…
Any IRC channel I've been to that develops into a community spends 90+% time talking about everything else except the topic it's ostensibly about. It's weird from the POV of the newcomers, but for old-timers, most of the on-topic things were talked about to death many times over already.
Among other reasons, this is why i have a contingency email draft that I have ready to go whenever I go out on a serious-ish hike, along these lines: “here’s who is going, this is our license plate, this is our gear, this is how much food we have, here’s a very rough itinerary; if i don’t update this email by such and such a time, contact the following SAR groups...”
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Please don't submit comments saying that HN is turning into Reddit. It's a semi-noob illusion, as old as the hills. (c) https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html , should be in FAQ too ;-)
I agree with you on the turning into the reddit part, but I have to say that the way I read the guidelines, this article fits the description for off-topic more so than it meets the description for on-topic.
This reminded me of this real life story of trying to find a German family that got lost in Death Valley. It's a tragic story but I found very interesting how this person tries to piece together what happened. It's a long but worthwhile read. https://www.otherhand.org/home-page/search-and-rescue/the-hu...
It is a fascinating story and the persistance of the author in trying to find the family is remarkable but its totally different than this story. The Germans were completely unprepared for their adventure without the correct clothing, not enough water, and apparently little or no knowledge of where they were going or where they were. The family in this story were prepared, knew exactly where they were going and where…
I've read in other articles that the father was expecting a rope to be pre-anchored which makes me dubious of their level of preparedness.
> Typically, he said, there's a rope going through climbing carabiners that have been bolted into the rocks.
> "This time, the rope was gone," Whitson told CNN.
If you know there is a rappel: Bring. Your. Own. Gear. Trusting a rope that is left exposed and potentially not well cared for is dangerous in and of itself, but to be aware of a gear requirement and just walk out in the wilderness expecting gear to be there (and in usable condition) is flabbergasting.
I am glad this mistake wasn't fatal though.