After the rescue, safely back in Anchorage and more than a little embarrassed, Alaska Department of Fish and Game public information officer Ken Marsh was contemplating a simple question: Cell phone good or cell phone bad?

Back in the day, Marsh confessed, he never would have thought of heading off into the woods without a lighter, a jacket and a compass. And yet that is exactly what he did on Thursday evening after work in Anchorage. He drove out north of the city into the Susitna Valley to look for a moose. The evening was warm. He wasn't going far from his truck parked not far off a road west of Wasilla. He really didn't expect to get a moose. And, of course, he had his cell phone if something went wrong.

As it turned out, something did go wrong, and he made one of several calls that last week sparked necessary -- but not necessarily vital -- rescues in southcentral Alaska. They were the sort of non-rescue rescues that are increasingly tying up Alaska rescue personnel and state resources. They were the sort of rescues that have helped to inflate the search and rescue budget of the Alaska State Troopers by about 60 percent over the past decade.

Given the huge distances in Alaska and the limited number of people trained for what are commonly called SAR (search-and-rescue) missions, these were also rescues with the potential to tie up life-saving assets that might be needed elsewhere. A trooper helicopter earlier this summer took a long nine hours to reach a group of National Outdoor Leadership School students after they were attacked by a grizzly bear in the Talkeetna Mountains in large part because it had been tied up in a futile SAR operation in the Fairbanks area earlier the same day. Two of the NOLS students mauled by that bear had suffered life-threatening injuries. They were being treated by fellow students who could only hope and pray rescuers would arrive before their classmates bled to death. 

Fortunately, help did come and all did survive, but it was close.

NOLS officials later pondered whether the rescue had been delayed by a rescue system bogged down with marginally necessary, unnecessary or even bogus calls for help. These problems are not unique to Alaska, say those involved in SAR. All across the country, the convenience of the cell phone and the creation of the personal locator beacon (PLB) are taxing rescue assets. SAR personnel say that too many people who should be taking care of themselves are instead calling for help.

Technology, a marvelous crutch

Marsh admits he is one of those who should have been able to take care of himself. He wonders, frankly, what he was thinking that night he went moose hunting. "I probably had a little sense of security with that cell phone," he said. "I always carried a lighter."

Always, that is, until recently. Technology is a marvelous crutch.

Marsh wasn't the only one to use it in recent days in the Anchorage area. Less than a day after Marsh called troopers, Barbara Wright dialed them from the Twentymile River near Portage to report she was worried about her son, 31-year-old Josh Hoeldt from Eagle River. He'd dropped his mom and her husband on the river to make camp, then pointed his riverboat back downstream toward the Seward Highway bridge to pick up his wife and kids. The Twentymile is not a particularly dangerous river, but when Hoeldt failed to make it back to camp his worried mom called for a search.

"AST searched the area using AST Helo-1 from approximately 2339 hours until approximately 0300 hours," troopers later reported. "Due to increasing fog and lack of light the helicopter had to leave the area. The following day prior to resuming search efforts, a family friend located Hoeldt at a cabin on Twentymile River. Hoeldt and his family were not in distress. Hoeldt reported on his return trip to the campsite with his family, darkness prevented him from continuing. Hoeldt and his family spent the night at the cabin with plans to resume the trip in the morning."