Read this a couple weeks ago when it came out. Great story, but yeah when having kids and a family takes another sort of person to still want to pursue those adventures. But some cannot just sit still and feel the need to push their endeavors to the highest limit.
If you liked this story, you might like the documentary “Torn,” which was made by children of Alex Lowe, a top mountaineer who disappeared in an avalanche and then his body was found years later.
Another is Eiger Obsession Facing the Mountain that Killed My Father By John Harlin III. His father died attempting a route on the Eiger when he was a kid. Later in life he climbed it while his own kids were around the same age. I thought he wrote pretty well about his father's drive and how it impacted his family and his life.
Some folks are adrenaline junkies. Doing this stuff when you have kids though is negligence and even worse doing it when the kid already lost one parent to the activity. Fuck those parents and anyone here that's like them.
Most mountaineering is not an adrenaline fueled pursuit and many adrenaline junkies would find it’s often non-technical tactics boring. Is it an egotistical pursuit? Sure. Objectively hazardous? Yes. But distance cyclists and runners have more in common with mountaineers than base jumpers.
If you break down the stats, a significant fraction (if not most) of the fatal accidents in GA are in experimental aircraft like kit builds and exotic stuff like fighter jets, despite accounting for a small fraction of the total flight hours. Most of the rest are due to preventable human error like misjudging your ability to fly in bad weather or miscalculating fuel and running out mid-flight.
It’s like driving: it’s usually very safe if you don’t speed and drive tired or drunk.
With the distinct difference that driving isn’t at all like flying for very obvious reasons.
Miscalculating range in a ground vehicle typically has the somewhat less than fatal outcome of being at least somewhat embarrassing.
Misjudging driving ability is largely a characteristic attributed to male drivers under the age of 25, and the overwhelming majority of incidents are more costly and ego injuring than fatal.
Last time I checked, the average driver can expect to be involved in a fatal car accident every 200 million kilometres or so (Australian data).
While general aviation appears to have a fatality rate of around 10 per million flight hours.
Average speed in a car is typically well under 100 kilometres per hour, making general aviation fatality rate 10 to 20 times higher.
Having said that, the law of small numbers informs that the average general aviation pilot can expect to be involved in a fatal incident approximately never.
~10x as dangerous checks per km checks out if you assume the same distance is traveled either case. (1 fatality per 100k flight hours * 200KPH would be 1 fatality per 20 million km.)
However people who fly regularly tend to have crazy high total mileage compared to the ~15k miles/year of a typical American. Which is why so many general aviation pilots die relative to car crashes, it’s just inherently a very dangerous hobby.
No, according to the article, she was already 31 in 2002.
> In 2002, at age 31, she'd gotten her degree to teach music around the time that Bill announced to the family that he was going to try to climb Huascarán.
I think having a commitment that strong to a dangerous activity should factor into whether you have kids in the first place. Maybe it doesn't make the answer an automatic "no", but I think one has to really think through one's decision to create a person who will have a disproportionate risk of major trauma in their early life and should have an extremely clear contingency plan for the child's care by someone who is genuinely psychologically and materially prepared for that eventuality. I think that to do less than that would be negligence—it might be a common type of negligence, easily obscured by romanticism about bold endeavors, but it is certainly not taking care.
Everybody’s life sucks in some way. Some kids have parents who die rock climbing. Some kids have parents who hate their lives. You can’t prevent trauma in a kid’s life.
Telling people to think more about having kids is a clear waste of breath. Whatever amount they think about it they’ll (almost always) rationalize that as the correct amount.
The problem with mountains is twofold: Many mountains can be climbed without being elite while exposing yourself to major risk, and for some mountains there is objective hazard that can’t be mitigated.
One example of an “easy” but high risk climb is Mt. Rainier in Washington. All you need to go up is a set of crampons and a backpack, no technical mountaineering needed. However the mountain is full of glaciers that can collapse from under you, which has killed many people. Additionally, many have slipped and then slid to their death. In my case, when I attempted Rainier I took a wrong turn at one point and almost walked off a cliff.
Second: Objective Hazard. Objective hazard is risks that cannot be reasonably mitigated. Things like rockfall where a rock breaks off and falls on your head at random, or unpredictable avalanches. Mt Rainier as well has an area called the bowling alley known for its rockfall. The humans are the pins. Rainier also has an area called the icebox where cornices break off and fall into the climbing route. In 1981 the icebox killed 11 people in one day. Those climbers did everything right, but were in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Mountaineering is not the same as other sports. It is sometimes deceptively easy, yet there are risks that simply cannot be mitigated. Any experienced mountaineer can give you a long list of friends they know that have died. That’s the case in few other sports.
