THE MISADVENTURES OF WEALTHY IDIOTS

While I'm on the subject of awful people, I have both sets of fingers crossed that Steve Fossett is found a few months from now as a bleached skeleton minus a generous number of cougar bites. I'd never kill anyone, but I do read some obituaries with a lot of pleasure.

His latest misadventure is one of the more pedestrian; the private plane he was piloting went down somewhere in the sparse Nevada countryside. There's currently a massive rescue party – 50,000 people – searching for him or his remains. But this man is no stranger to large rescue parties.

Fossett, a multimillionaire commodities trader in his 60s, has busied himself for the past decade by trying to fly hot air balloons around the world solo. He succeeded in 2002, but only after five previous attempts ended in failure. Ordinarily that sort of thing wouldn't bother me. In fact, I think pointless adventuring is pretty cool.
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But on each of those instances, he went down in a ridiculously remote area of the Pacific and needed to be rescued by the Coast Guard or similar rescue agencies from other nations. You'd be stunned at how much it costs to send the Coast Guard to pluck a stranded balloonist out of the uninhabited void of the oceans. And guess who foots the bill?

Let's put it this way: the current search – in Nevada – has cost over $100,000. Plucking him out of the ocean has run well into the $1 million or more range on multiple occasions. Essentially, Steve Fossett, who has more money than Jesus, has his personal hobbies subsidized by the government.

No matter how poorly planned or ill-conceived his schemes may be, he goes off half-cocked on his self-financed adventures and waits for the Coast Guard to rescue him. Not like they have anything better to do with their time or budget.

Fossett is not the only person guilty of such stupidity – the cost of rescuing idiots is starting to cast a pall over normal, intelligent people's enjoyment of the outdoors. For example, because group after group of idiots get stranded on mountains like Hood or Rainier (at the cost of $10,000 or more per rescue) more parks and mountains are starting to require significant deposits or climbing fees. That means that those of us who aren't mentally retarded – you know, the kind who have proper equipment and don't climb into snowstorms – end up paying the price.
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Not to mention, of course, the strain placed on the budgets of our woefully underfunded outdoor areas.

People make mistakes. Accidents happen. Wilderness rescues are going to be needed.

However, a climber breaking his leg on Mount Rainier is a lot different than an exceptionally rich moron making a mistake five times and handing us the bill. Hopefully the state of Nevada will put in a claim on Fossett's estate for the cost of his latest misadventure.