"Hey, Hiker!" * * * * * US 



Maybe it's morning, noon, or past midnight a ranger is always on duty 

 at headquarters to make the "drag out" if need be. Most of them are 

 unnecessary, but the rangers must always respond to the call for help 

 for the sake of one in ten who actually 

 needs it. 



One day the "drag out" call came to 

 headquarters in Sequoia National Park. 



"Fat man stuck in a cave," said the 

 voice on the telephone. "Send a ranger 

 better send two or three rangers." 



Arriving at the cave, the rangers found 

 a hiker of great avoirdupois who had left 

 his discretion at home and who had tried 

 to push his way between two great boulders 

 into a cave much visited by hikers in that 

 park. The boulders weighed many tons and 

 could not be budged. Other hikers had pressed their weight against the 

 broad expanse of the fat man's trousers and had tried to push him into 

 the cave, with no luck. Then they tried to pull him out, but failed 

 equally dismally. Two courses lay before the rangers. They could dyna 

 mite the rocks and loosen the fat man, but that would destroy a scenic 

 asset and it might injure the prisoner. They could allow him to fast 

 until he reduced sufficiently to be released. The latter course was 

 adopted. It took three days to make that "drag out." 



In Yosemite the call for help came from a trail rider. The rangers 

 hurried up the trail and found that a San Francisco sports writer had 

 been riding a mule, when the animal shied at something and jumped, 

 scraping the rider's head on an overhanging boulder. He was scalped 

 as neatly as if a redskin had done it, except that no self-respecting In 

 dian would waste time scalping a bald-headed man like this sports 

 writer. He was a pitiful figure, and was rushed to the hospital, where 

 his scalp was sewn back on his head by the surgeon in attendance. His 

 scalp healed, and shortly thereafter his hair began to grow. Today he 

 boasts the finest locks of any sports writer in San Francisco, which may 

 not be saying much ; but anybody wishing to take this cure for baldness 

 may have the man's name on application. 



One day last summer three ambitious youngsters from Iowa arrived 

 in Rocky Mountain Park in an old car, and without delay or preparation 

 set out to climb Longs Peak. They reached the peak by late afternoon, 

 and started down by what they thought to be a short cut. The route be 

 came increasingly steep and their shoes, without hobnails, slipped on the 

 granite. The lads threw discretion to the wind and two of them tossed 

 their shoes ahead of them, hoping to find them below. One boy stuffed 