It's the same with base jumping. I remember watching a documentary on it one time and almost all of the people being interviewed knew multiple people that died during a jump.
An engine failing on an aircraft, especially a light aircraft, is not a guaranteed crash landing. It is a serious situation, however aircraft usually glide well. This means you have opportunities to find somewhere that is adequate for landing. Many aircraft with engine failures have landed safely on airstrips. Interestingly this is also the case with helicopters due to their ability to autorotate.
I think base jumping is slightly closer to suicide.
Or that almost suicidal thing with the wingsuits some people do: I get the appeal, I'm sure the rush of feeling like flying must be incredible, but they are playing Russian roulette.
Wingsuits aren’t something I really follow. But my understanding it’s an activity that most serious practitioners die sooner or later from a crash/fall.
It's very dangerous, but I think "most serious practitioners die sooner or later" is an exaggeration. The number I see is 1 death per 500 jumps, which I assume is also biased towards people with less experience.
It might have been true for the pioneers of the sport though.
I (and probably the commenter you're replying to) meant wingsuit BASE jumping, who is considered one of the most dangerous sports in the world. I think it's borderline suicide. I think its practitioners are thrill seekers who want a higher and higher rush, much like an addiction, which has a high chance of killing them.
It's more dangerous than jumping from a plane with a wingsuit.
I'm under the impression that wing suit base jumping is a lot safer than it was 20 years ago due to design improvements, and I believe that's what the 1 in 500 number I see in a few articles comes from. I could be wrong, but it matches the impression I have from watching a few content creators doing it.
Yes, I'm basically referring to base jumping in a wingsuit though, as I say, it's not an activity I'm remotely interested in or have much knowledge of beyond some videos. Of course, serious/elite practitioners do quite a lot of jumps.
I read the fatality comment somewhere presumably somewhat authoritative but it was a while back.
I have been thinking about starting to do air gliding. Is this a dangerous sport? How long does it take to get to glide a few miles? Any pointers pointers (books, videos,etc..) to start up? I live nearby Seattle, WA. Thanks!!!
When I used to do gliding (sailplane, not hang gliding or paragliding) many years ago, it was not classed as a dangerous sport for insurance purposes. Don't know about the other fields of gliding. General aviation was classed as riskier - I guess glider pilots are more used to the fact that they don't have a working engine!
hehe a friend wants to do it. He has a trainer. The condition was at least 5000 jumps from plane with parachute . then 3 years training with at least 1000 or more jumps from plane or so….. it was hard and demanding be asured. he is elite lvl in sport.
i wouldn’t do it. not because of the danger but because the training to do it safe is to hard.
>> Objective hazard is risks that cannot be reasonably mitigated. Things like rockfall where a rock breaks off and falls on your head at random, or unpredictable avalanches
Those risks can be mitigated. They can't be reduced to zero, but they can be made less severe.
Avalanches don't typically happen randomly out of the blue any more than thunderstorms do in the midwest. In the midwest, you know days ahead of time that there is going to be a risk of thunderstorms the same way that you know days ahead of time when there is going to be a high avalanche risk. You know the amount of recent snowfall, you know what the weather is going to be, and you know how to recognize avalanche terrain.
Rockfall does not occur completely randomly. If you go to a place overlooking something like the bowling alley on a warm summer afternoon, you will see and hear rocks the size of cars or small houses bouncing down the slopes. If you go on a cold winter morning before the sun hits the snow, you won't see or hear that because everything that is frozen in place will stay frozen in place. You choose the time of your climb to mitigate risks from rockfall, avalanches, and weather. Mitigate does not mean reduce to zero.
Yes, mountaineering can be risky. Everyone decides their own level of involvement. Climbing a walkup in bluebird weather has less risk than driving to the grocery store. Attempting to climb K2 kills 25% of the people who do it. Mountaineer's choice. If you've got kids and you try to climb K2, you're selfish and I feel sorry for your kids. If you're a single guy who wants to risk death, go for it.
It has a historic fatality ratio of 1 death for every 4 summits. If you have 100 people try to climb it in a season, 4 summits and 1 death you have 25% summit to death ratio, but 99 out of the 100 people survived.
Last year it looks like it had 175 climbers, ~50 summits, and 2 deaths. 2023 had over 100 summits and 1 death.
