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Chockstone Forum - General Discussion

General Climbing Discussion

Author
A comment on hierarchies of risk

Macciza
26-Jan-2016
12:41:35 AM
First let me state that I am aware that some people may consider me to be 'bold, reckless, even dangerous or risky' at times when I climb .... Personally I don't agree and believe that I have a quite good understanding of the various risks involved and my ability to deal with such factors in my climbing, rope system management and protection capabilities. Sure I have had the odd incident here and there but in general I think i ' know my shit ' fairly well, and am generally aware of the relevant factors when pushing the boundaries and can explain/take responsibility for my actions. Based on a few decades of climbing the way I do ....

So here's a few observations.....

1. Just because you think you do everything 'correctly/by the book' (whichever one) does not mean that 'nothing can possibly happen' because as they say 'shit happens' and without a broad base of experience you may not be aware of some of the issues at hand...

2. Doing slightly dubious stuff with awareness of the relevant factors can maintain an adequate safety envelope; but without that awareness you are entering risky territory.

3. Teaching dubious techniques to others can lead you into quite dangerous territory and can lead to bad practice propagating and endanger the other person who has no perception of the risks involved.

4. Failing to even listen to constructive criticisms from experienced people creates an even more dangerous situation for both yourself and even more so for the person you might be 'teaching' ( for want of a better word).

5. To then claim that 'everything was just fine' without explanation or discussion is even more dangerous ( and a bit arrogant) because you are essentially unaware of the dangers involved so cannot protect against them and refusing to learn what you might be doing wrong and will never understand what you are doing wrong. Neither will the personal you are 'showing stuff to'( as opposed to actually teaching'. This can lead to substantial serious problems at later times for both of you and anyone else who observes and copies what you are doing wrong.

Sure you might be able to climb pretty well in the gym where safety is somewhat managed, but out in the 'real world' it's a whole different ballgame and you owe it not only to yourself, but more importantly others to at least listen when someone attempts to help you out with some knowledge/advice etc. You might actually learn/understand something that you weren't aware of. I know I did through the years and continue to do so.

I will generally listen to others point of view and feel quite able to respond to/explain any questions regarding what, why and how I might do something....

Please tithe to at least listen to others point of view and comments in the hope of staying as reasonably safe as you possibly can when engaged in the dangerous act of climbing...

And try to remember, it's really the unknown dangers that are most dangerous, and it's only the known dangers that you can can protect yourself from ...

Cheers, stay 'safe' ...

rodw
26-Jan-2016
7:28:17 AM
Can I have the back story for this post...sounds like something good went on? :)

Tend to agree Macca with sentiments mostly..if I see something dangerous I pipe up...if they choose to take it on board up to them...if they don't I move on, don't want a incident ruining my fun day off...one of the reasons I climb at obscure secret crags as people tend not to listen, ego is often bigger then common sense.

Though I offer advice only once, we are all adult and if they want to do stupid shit its there call...I certainly wont lecture.

martym
26-Jan-2016
9:58:39 AM
May I offer some solace from someone who's been on both sides of this discussion (haven't we all been newbys once?) While I don't pretend to have anywhere near the experience,knowledge or passion that you do - I have learned my fair share in 15 years of climbing. And I think a lot of that is by getting myself and/or others into and out of trouble, but have also received a dressing down from time to time. It's not pleasant but it did sink in.
I've only met Macca a handful of times and you were always funny and polite. But some of your online comments and I dare say this post - I imagine some people could find you a bit confronting, and climbers being a predominantly (tough)male population - they may feel the need to save face..
The good news is, even if people seem to "not be listening" - in my experience, even arrogant punks will dwell on comments and criticism, even if they appear to ignore you...

Goshen
26-Jan-2016
12:18:15 PM
All true...

