[pct-l] New Mountain Education videos on YouTube!

[Bill Weber]

This is my first post to PCT-L, so I'm not sure if I'm doing it right.  Hopefully it will get through.

I'm the guy that was with Ned at Hart's pass and fell off the trail, hitting a couple of trees.  I saw the posts by Matt Signore, Jackie McDonnell and Ned Tibbits and since I was part of the subject of this thread, I felt compelled to give my opinion.

I was really quite taken aback by the vitriol from Matt and Jackie against Ned for my accident.  Many accusations were made with, as far as I can tell, no supporting data.  Were either Matt or Jackie there?  Did they talk to any of the people who were there?  How could they know how dangerous the situation was, whether or not I fell from experience or from bad luck.  It's a dangerous place out there and anyone, even one with lots of experience can have a bad accident.  You just have better odds with more training and experience.  Maybe someone is at fault and maybe no one is at fault, but neither Matt nor Jackie had the data to make that determination.

Why didn't they just talk to one or several of us who were there, rather than get information from the rumor mill or Facebook and decide to point the finger on a public forum?  Ned is one of the nicest guys I've met on the trail so far.  He would have gladly had a conversation with either Matt or Jackie one on one.  So would I.  I still would, just ask.

I think it was a mistake to bring this topic up on PCT-L with accusations.  Apologies are in order, then we can move on and have a happy ending to all this.

Bill