You can mitigate to greater or lesser. Kate Matrosova was actually well prepared when she died a few years ago. She should simply have gone out in that forecast
On the other hand, you get into the bigger mountains and it’s a lot harder. To time the weather and other dangers.
Which is why they all carry beacons, so when they fail they can involve others in their folly. Dunno, you wanna leave civilization, that's like a billion dollar risk premium right there.
this isnt true. I know some alpinist guides and alpinist. beeing one myself. I can remember the story of maximum 3 deaths and they were not even first encounters. If you are a professional its rly rly rare that you die. accidents with injuries can happen for sure and they are way more common.
the mt Everest hast like 300 deaths on 15.000 successful climbs or so. And thats not an easy one and ridiculous elite.
I know guids in the alps and they do 300 alpinist tour day a year. So how come allmost all are alive and their friends etc. For sure they know people that know poeple or colleges that died by accidents , mostly avalanches and loose rocks, but as said rly rly rare.
but on the other hand there are many deaths in the alps every year.
The guy in the post seemed well prepared and smart and shit happens and I am sorry for the lost. Very glad his family got an answer.
In my personal experience, that does not seem true. I have a number of friends who have been seriously injured climbing, e.g. from large rocks falling from above, presumably loosened by water freezing and expanding over the winter.
I don't know anyone who's gotten into an accident on their trip to or from climbing. Car accidents are already pretty rare overall, and driving to/from climbing is a teensy fraction of your overall driving.
Mountains are inherently dangerous, unpredictable places in ways that roads usually aren't.
> Mountains are inherently dangerous, unpredictable places in ways that roads usually aren't.
Mountains are peaceful places without the majority of people around them required to keep perfectly attentive to their surroundings so they don't kill you. If you're in the mountains, your likelihood of experiencing dangerous situations depends on the environment, your skill and fitness, the weather, and maybe others on the mountain.
Roads are the most dangerous places most people will ever find themselves, much more often, regardless of whether they take on the responsibility of driving. If you're on the mountains, your death is caused by being severely ill-prepared or stupid, or significant misfortune just because. If you're around a road you're constantly surrounded by people armed with killing machines that nobody seems to have reverence for. You're in a life or death situation by default in any time you're not parked or stuck in traffic. All you or someone else needs to do is get distracted for a moment or fall asleep or whatever. Maybe they just decided that was their time to go and drive through a crowd of people.
In the mountains you could be in a very vulnerable spot, or you could effectively be camping, or just out for a trail run. Yes, bad things could happen, but there are all sorts of variables that matter to affect that. I've taken some spills, they happen, sometimes they've been scary, but I opted into that risk.
Both places are dangerous, only one is nearly always dangerous. While it may not literally be the drive to the climb that takes you out, I think the point is that being a car commuter or around roads regularly does pose a greater degree of risk.
You seem to be arguing from the idea that roads are filled with "killing machines" while mountains are "peaceful".
But that's arguing from emotion. The only thing that actually matters is statistics.
And statistically, it seems like people get injured far more often when climbing on mountains than when on the road to climbing.
It doesn't matter if you might die on roads because you "get distracted for a moment", because that's actually a very rare occurrence. It doesn't matter that when you get injured on a mountain, you "opted into that risk", because you opt into driving too.
The point is just where are you more likely to get injured. And roads seem to be the safer place if you're talking about hours spent.
Now it's about statistics but your comment was a personal, unconvincing anecdote by your own admission.
> You seem to be arguing from the idea that roads are filled with "killing machines" while mountains are "peaceful".
If you're a pedestrian or cyclist or passenger, you're relying on everyone elses ability to drive safely and not veer into you. If all it takes is a split second decision to do something different and simply turn into you, that's a killing machine as much as it is a transportation device. You can't do that on a bus or train without a gun, and it would be far from easy to do that on the mountains.
I think this is a disagreement about the definition of "mountain climbing." From the available statistics: 0.68 per 10,000 climbers in the Alps vs 1.5 per 10,000 US vehicles on the road.
High altitude mountaineering is considered an elite endeavor. Most mountaineering is not at high altitude.
That's fair. If you use any of the numbers closer to the activity described in the article (mountaineering at 22k') then you see the disparity. Even non elite mountaineering (mt ranier at 14k') has twice the mortality rate, according to this data.
? this is people dying in the alps and show how safe mountaineering is.
