{"id":1533,"date":"2007-10-22T22:34:07","date_gmt":"2007-10-23T03:34:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.tommangan.net\/twoheeldrive\/?p=1533"},"modified":"2007-10-22T22:34:07","modified_gmt":"2007-10-23T03:34:07","slug":"guide-book-blamed-in-uk-hikers-death","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.tommangan.net\/twoheeldrive\/index.php\/2007\/10\/22\/guide-book-blamed-in-uk-hikers-death\/","title":{"rendered":"Guide book blamed in UK hiker&#8217;s death"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/thegoat.backcountry.com\/blog\/2007\/10\/22\/can-a-guidebook-be-at-fault-if-a-hiker-dies\/\">Saw this one at Rocky&#8217;s blog<\/a>:  Seems this guy and his wife were hiking on Tryfan, one of Wales&#8217; most notoriously nasty mountains (what UK peaks lack in altitude, they often make for in shear climatic hell; <a href=\"http:\/\/tommangan.net\/twoheeldrive\/archives\/2007\/01\/30\/flickr_hiking_p_6.html\">here&#8217;s a pic<\/a>). The pair got lost in the fog (imagine that), the guy slipped, fell 90 meters, cracked his skull and expired. The offending guide book had a chapter called &#8220;Tryfan the Easy Way&#8221; &#8212; though one suspects the reader is expected to deduce this means &#8220;this route merely sucks a bit less than the more difficult ones.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><P>I understand that people in grief need somebody to blame besides their lost loved one, and that  it&#8217;s  terribly poor taste to point out the obvious to the bereft, so I won&#8217;t belabor the point.<\/p>\n<p><P>What I will say is that there&#8217;s a reason beyond basic laziness for the sketchy descriptions of my hikes. I don&#8217;t much care for being guided; I consult guidebooks for ideas on where to go, but  I have zero expectation of them getting me home safely.   I&#8217;m writing only enough to get folks interested in checking out some of the places I visit; once they get there, they&#8217;re on their own.<\/p>\n<p><P>Zeroing in on &#8220;easy&#8221; in a chapter heading reminds me of hiking to the top of Monument Peak from Ed Levin County Park. The &#8220;easy&#8221; way and the &#8220;hard&#8221; hard way <em>both<\/em> require  2,000 feet of climb in a tad under four miles (the harder route is steepest in the last half-mile, while the easier one is steeper in the middle and has a bit more shade).   Either way, you have to know how much you can handle before going up.<\/p>\n<p><P>More on the UK story <a href=\"http:\/\/news.bbc.co.uk\/1\/hi\/wales\/north_west\/7052630.stm\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Saw this one at Rocky&#8217;s blog: Seems this guy and his wife were hiking on Tryfan, one of Wales&#8217; most notoriously nasty mountains (what UK peaks lack in altitude, they often make for in shear climatic hell; here&#8217;s a pic).&hellip;<\/p>\n<p class=\"more-link-p\"><a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.tommangan.net\/twoheeldrive\/index.php\/2007\/10\/22\/guide-book-blamed-in-uk-hikers-death\/\">Read the whole thing<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0},"categories":[33],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tommangan.net\/twoheeldrive\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1533"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tommangan.net\/twoheeldrive\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tommangan.net\/twoheeldrive\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tommangan.net\/twoheeldrive\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tommangan.net\/twoheeldrive\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1533"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.tommangan.net\/twoheeldrive\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1533\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tommangan.net\/twoheeldrive\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1533"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tommangan.net\/twoheeldrive\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1533"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tommangan.net\/twoheeldrive\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1533"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}