Stay outta those places!!!

A former Green Beret has a few comments about the guy in the AOL article:

Click here: AOL News - Hiker Rescued After Five Days in Lava Field Near Volcano

This is one LUCKY person. I have trained in that area, and it some of the most viscious terrain I have ever seen. NASA used to own it, because it resembles the surface of the moon, but it was too rough on the lunar rover, and their equipment, so they gave it to the Army.

You go there for thirty days, with a brand new pair of boots, and at the end, you throw them away because they are shredded by the razor sharp rocks. The rocks are covered with a fine powdery dirt, but it offers no protection. A simple stumble and fall can lead to being medevac'd with severe injuries. And survival there is a definite challenge. Besides the fact that you are in this huge valley between a live volcano, and an extinct one.

I have to wonder at anybody's intelligence that would actually choose to go to a place like that, although many people do it. Don't they understand that is what the National Geographic channel is for?

The training areas in Hawaii are so limited, that the Army has to use that hell hole. The "Hawaiian Government" has real tight restrictions on everything. In most of the training areas you aren't allowed to even dig fighting positions, because it disturbs the ecosystem...

Any troops stationed at Schofield Barracks for a tour learn the terrain so well in the very small training area there, that they don't use maps. Caused problems for us when we were trying to train the cadre for the 25TH INF's Sniper school, most of the NCO's map reading, and land navigation skills were so atrophied, we had to teach them the basics, before moving on to the skills they needed to complete the course..
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I'd say it's a whole lot smarter, if you're determined to see the lava in a volcano, to get thee to a helicopter and fly over that sucker!
Wrap...