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The most dangerous time of your life!!? 17-Mar-2012 At 7:47:13 PM cruze

Message

On 17/03/2012 Useful wrote:
>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-
>he-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.

I googled and found the report. I appreciate Iain's efforts but if I were to be critical I feel uncomfortable with how the data was collected and how it was reported. It was collected from a number of sources (including word of mouth) and seems (at least for mountaineering) to relate to Australians anywhere in the world having an accident. I don't know the last time someone died in Australia of altitude sickness (the example given is pulmonary oedema) - there are three listed fatalities in the report! Mountaineering also included deaths on approaches but not for appraoching rock climbing areas. I would be interested in knowing whether the avalanche deaths included any ski tourers/mountianeers.

One thing that I am aware of is how people that partake in risky behaviour often divert attention away from themselves in order to justify their risky behaviour to themselves, such as saying the drive is the most dangerous part of the activity, or saying inactivity leads to heart disease, that base jumping is more dangerous than climbing. etc. I am not trying to say that "mountaineering" is safe, just that it isn't all as dangerous as you might imagine. eg there is a big difference between a new route on an 8000m peak in winter and what most Kiwis would call a weekend tramp up a >2000 m peak.

The second quoted report highlights the objective dangers in mountaineering. Not a lot of dispute there. But I reckon the average rockclimber exposes themselves to a greater level of subjective danger than the average person spending time in the hills through being so inexperienced they don't know how inexperienced they are and regularly expose themselves to hazards they wouldn't even know about. This is evident in the high number of reported (Iain's report) rock climbing falls requiring hospitalisation, or worse. Just a thought.

Anyway, sorry Adam, didn't want to thread highjack. I hope you resolve your initial conundrum. This life isn't a dress rehearsal. If you're not living, you're dying.