It's not the unknown dangers so much (eg rockfall), it's more the failure to appreciate the more obvious dangers, as in:

And a helmet does not protect you from climbing dangerously, or worse, from falling to your death by failing to clip in when getting dressed for a climb while standing on a 20cm wide ledge above a 40m drop. In this case, these were experienced climbers, I was asking myself if my failure to point out the obvious would haunt me forever if the worst was to happen. I decided in the end, that it wouldn't.


The good Dr
27-Jan-2016
9:58:15 AM
Encapsulates getting on the Chocky forum perfectly.

Macciza
28-Jan-2016
6:21:34 PM
invalid or suspicious input? 'Exe-cute' as one word ??

Rod witnessed some instruction taking placed and attempted to help out but was sternly rebuked before getting to say anything much, and was told to basically get lost. There were points of the setup that should have been done better and that were being done (apparently exe-cuted as one word is invalid or suspicious, ffs) quite poorly and not being properly corrected. I left so as not have to witness any more...

Marty - given setup, exe-cution and apparent somewhat uncomfortableness of the belayer, in this particular top of cliff top belay setup, I'm not sure how well the getting out of trouble would have gone. I don't think I was confronting in this instance, was merely trying to help backup and add a little more explanation to what was being said, but seeming not properly interpreted or acted upon. There was definitely no tough male face-saving going on, and unfortunately with nothing really being said for them to 'not listen to' there ended up no chance of them being able to dwell on or consider later. It was total ignorance.

Goshen - Generally speaking random rockfall (unconnected with the climber knocking somethings) is a known danger, but it is an objective hazard which an individual has somewhat no control over. One can gather information as to likelihood and potential consequence but can do little about it except take a chance based on educated guess or avoid as much as practicable.

What I mean here are the unknown unknowns, those things which you aren't aware that you aren't aware of. There are thing we know we know, things we know we don't know, thing we don't know we know, and things we don't know we don't know. that last one is really hard to protect against via risk management.

Dr - No, in fact not at all like the Chocky forum where posts are generally somewhat unavoidable .....

Mods- Why on earth does the word 'exe-cution' as one word cause such problems? That is simply political correctness gone made. particularly when all this is happening on computers that exe-cute millions of instructions a second...

ldshield
29-Jan-2016
1:59:51 PM
I am a relative newcomer to climbing, but despite formal instruction with a couple of different organisations one of the things that still worries me is not knowing what I don't know. After reflection I came to the conclusion that this is not necessarily always a bad thing, because if you can recognise that there are always going to be gaps in your knowledge (even if you're not sure what they are) it motivates you to actively check for hazards rather than become complacent.
widewetandslippery
29-Jan-2016
3:36:40 PM
I find this funny, in a good way, as a bumbly paddler I am reliving near death as I did as a teenage climber but in middle age. That "fuc that was dumb, wont do that again, try not to anyway" is no different.


phillipivan
29-Jan-2016
5:04:37 PM
On 28/01/2016 Macciza wrote:
>invalid or suspicious input? 'Exe-cute' as one word ??
...
>
>Mods- Why on earth does the word 'exe-cution' as one word cause such problems?
>That is simply political correctness gone made. particularly when all this
>is happening on computers that exe-cute millions of instructions a second...
>

Since the hacking a while back there are a considerable number of words that no longer pass muster, or filters. Most of them seem applicable to the world of computing / programming.

It's got naught to do with PCness.

PI.
Olbert
30-Jan-2016
8:58:36 AM
The word "e x e c u t e" might mean something to the server Chockstone is served on when combined in a certain way with other words - ie it might be an attempt to hack the system. I think the server is basically telling that there is a hair in your soup.

ajfclark
31-Jan-2016
8:46:14 AM
Correct con text is another word in this category.

The problem is that there are some bugs in the chockstone scripts that make the computer exe cute what the user sent rather than storing it in the database. So there's a list of banned words. It's not an ideal solution, but it was all Mike had time to do.

I've looked at some of the code involved and it'd be significant effort to find all the places that chockstone might incorrectly run user supplied commands.

There are 11 messages in this topic.

 

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