Safe Sex: Is Big Brother Trying to Baby the Great Outdoors?

By Marc Peruzzi

Swaddle me in sanitary cotton and set me in front of Playstation 17 — for that is surely my future. The outside world is too dangerous for modern man. With ski patrollers roping off steep terrain, politicians outlawing winter and Podunk lawmakers everywhere acting like recreation nannies, the once-wild out-of-doors is getting babyproofed.

Last year, the police department in Boulder, Colorado, where I live, instituted a speed limit on the cycling leg of the town’s weekly triathlon. The cops set up a radar trap at the bottom of the course’s one big hill. At first this didn’t bother me — triathletes aren’t exactly known for their bike-handling skills — but when the police expanded their campaign and ticketed experienced roadies for going fast down Boulder’s epic descents, I’d had enough. Who are they protecting? The guy driving the Hummer uphill, typing on his Blackberry and downing a mango smoothie?

America’s tradition of Emersonian self reliance — which led to such unsafe practices as Manifest Destiny, the Donner Party (“Oh no, we forgot to bring snacks!”), Apollo 13, Timothy Treadwell and free-ride mountain biking — is getting hobbled by our mommy-knows-best culture.

High-profile run-ins between outdoor athletes and government officials occurred at a steady clip in the late-’90s, setting the tone for the current Millennium. A famous and early example occurred in 1996 when Olympian whitewater paddler Davey Hearn got busted on the Potomac. The river was running above flood level and what normally was an inescapable hole had morphed into a perfect standing wave. When Hearn found a safe pullout on the bank, a Park cop went in after him — slipping into the frigid water. Incensed, four rough and tumble cops shook Hearn from the vessel before dragging him off to jail. The arresting officer was quoted in The Washington Post as saying: “Whether Mr. Hearn thinks so or not, I feel I rescued him.”

In 1998, BASE jumper Frank Gambalie landed an illegal jump off Yosemite’s El Capitan. Unbeknownst to Gambalie, Park Rangers were waiting for him in the bushes. Seeking to avoid arrest and a $2,000 fine, Gambalie jumped into the swollen Merced River — and drowned. Hmm, here’s an idea, until BASE jumpers start raining down on the streets of Cleveland, let’s leave them alone.

Now the preferred nanny tactic is to legislate safety. In 2007, an Oregon lawmaker sponsored a bill that would require all mountaineers to wear electronic locator beacons above 10,000 feet on Mount Hood. This despite the fact that lost alpinists only account for 3.4 percent of Oregon’s search-and-rescue missions each year. Also in February, a Massachusetts lawmaker said he would file a bill requiring children to wear helmets — when sledding.

Don’t they have anything better to do than harass us? Let’s sic a horde of undead French existentialists on the lot of them. Kill ’em with smug metaphors and second-hand smoke. Sartre, incidentally, was a powder skier. And France was occupied by real fascists during World War II. Which may explain why France is producing the world’s greatest big-mountain skiers and downhill mountain bikers — nobody is yelling at them to slow down.

Here’s what the anti-risk crowd doesn’t get: When people head into the backcountry, they simply aren’t expecting to be rescued. They’re relying on their own skills to get out alive. If they had to sign a waiver to have fun, they would.

Still, we play cat and mouse. But there’s hope: In the spring of 2006, I was in Girdwood, Alaska, skiing with my brother. One afternoon, he called my room and told me to turn on the local news. Turns out a couple of Red Bull generation guys had been hanging out at the notorious Turnagain Arm inlet, double-dog daring each other to attempt some iceberg surfing on this, the most dangerous tidal bore in North America. The slower-witted (my read) of the two had jumped on a SUV-sized berg, only to get propelled by the current toward the open Pacific at 20 miles per hour. A TV crew arrived on the scene, and the reporter started bombarding the local sheriff with questions: “Are you going to try to save him? Will he be arrested?” Unfazed, the sheriff replied in the casual monotone of Alaska (a state that apparently isn’t run by your aunt Irma) and said, “He’s got the right to die.”

Showing deft berg-surfing skills, the daft youngster returned to shore safely. But I’m still struck by the sheriff’s comment. We do have the right to die. As soon as the government invents the position, I say we make that sheriff our next recreation czar.