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The most dangerous time of your life!!? 17-Mar-2012 At 3:17:49 PM davidn

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On 17/03/2012 cruze wrote:
>While I agree with the sentiment, I think it is a bit black and white to
>say "mountaineering" is dangerous and cragging is less so.

To the stats, batman! The climbing accidents in Australia report (Iain Sedgman: http://uob-community.ballarat.edu.au/~isedgman/climbing/Accidents.pdf indicates that of the injuries recorded in a 49 year period, over 69% were rock climbing injuries, and 21% were mountaineering injuries. Yet 55.4% of the deaths were mountaineering-related. Australia is by no means a go-to destination for mountaineering, of course.

To quote another site that keeps evidence on climbing fatalities and injuries (http://climbing.about.com/b/2010/09/06/will-2010-be-a-record-year-for-climbing-deaths-in-the-united-states.htm :

"The statistics from the past 50 years as well as from this year indicate that mountaineering is much more hazardous than rock climbing. If you go climbing in the mountains, it's more likely that accidents will happen. Climbers travelling across snow slopes and icy terrain account for a lot of accidents and deaths due to avalanches, falls, and falling objects. Mountains also have lots of loose rock, unstable slopes, and danger from weather."

So cragging is less dangerous than mountaineering. Black and white, but then that's not saying cragging isn't dangerous.

Back to Gadd's point. Anyone can talk about what they think is dangerous based on their own experience or a throwaway line they heard once, but... imagining something to be true doesn't make it true. To assert that Gadd is trying to have his cake and eat it too is just inflammatory for the sake of it. He's telling people to stop deluding themselves into believing crossing the road is more dangerous than mountaineering (as well as obviously having some personal crises of faith in his chosen religion of climbing). So essentially... "It's dangerous, make your decisions on that basis" - isn't that the European approach?