Don't ask of your friends what you yourself can do.
- Quintus Ennius

It is not fair to ask of others what you are not willing to do yourself.
- Eleanor Roosevelt

Clean up your own mess. Your mother doesn’t live here.
-Anonymous

The Brotherhood of the Rope demands that hikers and climbers take care of their own. Or themselves. When a fellow traveler is injured, dehydrated, blistered, burned or otherwise dehabilitated, they get them out without resorting to outside forces such as the Park Service or Search and Rescue.

The Brotherhood has frayed a bit in years past. With the advent of cell phones, GPS, and the nanny state too many hikers, climbers, and even mountaineers on the world’s most challenging peaks have begun stepping over their dying comrade to make the summit, then when they are safely back, placing a casual call to 911.

Add to that the increasing number of “ego climbers” who find themselves in challenging circumstances without the years of experience which one usually approaches such challenges. Many are the “independent” climbers who boast of their solo status while relying on larger parties’ fixed ropes, medical facilities, and radios. Then when something goes wrong, they berate these expeditions for not risking everything to save them.

In wilderness medicine classes we are taught to improvise for splints, bandages, padding, and whatnot from hiking equipment rather than first aid kits. We are further told to use the victim’s equipment. The reasoning being that, if I use up my clothes or pack or sleeping pad on the affected person, I may become affected myself in the fullness of time. And I shall have used up the equipment needed to keep me safe and sound. Rule number one is, “I’m number one”. Don’t make another victim.

I, of course, can picture someone bleeding profusely and protesting mightily when I cut up his/her $200 technical running shirt to bandage said bleeding. When, in fact, I play the part of victim for a learning scenario, I make myself as malevolent as possible (“Do you know how much I paid for these pants?”). Conversely, I can picture coming to the rescue of one of those minimalist hikers who pride themselves on the lightest pack. The lightest pack means no first aid kit, no spare clothing, no, in point of fact, spare anything. “I need an extra shirt to staunch that spurting artery: too bad you don’t have one”.

Oft am I approached by people who know me (and many who do not) asking for equipment which they require but did not fetch along themselves. “I don’t bring a first aid kit,” one such informed me, “because I know you’ll always have one”.

Often in the desert one espies hikers (usually male) dashing madly into the arid climes with a half-liter of water, a can of soda in one hand, or more often, nothing whatsoever in hand or non-existent pack. On one hike into the Grand Canyon one such scampered past me, a half-empty bottle clutched in one sweaty palm, no pack on his ample back. It was a warmish day: temperatures topped 100 in full sun.

In the course of time, I met a fellow traveler who queried, “I have a philosophical question. Did you see that male who rushed past in such a hurry”

“Oh, yes”.

“Do you think he had enough water?”

“I know he didn’t.”

“So my question is, when he collapses on the trail, do I have to give him some of my water?”

“I refer you to the National Outdoor Leadership School’s Outdoor Medicine curriculum: don’t make another victim”.

She nodded, and we were in accord. If said male collapsed due to testosterone poisoning, we were not going to dehydrate ourselves for his sake.

For the record, we last saw him hiking out. Totally out of water, during the hottest part of the day, but heading the opposite direction as we, so if he did collapse it would not be on our heads to provide hydration.

Self-reliance can be taken to extremes. A close friend on an off-trail route, which I have never and will certainly not now attempt, fell 40 feet when part of the route crumbled under her tenuous tread. Her compatriots hastened to treat her shattered legs (tee shirts and sticks for splints), and then discussed how to get her out. She was all for climbing out herself until her innate good sense reasserted itself. If she could not climb down with two good legs, how was she to climb out with none?

Two fast hikers were dispatched to fetch a helicopter, but once on the rim, it was dismissed. My friend was tossed unceremoniously into the back of a pick-up and driven willy-nilly (four-wheel drive road) back to the city and medical aid. “We don’t need Search and Rescue. We take care of our own”.

Said friend now decries this lack of trust in the powers-that-be, and both of us wonder if her 30-years-after-the-fact arthritis in both feet are at all related to the delay in proper medical care. Not to mention bouncing around in the back of a pick-up whilst navigating a Navajo Reservation dirt road.

Self-reliance requires that I carry in my pack a bottle of water and a bag of nuts, a small first-aid kit and enough clothing to be comfortable if I became injured and had to either haul myself out more slowly than I am accustomed or wait wearily for rescue. No wonder those denizens of the outdoors who dash by with half a can of energy drink come to me when they are injured, or hungry, or cold, or thirsty.

Sometimes I help them out. Sometimes, particularly if they let fly a less than charitable remark on their way past about people who burden themselves with a largish pack, I resort to a less than charitable response. “No hablo inglés”.