Your Saturday Evening “It Looks Bad If We Leave Them There” Open Thread

We are well into summer now, and I want to vent about something: lost tourists.

Now, I don’t want to complain about the driving type of lost tourist. That’s honest, and at least they are trying to follow a map.

No, I want to complain about the type of lost tourist that comes from being willfully ignorant. This type can be either foreign or domestic. They’re the type that arrives at a park an hour before sunset, in sandals, looks at the map, sees a four-hour return-trip hike listed on the park guide, and still decides to go out because “well, we drove all the way here”.

Over the Canada Day weekend, over a dozen people needed to be rescued from normally average hikes because they were unprepared for being in the wilderness – sandals; no water; obesity – or started too late in the day & couldn’t judge time correctly. Since then, it hasn’t really stopped. As I type this, they are hunting Grouse Mountain

for some jagoff who started the Grind late by skipping the closed gate. (The Grouse Grind is a popular hike up the mountain.

It is 2830 steps, a 1.8 mile vertical climb, and takes you from the base (900-feet) up to the 2800-foot mark of the mountain. From there you either take the Skyride gondola down to the parking lot, or hike another trail down, because the Grind is only one-way.) It should take a reasonably healthy person about an hour to complete the ascent. Sometimes, because the trail is quite crowded during the peak daylight hours, people will try & delay their ascent until later in the evening. If he didn’t know the mountain, he likely made a wrong turn onto one of the secondary trails that criss-cross the mountain, but that doesn’t matter to the 15-20 volunteers who are out looking for his sorry ass right now. If they don’t find him tonight, I get to wake up to the dogs barking at the sound of helicopters.

I take this a bit personally because, aside from it being a general pain in the ass, I lost a friend on the Grind 20 years ago. We spent three days digging for his body, only to be pulled off the mountain because the conditions kept worsening. They only found him after the thaw. And it was a pointless death, because the trail was marked “avalanche danger” before they started. But he was visiting from back east and they drove all the way there…

I haven’t hiked it since.

If you know someone planning outdoor adventures this summer, please quiz them on their preparedness. Because their dumb ass is likely not prepared for what they are planning.

**end rant**

Tonight’s sports:

• MLB:
  • Nationals at Atlanta – 7:00PM | FS1
  • Blue Jays at Tigers – 7:00PM | Sportsnet
  • Marlins at Dodgers – 10:00PM | Sportsnet1
• CFL:
  • Lions vs. Roughriders – 10:00PM | TSN / ESPN+
• Fútbol:
  • Liga MX:
    • Club América vs. Monterrey – 7:55PM | UNI
    • Necaxa vs. Cruz Azul – 9:55PM | UNI
  • International Champions Cup Soccer:
    • Bayern Munich vs. Real Madrid – 8:00PM | ESPN2
  • MLS:
    • Whitecaps FC vs. San Jose – 10:00PM | TSN
• Pugilism:
  • UFC Fight Night: Dos Anjos vs. Edwards: From San Antonio
    • Prelims – 6:00PM | ESPN / TSN2
    • Main Card – 9:00PM | ESPN / TSN2
  • PBC Fight Night:
    • Plant-Lee (super middleweights) – 7:00PM | FOX
• Autos:
  • IndyCar Racing: Iowa 300 – 7:00PM | NBCSN

Just be that cautious voice in a friend’s ear.