„ For France, Soulé et al. reported approximately 25 fatalities per year, calculated for a 4 year period, with a slight predominance of traumatic (approximately 45%) versus non-traumatic accidents (approximately 35%) and nearly 20% disappearances
„
The Mont blanc is in france and one of the most climbed mountains in the world.
I think this „ many people die while mountaineering“ is bragging or watching to much social media
In the context of the article, instead of your parent comment, this sounds like a weak excuse. Is driving to the Huascarán mountains (and it's ilk) more dangerous than climbing it?
Mountains can be orders of magnitude safer than Mt. Everest and still make your initial assertion wrong. I brought up Mt. Everest to show just how wildly wrong your claim could be.
This is a confusing example because Baldy has hiking routes to the summit in the spring/summer/fall, and also a pretty technical mountaineering route used in winter which people (often unprepared for conditions) die trying almost every year. Nobody ought to call the hiking route mountaineering, nor the mountaineering route a hike.
honestly your comment and others are condescending as hell. For sure there are risks that the best planing cant safe one from but this is live. Many sports and adventures are dangerous. Doing a shitload of cocaine or alcohol is way more dangerous and shitty towards society then mountaineering. I am mountaineering and i come from a family of mountaineers. I asure you usually those people are very aware of what they are doing and the risk and they do every possible to minimize risk to the least possible. Dying is if you are
professional and self conscious very very rare.
It still happens but this is live and sitting there behind you screen and judging people while , I am certain, not beeing conscious enough to grasp what you do that could kill you everyday. Are you driving a car? how do you prepare to net get killed in a road accident? you know it could still happen.
problem that death numbers are so high is because of social
media idiots doing it for the fame and not beeing prepared while beeing 100% douches.
And mountaineering. Its amazing. Why people do it? I do it because i feel so little there and the world so big. In the mountains your mind gets activated because you are not anymore the king of the city but a little animal in big nature. beeing on a summit is something that the human mind cant grasp. its feeling endless beauty. Your friends are so close to you and you did something amazing together and your body and minds knows it. its like fucking. there is a nature to its greatness.
Also all the technical stuff and planning is awesome and i love every moment of it. So i hope you understand there is something about it.
No condescension intended. I think I understand the appeal, in the same way I understand Jack London stories, Joseph Conrad novels, Survivor, Fight Club, and that bear movie guy. We’re too civilized, we’re hothouse flowers, and a little danger makes you feel alive. Especially if you are raised with traditional masculine values.
If you could have the same solitude, sweeping views, natural beauty, cameraderie, etc., but without real danger, would it have the same appeal?
> If you could have the same solitude, sweeping views, natural beauty, cameraderie, etc., but without real danger, would it have the same appeal?
Well, yeah. Most of the gear for mountaineering and other pursuits are to try and minimize risk because we deem the gain is worth the risk but still it's worth reducing risk.
After all, that's the same reason people drive despite it being a leading cause of death.
It would have many of the same appeals. But it really isn't possible to replicate without being in the high peaks. Car camping and backpacking have some of the appeal, but not nearly as intensely.
This mountain was also the site of the most deadly avalanche/landslide in recorded history https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1970_Huascar%C3%A1n_debris_ava...
Read this a couple weeks ago when it came out. Great story, but yeah when having kids and a family takes another sort of person to still want to pursue those adventures. But some cannot just sit still and feel the need to push their endeavors to the highest limit.
It’s maybe a bit different when the kids are adults, as I think was the case here.
If you liked this story, you might like the documentary “Torn,” which was made by children of Alex Lowe, a top mountaineer who disappeared in an avalanche and then his body was found years later.
Another is Eiger Obsession Facing the Mountain that Killed My Father By John Harlin III. His father died attempting a route on the Eiger when he was a kid. Later in life he climbed it while his own kids were around the same age. I thought he wrote pretty well about his father's drive and how it impacted his family and his life.
This was a very poignant read. Thank you for posting it.
Great article.
I am surprised at how close cooper became with the stampf family. There were others that found Bills body but only cooper stayed close.
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Some folks are adrenaline junkies. Doing this stuff when you have kids though is negligence and even worse doing it when the kid already lost one parent to the activity. Fuck those parents and anyone here that's like them.
Most mountaineering is not an adrenaline fueled pursuit and many adrenaline junkies would find it’s often non-technical tactics boring. Is it an egotistical pursuit? Sure. Objectively hazardous? Yes. But distance cyclists and runners have more in common with mountaineers than base jumpers.
