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Thanks for your rational view and explanation.

There is clearly a place here for "risky business" insurance which would be used to reimburse and help protect the general public as well. We need to be careful of how we use public funds so that we actually have money available to help with natural disasters.

There are many precedents for reimbursement of rescue expenses. Mt McKinley requires "rescue insurance" before ascending in Denali Park Alaska. Climbers/hikers in the Swiss Alps are required to have rescue insurance. Others here have mentioned the Grand Canyon rescue reimbursements. Why shouldn't this become a standard procedure!! One real benefit would be that some of these "explorers" might be more careful in preparing and making sure they really are capable of their exploits!

Keep up the good work!

Thanks, Howard. I was discussing this with my wife last night, and the answer seemed easy. Since almost all of these mountains are National Parks, it would be easy to establish a "climber's permit" system where the applicants perhaps could perhaps purchase climber's insurance on the spot.

Another benefit of something like this is that could have some control over who tries to do what. I can see requiring "climber's training" just the same as we require "hunter's training" for hunting licenses.

And they could restrict the less experienced climbers to "learner's slopes" instead of having some adventurous neophyte from the big city come out and try to climb Mount Hood equipped with a bottle of mineral water and a couple of granola bars and wearing shorts and a tee shirt.

Let me stop and apologize for proposing all this regulation, I just realized what I was saying. I'm normally against over-regulating human behavior, but I think this is an area where some regulation is needed.