No Federal Search and Rescue assets or mission on public lands means the local county sheriff has to run the mission. So local tax base and assets are required to hold the hands, and find the people or otheir remains on public lands at a time the Congress has bolted from paying the counties their remittance to mitigate the large federal land holdings and lack of tax base to support activities just like the search for the lost, misplaced, and just plain stupid. Add to that the removal of the US Air Force Search and Rescue unit from Portland Air Base, and the Oregon Natl Guard now broke, and still waiting for FEMA to pay them for their peace keeping mission to New Orleans following Katrina, and the public insult to those who bear the burden of finding the lost public comes full circle. Those are your wilderness and national forest lands. Why is it a local duty to search for the national lost on public lands?

The "Public" wants a lot of freebies from the local yokels, and in no way do they want to pay for them as a Nation. When the Kim family lost their way in Southern Oregon last month, it was the Kim family who hired the helicopters that found Mom and the kids, and eventually Dad's body. The local county is broke, awash in public lands, and the jobs and tax base gone 20 years now with the end of logging on public lands. All they have left from that is trees and a substantial part of the 600,000 acre Biscuit Fire of several years ago. Big Whoop. No money for schools, public safety, or roads. The "Public" is getting a better search effort than they are paying for, in that a lot of donated supplies and people's time are directed at the search for the 3 missing climbers who dared to go up a bad mountain at the most stormy time of the year. It might be romantic in New York, but it is viewed as insane by the locals. There will be no great outcome. Survivors, if any, with frostbite damage, or at worst, frozen corpses. A terrible waste of life entirely preventable by use of locator beacons for rent at Timberline Lodge. But, get used to it. This is not the first for this year, nor will it be the last. Searching for users of the vast public domain who have lost their way, a local responsibility, will continue, unfair as the burden might be.

I feel so sorry for the families of these guys, but it is time to put a stop to dumbells taking off up the mountain in the dead of winter for recreation and fun. Not only have they put their own lives at risk (and probably ended them), but they have put the lives of rescuers at risk. Far too many folks under estimate nature and over estimate their own abilities every single winter.
Unfortunately, as bearbait says, it won't be the last such rescue this year either.