Safety
A potential avalanche chute, 2004Bears are the primary safety concern in the park. It is very common for hikers to encounter them. Firearms are not permitted. Almost all parties take bear spray and/or bear bangers as repellents, but most importantly both sides of the park mandate smart bear practices. It is required to stow food in bear-safe locations.
Weather and terrain also pose a challenge to hikers. There are few risks in the forest regions of the trail, however once the trail climbs into the alpine, weather and the elements pose more of a concern; the same does vertigo. Often the American ranger from Sheep Camp sweeps late in the day up to Chilkoot Pass to monitor for straggling groups that may not make Happy Camp and would be in need of emergency shelter.
Read more about this topic: Chilkoot Trail
Famous quotes containing the word safety:
“There was only one catch and that was Catch-22, which specified that a concern for one’s own safety in the face of dangers that were real and immediate was the process of a rational mind.... Orr would be crazy to fly more missions and sane if he didn’t, but if he was sane he had to fly them. If he flew them he was crazy and didn’t have to; but if he didn’t want to he was sane and had to.”
—Joseph Heller (b. 1923)
“[As teenager], the trauma of near-misses and almost- consequences usually brings us to our senses. We finally come down someplace between our parents’ safety advice, which underestimates our ability, and our own unreasonable disregard for safety, which is our childlike wish for invulnerability. Our definition of acceptable risk becomes a product of our own experience.”
—Roger Gould (20th century)
“For hours, in fall days, I watched the ducks cunningly tack and veer and hold the middle of the pond, far from the sportsman;... but what beside safety they got by sailing in the middle of Walden I do not know, unless they love its water for the same reason that I do.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)