[pct-l] safety on the pct

[Eric Lee (GAMES)]

Jana wrote:
>
i am a college freshman and my friend (who is also college age) and I
want to hike a section of the PCT this summer for about 2 or 3 weeks.
We are having trouble convincing our mom's that 2 girls will be safe
alone out on the trail.....what should we tell them?
>

Tell them that the most dangerous part of your hike, by far, will be driving to and from the trailheads.  Seriously.

Unknown things always feel more scary to people than they really are, and familiar things always feel safer than they really are.  It's a strange fact that the human sense of risk is often quite warped.  Sure, you're not absolutely safe out on the trail, and sure, something could theoretically happen, but every year in the US about 41,000 people are killed in auto accidents and another 3 million (!) are injured.  In other words, you have about a 1 in 100 chance of being injured in an auto accident and a 1 in 7000 chance of being killed every year if you are crazy enough to get into a car.  I don't have accident statistics for hikers handy, but I'm pretty sure the rates are lower, sensational news reports notwithstanding.

For example, your mom might be worried about bears.  What if you're attacked by a bear?  Well, you can't guarantee that won't happen, but if you think about the fact that only 56 people have been killed by black bears in the US *in total over the past 100 years* (seriously!), it changes things a bit.  Let's see, a 1 in 7000 chance of dying in an auto accident, or a 1 in 600 million chance of dying in a bear attack.  Personally, I think the drivers are the crazy ones.

(For any mathematical types out there, yes, the risk exposure should actually based on how much you drive and how much you're exposed to bears, but the basic point still stands.)

Of course, fear is an emotional thing and not always a logical thing so talking numbers may not solve the problem.  But it sometimes helps to put things into perspective.

Eric