FAIRBANKS — What’s the difference between being mentally unstable and just plain stupid?

If you’re mentally unstable, you get strapped to a backboard and flown off Mount McKinley in an Army helicopter.

The National Park Service might even hand you a bill for thousands of dollars for the rescue. You might even get a ticket for committing some kind of crime.

As an added bonus, your name is released to the media and your story gets picked up on the national wire.

If you’re just plain stupid, on the other hand, you fall and break your ankle while hiking on a steep, wet trail in a pair of Crocs and you get hoisted out by an Alaska Air National Guard helicopter.

There is no talk of charging you for the rescue and your name and the details of what happened are not released to the media, so nobody really knows how stupid you were except for yourself, a few friends and the strangers who helped you at the scene.

While the above scenario might sound a little unfair, that’s precisely what happened in the case of Andrew Randolph, a 25-year-old mountain climber from Pennsylvania who was evacuated from Mount McKinley last week, and the unidentified, overweight woman who fell and broke her ankle while hiking on the Angel Rocks Trail in the Chena River State Recreation Area and was hoisted out by helicopter on June 30.

Randolph, who was attempting to climb Mount McKinley by himself and had talked about foolishly paragliding off the 20,320-foot summit, was pulled off the mountain by Army helicopters from Fort Wainwright on July 7 after park service rangers deemed him unfit to be on the mountain.

He had made it to two-thirds of the way up the mountain when medical staff at the 14,200-foot camp stepped in and determined Randolph “was a threat to himself and others,” as John Leonard, South District ranger for Denali National Park and Preserve, put it.

Randolph showed up at the camp with a body temperature bordering on hypothermia and was treated by doctors. Rangers, meanwhile, found and confiscated Randolph’s paraglider, which he had promised park rangers he would not take onto the mountain.

It is illegal to paraglide off Mount McKinley, and Randolph had signed an affidavit with the park service swearing not to use a paraglider on the mountain.

Randolph told the News-Miner earlier this week he wasn’t planning to use the paraglider unless he faced a life-or-death situation on the mountain, though I have always thought just the act of climbing North America’s tallest peak is a life-and-death situation.

Whether that’s true or not doesn’t really matter, Leonard said, because it was Randolph’s erratic behavior, not the fact he had a paraglider, that prompted the park service to call in the Army to pick him up. In fact, Leonard said Randolph demanded an emergency flight off the mountain because he lacked the proper gear or experience to get down.

Randolph, meanwhile, contends he had a broken snowshoe and he didn’t trust the backup gear or support the park service offered him to get down the mountain.

However it played out, on July 7 Randolph was strapped to a backboard and picked up by two Army Chinook CH-47 helicopters from Fort Wainwright.

Why two helicopters were required to transport Randolph off the mountain is beyond me, but that’s another story.

After the rescue, Randolph said he had been singled out by the park service because he was climbing solo, which is frowned on by park rangers because of the danger involved, and for bringing his paraglider onto the mountain.

The park service, meanwhile, said earlier this week the federal agency might seek reimbursement from Randolph for the rescue, which cost tens of thousands of dollars. The park service also is considering criminal charges.

But what makes Randolph’s situation different than that of the unidentified, overweight woman who was hoisted out by helicopter after slipping and falling on the Angel Rocks Trail and breaking her ankle?

From what I’m told, the woman was wearing a pair of flip-flops or Crocs — fashionable yes, but not the appropriate footwear for hiking Angel Rocks — and wasn’t in physical shape to be doing what she was doing. She slipped and fell, badly breaking her ankle.

The only way to get her out was to hoist her out by helicopter. As luck would have it, an Alaska Air National Guard crew had just finished a training mission in Fairbanks. The crew got the call to help with the rescue at 4:50 p.m., and the woman was in Fairbanks Memorial Hospital by 6:13 p.m.

The interesting aspect of this to me is that there really is no difference between Randolph and the woman who was rescued from Angel Rocks. They were both unprepared to do what they set out to do and ended up risking other people’s lives to save them at great monetary expense.

It happens all the time in Alaska. People make stupid decisions and need to be bailed out when they get in trouble, whether it’s by Alaska State Troopers, the U.S. Army or Alaska Air National Guard.

I find it interesting that the park service might seek reimbursement from Randolph for his rescue, considering rangers knew he was a little loony when he showed up in Talkeetna and started talking about paragliding off the mountain. Why even allow him on the mountain in the first place, paraglider or no paraglider?

Whether or not those people should have to pay for their respective rescues is irrelevant, even though that’s the point everyone wants to focus on whenever anybody is rescued in Alaska.

In reality, the two incidents provide great, real-life training for the rescuers involved. If they weren’t rescuing idiots in real life, they’d be pretending to rescue dummies in mock training scenarios.

Ironic, isn’t it?

Contact outdoors editor Tim Mowry at 459-7587.