[marvin]

I don’t think it’s necessarily a Europe thing, it’s just as likely a tourist thing. When you’re a city-dwelling tourist, you don’t know danger and certainly not the local dangers. Dangers at home are considered part of your upbringing, overgeneralized as absolute facts of the world, while dangers elsewhere are unknown and unexpected.

I’ve seen the same in Norway; tourists from all over the world getting lost in the mountains, caught out in bad weather or early nightfall with poor clothing and footwear, lost at sea in quickly-changing weather, fall off unexpected cliffs, hit by falling glacier ice, swept into the freezing ocean by waves, killed by avalanche, snowed in on the road etc.

[arethuza]

I think its mostly just a "not a local" thing - I've met quite a few people in the Scottish mountains who had got quite a shock at weather conditions even though our hills are tiny compared to the Alps or elsewhere.

A 1000m hill can't be dangerous, right?

[LorenPechtel]

I will second this. I hike and pretty much I can divide the stupidity into two classes:

1) People who are utterly ill-equipped and know nothing. Almost all of these are within a mile of the trailhead. They are very unlikely to experience worse than an unpleasant time.

2) People who are underequipped and know little of the local situation. These are almost all tourists. (To date I have encountered only one exception--two guys 4 miles and ~2,500' in, water bottles and big, heavy sticks that were worse than useless as trekking poles. Fortunately I got them turned around, had they continued they would have been out of water, risking hypothermia and have had no chance of getting back to civilization before dark--and they had no light.) The ultimate example was a guy from Florida. He was asking me for navigation advice, attempting to reach the highest local summit. It was his 4th attempt, the previous three were blocked by snow. By unreliable reporting there were several feet of snow on the summit at that time, it certainly wasn't considered passable. He was asking me about a third trail shown on his map. Really now, an arrow-straight trail in steep mountains?? That's the boundary line for the ski resort! No GPS, no poles, if he by some miracle summitted he would have had no chance of getting down before nightfall.

[mturmon]

Smart observation. Relatedly, I've wandered around dodgy neighborhoods late at night while visiting foreign capitals much more than I'd do in the city where I live.