There’s class 4 mountaineers, and WI6 mountaineers. It’s often hard to tell where any one person falls on that continuum.
The latter are generally called alpinists.
Would we group private pilot / recreational flying in that category?
It’s massively more risky than commercial flight travel and seems to serve no practical utility.
If you break down the stats, a significant fraction (if not most) of the fatal accidents in GA are in experimental aircraft like kit builds and exotic stuff like fighter jets, despite accounting for a small fraction of the total flight hours. Most of the rest are due to preventable human error like misjudging your ability to fly in bad weather or miscalculating fuel and running out mid-flight.
It’s like driving: it’s usually very safe if you don’t speed and drive tired or drunk.
With the distinct difference that driving isn’t at all like flying for very obvious reasons.
Miscalculating range in a ground vehicle typically has the somewhat less than fatal outcome of being at least somewhat embarrassing.
Misjudging driving ability is largely a characteristic attributed to male drivers under the age of 25, and the overwhelming majority of incidents are more costly and ego injuring than fatal.
Last time I checked, the average driver can expect to be involved in a fatal car accident every 200 million kilometres or so (Australian data).
While general aviation appears to have a fatality rate of around 10 per million flight hours.
Average speed in a car is typically well under 100 kilometres per hour, making general aviation fatality rate 10 to 20 times higher.
Having said that, the law of small numbers informs that the average general aviation pilot can expect to be involved in a fatal incident approximately never.
~10x as dangerous checks per km checks out if you assume the same distance is traveled either case. (1 fatality per 100k flight hours * 200KPH would be 1 fatality per 20 million km.)
However people who fly regularly tend to have crazy high total mileage compared to the ~15k miles/year of a typical American. Which is why so many general aviation pilots die relative to car crashes, it’s just inherently a very dangerous hobby.
In that particular story, I understand the daughter and son were already adults.
They were not. The daughter is 31 and her father went missing 22 years earlier.
No, according to the article, she was already 31 in 2002.
> In 2002, at age 31, she'd gotten her degree to teach music around the time that Bill announced to the family that he was going to try to climb Huascarán.
> Doing this stuff when you have kids though is negligence
Obviously there’s a middle ground but nobody says that giving up the thing that you love because you have kids is negligence.
I think having a commitment that strong to a dangerous activity should factor into whether you have kids in the first place. Maybe it doesn't make the answer an automatic "no", but I think one has to really think through one's decision to create a person who will have a disproportionate risk of major trauma in their early life and should have an extremely clear contingency plan for the child's care by someone who is genuinely psychologically and materially prepared for that eventuality. I think that to do less than that would be negligence—it might be a common type of negligence, easily obscured by romanticism about bold endeavors, but it is certainly not taking care.
Everybody’s life sucks in some way. Some kids have parents who die rock climbing. Some kids have parents who hate their lives. You can’t prevent trauma in a kid’s life.
Telling people to think more about having kids is a clear waste of breath. Whatever amount they think about it they’ll (almost always) rationalize that as the correct amount.
Driving to the mountains is often more dangerous than climbing a mountain. Things change at the elite levels, but that is true for any sport.
The problem with mountains is twofold: Many mountains can be climbed without being elite while exposing yourself to major risk, and for some mountains there is objective hazard that can’t be mitigated.
One example of an “easy” but high risk climb is Mt. Rainier in Washington. All you need to go up is a set of crampons and a backpack, no technical mountaineering needed. However the mountain is full of glaciers that can collapse from under you, which has killed many people. Additionally, many have slipped and then slid to their death. In my case, when I attempted Rainier I took a wrong turn at one point and almost walked off a cliff.
Second: Objective Hazard. Objective hazard is risks that cannot be reasonably mitigated. Things like rockfall where a rock breaks off and falls on your head at random, or unpredictable avalanches. Mt Rainier as well has an area called the bowling alley known for its rockfall. The humans are the pins. Rainier also has an area called the icebox where cornices break off and fall into the climbing route. In 1981 the icebox killed 11 people in one day. Those climbers did everything right, but were in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Mountaineering is not the same as other sports. It is sometimes deceptively easy, yet there are risks that simply cannot be mitigated. Any experienced mountaineer can give you a long list of friends they know that have died. That’s the case in few other sports.
It's the same with base jumping. I remember watching a documentary on it one time and almost all of the people being interviewed knew multiple people that died during a jump.
They are not the same.
In mountaineering, if something goes wrong, you could die.
In base jumping, if you don't do everything correctly, you will die.
