Originally published at: Co-workers ditch colleague on Colorado hiking retreat — who falls 20 times and gets stranded - Boing Boing
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It’s pretty obvious they failed the teamwork exercise.
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This is going to be one hell of an Ask A Manager letter.
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Someone is getting a really unpleasant Secret Santa gift.
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Fail by the main group to split.
Fail by the people who let someone leave and solo alone.
Fail for not going back to look for that person when it was still early.
Fail for leaving the main group.
Fail for trying to breadcrumb by leaving behind gear.
Fail for taking his breadcrumb gear.
Fail for not making a decent descent plan or send-help plan when they had cell contact.
This is why people die hiking. Luckily this person did not!
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I don’t know what kind of workplace this was but, even if they had followed best practices and stuck together, summiting a mountain in the 14,000 ft range is a significant challenge for most people. You really start to notice the effects of high altitude when you’re up that high. Very strange choice for an office retreat.
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… is this a mandatory job activity 
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This is why I think it’s worth being a slight bit picky about who one hikes with, preferably a recommendation from a mutual acquaintance that “they’re a good hiker”. It’s not just a question of matching pace and goals, it’s the fact that whether in a split second or over the course of hours, it’s always possible that your lives are going to be in each others’ hands and some measure of their character is good to know.
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Maybe not strange to the others if the purpose was to — oh, forget it. 
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Those easier ones, the “walkup 14ers”, can turn very very cruel and dangerous for even the best prepared. Not tragic in this case, but hopefully a reminder that ma nature has her moments…
A work-fun-activity-gone-bad could be a good frame on which to do an episode of CSI/NCIS/MontyPython though!
On the less entertaining but possibly actually meaningful side, it makes for some good looks at heuristics and group management in the already complicated-and-nonzero-risk arena of outdoorsy stuff.
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That is a good way to look at it. Most of the time when something bad happens it’s more a cascading series of small failures than one big thing.
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Sometimes the wrong holes in the swiss cheese line up. This crew had a few too many holes from the beginning.
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Has it been done on “Star Trek”?
… to boldly go where no sane person would ever go and rescue the idiots who went there 
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A few of our local volunteer S&R peeps have bumper stickers with “Support your Local Search and Rescue - GET LOST!”
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Sounds like a series of things that folks would do to Milton. Hope this guy winds up spending some quality time relaxing on a beach now.
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Also boating, and it is astonishing how many people assume ‘it will be fine’ when they get on a boat.
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There are 14 people who should probably be let go.
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That’s seems like some unreasonably really shitty behaviour; what excuse could they have for treating their colleague so badly?
Type A Holes? 
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