Bill O'Reilly wants lifeguards on Mt Hood?

Turns out, we actually already have lifeguards on Mt. Hood! Here's a photo taken close to Cooper Spur [the "spur" is clearly visible to the left], where last-week's ill-fated climbers attempted to summit.


Seriously, tonight was the second night in a row Bill O'Reilly is trying to convince his audience that we should just, you know, shut down the mountain when the weather's bad. Like how lifeguards shut down beaches when a thunderstorm rolls in. The guys depicted below--rangers (?) from Mt Hood and Mt Rainier--were trying to convince him otherwise...


...but he was adament: just get two people up on the mountain to chase down anyone who's up there in the winter!

I've been up on Cooper Spur a few times, and I've been on various trails around "Wy'east" and, yeah, it may not be the biggest mountain evah, but it's a fairly good sized rock. And though there's only two major routes to the summit, there's multiple trails that hook up with those routes, from multiple trailheads and snowparks. Plus, there's more than one mountain in the Cascades. And sometimes--even in the winter--it's safe to hike up to the 9000' level and sometimes it's safe to summit, and then there's other times it's not safe at 7000' in June. And then there's those times where it's safe for the foreseeable future, but then there's three storms that hit the mountain back-to-back after that foreseeable future when there's a climber in distress. You just can't regulate something like that, especially in fairly desolate terrain like the Oregon Cascades. Best thing you can do is convince everyone to voluntarily register before heading up and make them aware of the dangers.

But hey, Bill-O knows best.