A bit like the difference of a car engine failing (it will roll to a stop) vs an airplane engine failing (you will come down hard on the ground)
An engine failing on an aircraft, especially a light aircraft, is not a guaranteed crash landing. It is a serious situation, however aircraft usually glide well. This means you have opportunities to find somewhere that is adequate for landing. Many aircraft with engine failures have landed safely on airstrips. Interestingly this is also the case with helicopters due to their ability to autorotate.
I think base jumping is slightly closer to suicide.
Or that almost suicidal thing with the wingsuits some people do: I get the appeal, I'm sure the rush of feeling like flying must be incredible, but they are playing Russian roulette.
Wingsuits aren’t something I really follow. But my understanding it’s an activity that most serious practitioners die sooner or later from a crash/fall.
It's very dangerous, but I think "most serious practitioners die sooner or later" is an exaggeration. The number I see is 1 death per 500 jumps, which I assume is also biased towards people with less experience.
It might have been true for the pioneers of the sport though.
I (and probably the commenter you're replying to) meant wingsuit BASE jumping, who is considered one of the most dangerous sports in the world. I think it's borderline suicide. I think its practitioners are thrill seekers who want a higher and higher rush, much like an addiction, which has a high chance of killing them.
It's more dangerous than jumping from a plane with a wingsuit.
I'm under the impression that wing suit base jumping is a lot safer than it was 20 years ago due to design improvements, and I believe that's what the 1 in 500 number I see in a few articles comes from. I could be wrong, but it matches the impression I have from watching a few content creators doing it.
Yes, I'm basically referring to base jumping in a wingsuit though, as I say, it's not an activity I'm remotely interested in or have much knowledge of beyond some videos. Of course, serious/elite practitioners do quite a lot of jumps.
I read the fatality comment somewhere presumably somewhat authoritative but it was a while back.
I have been thinking about starting to do air gliding. Is this a dangerous sport? How long does it take to get to glide a few miles? Any pointers pointers (books, videos,etc..) to start up? I live nearby Seattle, WA. Thanks!!!
When I used to do gliding (sailplane, not hang gliding or paragliding) many years ago, it was not classed as a dangerous sport for insurance purposes. Don't know about the other fields of gliding. General aviation was classed as riskier - I guess glider pilots are more used to the fact that they don't have a working engine!
edit:// i thought wingsuit gliding was meant.
hehe a friend wants to do it. He has a trainer. The condition was at least 5000 jumps from plane with parachute . then 3 years training with at least 1000 or more jumps from plane or so….. it was hard and demanding be asured. he is elite lvl in sport. i wouldn’t do it. not because of the danger but because the training to do it safe is to hard.
>> Objective hazard is risks that cannot be reasonably mitigated. Things like rockfall where a rock breaks off and falls on your head at random, or unpredictable avalanches
Those risks can be mitigated. They can't be reduced to zero, but they can be made less severe.
Avalanches don't typically happen randomly out of the blue any more than thunderstorms do in the midwest. In the midwest, you know days ahead of time that there is going to be a risk of thunderstorms the same way that you know days ahead of time when there is going to be a high avalanche risk. You know the amount of recent snowfall, you know what the weather is going to be, and you know how to recognize avalanche terrain.
Rockfall does not occur completely randomly. If you go to a place overlooking something like the bowling alley on a warm summer afternoon, you will see and hear rocks the size of cars or small houses bouncing down the slopes. If you go on a cold winter morning before the sun hits the snow, you won't see or hear that because everything that is frozen in place will stay frozen in place. You choose the time of your climb to mitigate risks from rockfall, avalanches, and weather. Mitigate does not mean reduce to zero.
Yes, mountaineering can be risky. Everyone decides their own level of involvement. Climbing a walkup in bluebird weather has less risk than driving to the grocery store. Attempting to climb K2 kills 25% of the people who do it. Mountaineer's choice. If you've got kids and you try to climb K2, you're selfish and I feel sorry for your kids. If you're a single guy who wants to risk death, go for it.
K2 doesn't kill 25% of people who climb it.
It has a historic fatality ratio of 1 death for every 4 summits. If you have 100 people try to climb it in a season, 4 summits and 1 death you have 25% summit to death ratio, but 99 out of the 100 people survived.
Last year it looks like it had 175 climbers, ~50 summits, and 2 deaths. 2023 had over 100 summits and 1 death.
Thanks for the clarification.
