The recent tragedy on Nantou County’s Mount Kelekelean (可樂可樂安山) was heartbreaking. Two experienced climbers lost their lives, and the last cry for help came not from seasoned adults, but from an eight-year-old boy, the youngest member of the mountaineering trio.
In the freezing wilderness, the child used his grandfather’s cellphone to call for help. While this saved himself in the end, he was unable to save the lives of the adults — among them his own grandfather — who were traveling with him.
This call was not only a child’s desperate cry for help, but also a wake-up call about our blind faith in Taiwan’s current mountaineering safety systems.
Much blame has fallen on the so-called “emergency coordinator system.” In theory, an emergency coordinator — usually a family member or friend — stays as ground support, keeping track of the team’s itinerary and agrees on a time to descend. If they fail to reach out at that time, the emergency coordinator is supposed to call the police.
In this tragedy, the emergency coordinator clearly failed to act immediately.
In most cases, the emergency coordinator system is little more than a verbal, informal agreement made before setting out: “I should be down by Sunday afternoon — if you don’t hear from me then, maybe call someone.” It is informal, imprecise and dangerously unreliable.
How much do these emergency coordinators really know? Do they know where the mountain climbers plan to go each day, what the retreat routes are, and the team members’ physical condition and equipment? In most cases, the answer is no. The information they possess is extremely limited, leaving them unable to provide rescuers with actionable intelligence when something goes wrong.
In this incident, the boy in peril directly calling the police proved to be more effective than the emergency coordinator on the ground. This ironic fact exposes the absurdity of the existing system. It reveals the inherent flaw of outsourcing life-or-death responsibility to relatives, who are most likely untrained, not following standardized procedures, and guided only by intuition and a sense of duty.
Since the existing system does not work, we must replace it with something modern and reliable. Taiwan needs a nationwide online mountain activity reporting platform, where every group attempting certain classes of climbs is required to register detailed plans before departure.
Such a platform would transform vague personal promises into a trackable safety protocol, reducing the chance of human error and delay.
We must also foster a new culture within the mountaineering community: that safety is sacred and the only way home. Both novice and veteran climbers should respect the mountains and strictly adhere to safety regulations.
The government must pivot from reactive rescues to proactive prevention, such as upgrading communications infrastructure in mountain areas, using data to identify high-risk zones and issuing warnings before disaster strikes.
The tragedy on Mount Kelekelean must not fade into just another news story. That boy’s phone call in the darkness should be the catalyst for systemic reform. Only by combining technology, standardized procedures and a mature culture of safety can we honor those who were lost, and ensure that every future climber has a safe path home.
Roger Lo is a freelancer.
Translated by Lin Lee-kai
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