Episode 1: The Detour

I have a bit of a complaint about this detour, plus some comments on detours in general. First, here are the detour choices for this episode:

• Ice climb: Drive about 35 miles, trek across a glacier, then climb up the ice wall.
• Ice search: Drive a short distance, take a boat and search 7 square miles for a buoy.

This is one of those typical scary but fast and gentle but slow detours. I generally don't like these kinds of detours unless the alternative to the scary task is doable or at least have some advantage to it so that it's not totally obvious that the scary task will be faster. Now one of the "pros" of the ice search is that it is close by. However, even though the ice climb is farther away, it is actually in the direction of the pit stop, so this supposedly negative aspect of the choice becomes a positive aspect (or at least makes it a non-issue). This makes the ice search to have essentially no pros at all, contradicting that a detour is a choice between two tasks, each with its pros and cons (notice the plurality of the key words). Anyway, I still think detours can be designed way better than this, and if you see distances as being cited as a pro or a con, it probably doesn't matter at all.