You can mitigate to greater or lesser. Kate Matrosova was actually well prepared when she died a few years ago. She should simply have gone out in that forecast
On the other hand, you get into the bigger mountains and it’s a lot harder. To time the weather and other dangers.
Not gone out of course.
Same thing exists for GA pilots - they often KNOW they shouldn’t fly into weather, and do so anyway, and then - it’s over!
The wonderful thing about aviation is how all this stuff has names. This one's get-there-itis or plan continuation bias.
Which is why they all carry beacons, so when they fail they can involve others in their folly. Dunno, you wanna leave civilization, that's like a billion dollar risk premium right there.
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this isnt true. I know some alpinist guides and alpinist. beeing one myself. I can remember the story of maximum 3 deaths and they were not even first encounters. If you are a professional its rly rly rare that you die. accidents with injuries can happen for sure and they are way more common.
the mt Everest hast like 300 deaths on 15.000 successful climbs or so. And thats not an easy one and ridiculous elite.
I know guids in the alps and they do 300 alpinist tour day a year. So how come allmost all are alive and their friends etc. For sure they know people that know poeple or colleges that died by accidents , mostly avalanches and loose rocks, but as said rly rly rare.
but on the other hand there are many deaths in the alps every year.
The guy in the post seemed well prepared and smart and shit happens and I am sorry for the lost. Very glad his family got an answer.
you're right if you like nature go camping or somewhere that you don't have to risk your life imo
Do you have a citation for that?
In my personal experience, that does not seem true. I have a number of friends who have been seriously injured climbing, e.g. from large rocks falling from above, presumably loosened by water freezing and expanding over the winter.
I don't know anyone who's gotten into an accident on their trip to or from climbing. Car accidents are already pretty rare overall, and driving to/from climbing is a teensy fraction of your overall driving.
Mountains are inherently dangerous, unpredictable places in ways that roads usually aren't.
> Mountains are inherently dangerous, unpredictable places in ways that roads usually aren't.
Mountains are peaceful places without the majority of people around them required to keep perfectly attentive to their surroundings so they don't kill you. If you're in the mountains, your likelihood of experiencing dangerous situations depends on the environment, your skill and fitness, the weather, and maybe others on the mountain.
Roads are the most dangerous places most people will ever find themselves, much more often, regardless of whether they take on the responsibility of driving. If you're on the mountains, your death is caused by being severely ill-prepared or stupid, or significant misfortune just because. If you're around a road you're constantly surrounded by people armed with killing machines that nobody seems to have reverence for. You're in a life or death situation by default in any time you're not parked or stuck in traffic. All you or someone else needs to do is get distracted for a moment or fall asleep or whatever. Maybe they just decided that was their time to go and drive through a crowd of people.
In the mountains you could be in a very vulnerable spot, or you could effectively be camping, or just out for a trail run. Yes, bad things could happen, but there are all sorts of variables that matter to affect that. I've taken some spills, they happen, sometimes they've been scary, but I opted into that risk.
Both places are dangerous, only one is nearly always dangerous. While it may not literally be the drive to the climb that takes you out, I think the point is that being a car commuter or around roads regularly does pose a greater degree of risk.
You seem to be arguing from the idea that roads are filled with "killing machines" while mountains are "peaceful".
But that's arguing from emotion. The only thing that actually matters is statistics.
And statistically, it seems like people get injured far more often when climbing on mountains than when on the road to climbing.
It doesn't matter if you might die on roads because you "get distracted for a moment", because that's actually a very rare occurrence. It doesn't matter that when you get injured on a mountain, you "opted into that risk", because you opt into driving too.
The point is just where are you more likely to get injured. And roads seem to be the safer place if you're talking about hours spent.
Now it's about statistics but your comment was a personal, unconvincing anecdote by your own admission.
> You seem to be arguing from the idea that roads are filled with "killing machines" while mountains are "peaceful".
If you're a pedestrian or cyclist or passenger, you're relying on everyone elses ability to drive safely and not veer into you. If all it takes is a split second decision to do something different and simply turn into you, that's a killing machine as much as it is a transportation device. You can't do that on a bus or train without a gun, and it would be far from easy to do that on the mountains.
Even a cursory glance of mortality rates for driving vs mountaineering show orders of magnitude higher rates for mountaineering.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6843304/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_vehicle_fatality_rate_in...
I think this is a disagreement about the definition of "mountain climbing." From the available statistics: 0.68 per 10,000 climbers in the Alps vs 1.5 per 10,000 US vehicles on the road.
High altitude mountaineering is considered an elite endeavor. Most mountaineering is not at high altitude.
That's fair. If you use any of the numbers closer to the activity described in the article (mountaineering at 22k') then you see the disparity. Even non elite mountaineering (mt ranier at 14k') has twice the mortality rate, according to this data.
? this is people dying in the alps and show how safe mountaineering is.
„ For France, Soulé et al. reported approximately 25 fatalities per year, calculated for a 4 year period, with a slight predominance of traumatic (approximately 45%) versus non-traumatic accidents (approximately 35%) and nearly 20% disappearances „
The Mont blanc is in france and one of the most climbed mountains in the world.
I think this „ many people die while mountaineering“ is bragging or watching to much social media
In the context of the article, instead of your parent comment, this sounds like a weak excuse. Is driving to the Huascarán mountains (and it's ilk) more dangerous than climbing it?
Have you driven in the Andes? It is likely far more dangerous driving there. Certainly far more deaths.
Climbing Mt. Everest is three times more deadly than driving -- that is, 3x the chance of dying while driving anytime in your entire life.
Climbing Everest is an elite endeavor. Most mountaineers are summiting 14ers in Colorado or doing something similar.
Mountains can be orders of magnitude safer than Mt. Everest and still make your initial assertion wrong. I brought up Mt. Everest to show just how wildly wrong your claim could be.
And "climbing" Mt Everest means having paid helpers so most of the work for you.
No, stop that. That's bullshit and Will Gadd calls it out:
https://www.instagram.com/realwillgadd/p/CdoHJjag_QC/
Will Gadd and his friends are at an elite level. They would call most mountain climbing done in the continental US, summits like Mt. Baldy, "hiking."
This is a confusing example because Baldy has hiking routes to the summit in the spring/summer/fall, and also a pretty technical mountaineering route used in winter which people (often unprepared for conditions) die trying almost every year. Nobody ought to call the hiking route mountaineering, nor the mountaineering route a hike.
That’s a classic ridiculous HN pedantic missing the point statistical response.
I suppose on a basis of deaths per vertical meter travelled, ascending slopes is probably safer than even air travel.
> I suppose on a basis of deaths per vertical meter travelled, ascending slopes is probably safer than even air travel.
No, by orders of magnitude.
honestly your comment and others are condescending as hell. For sure there are risks that the best planing cant safe one from but this is live. Many sports and adventures are dangerous. Doing a shitload of cocaine or alcohol is way more dangerous and shitty towards society then mountaineering. I am mountaineering and i come from a family of mountaineers. I asure you usually those people are very aware of what they are doing and the risk and they do every possible to minimize risk to the least possible. Dying is if you are professional and self conscious very very rare. It still happens but this is live and sitting there behind you screen and judging people while , I am certain, not beeing conscious enough to grasp what you do that could kill you everyday. Are you driving a car? how do you prepare to net get killed in a road accident? you know it could still happen.
problem that death numbers are so high is because of social media idiots doing it for the fame and not beeing prepared while beeing 100% douches.
And mountaineering. Its amazing. Why people do it? I do it because i feel so little there and the world so big. In the mountains your mind gets activated because you are not anymore the king of the city but a little animal in big nature. beeing on a summit is something that the human mind cant grasp. its feeling endless beauty. Your friends are so close to you and you did something amazing together and your body and minds knows it. its like fucking. there is a nature to its greatness. Also all the technical stuff and planning is awesome and i love every moment of it. So i hope you understand there is something about it.
No condescension intended. I think I understand the appeal, in the same way I understand Jack London stories, Joseph Conrad novels, Survivor, Fight Club, and that bear movie guy. We’re too civilized, we’re hothouse flowers, and a little danger makes you feel alive. Especially if you are raised with traditional masculine values.
If you could have the same solitude, sweeping views, natural beauty, cameraderie, etc., but without real danger, would it have the same appeal?
> If you could have the same solitude, sweeping views, natural beauty, cameraderie, etc., but without real danger, would it have the same appeal?
Well, yeah. Most of the gear for mountaineering and other pursuits are to try and minimize risk because we deem the gain is worth the risk but still it's worth reducing risk.
After all, that's the same reason people drive despite it being a leading cause of death.
It would have many of the same appeals. But it really isn't possible to replicate without being in the high peaks. Car camping and backpacking have some of the appeal, but not nearly as intensely.
Be a father, risk your life on a mountain. Pick 1.
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