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John Moosie
climber
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Nope, don't have an answer. Still learning.
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John Moosie
climber
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" Sounds like an 'eye for an eye' to me "
That would be true if you didn't know about Grace. Grace is God's get out of Jail free card. All it requires is you understanding your mistake and vowing not to do it again. The vow must be made with a true heart. You can't cheat God.
Learn by Grace or learn in the school of hard knocks. It is your choice.
Crowley, it currently looks like the United States is heading for the school of hard knocks. Arrogance and pride will eventually catch up with us.
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John Moosie
climber
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So I am only left with "Dang!"
Couldn't have said it better myself. Of course there is always the hope that more people will wake up and realize that war and greed and pride are not the answers to lifes difficulties. I certainly spent a good deal of this lifetime asleep. Maybe others will wake up.
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John Moosie
climber
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" What if this is as good as it gets? "
Impossible, Too many saints have demonstrated that there is more. That plus even though things look bleak at times, humanity has raised its consciousness. 500 years ago the U. S. constitution coudn't have existed. Nor could the Bill of Rights. Too many imperialist Kings.
Yes, right now we are going through a phase in which our fears are being revealed to us, but this is actually an opportunity to grow out of them. As we reveal how our fear is causing us to give up our freedoms and our lives, then we have the chance to wake up and say to heck with the fear. We want a better way to live. We want more out of life then just responding with anger and fear.
Then, when enough people have woken up, change can happen.
Of course, with the way things look in America, things may get darker before the dawn. Too many people are holding on to their fears and just don't see it.
Bush is just revealing our fears to us. No reason to hate him for that. We are responsible for our fate. This does not mean that we have to go along with his program of fear. It means that we have a chance to learn and do better. Grace is possible, but the lesson must be learned before it is given.
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mcreel
climber
Barcelona, Spain
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Back in '88 or '89 or so, I was climbing on Arch Rock, and I kicked a rock off the top. Once we got down we saw that Peter Croft and Werner were soloing up a couple of routes. Who's karma was good that day, mine or theirs? Another time we drove down to the valley with a haulbag packed, planning on doing the Salathé, but there were 4 or 5 parties on it already. I said I didn't want to do it since there was too much risk of rockfall. But my partner convinced me to do Freeblast, which as many of you know is out of the fall line of the major part of the Salathé. As I was following the slab pitch, we got bombarded by baseball sized rocks, a very close call. It turned out that there was a really incompetent party above the Silver Dollar. I believe in luck, not karma.
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dirtineye
Trad climber
the south
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These stat discussions are seriously compromised because without seeing the data spread and knowing more about the sort of climbers involved and the rock they were on you can't really do anything but mislead yourself.
For instance, climbing on solid slab that is well traveled, with no tourons at the top or climbers above you, you will likely never see rockfall.
Climbing on a choss pile with climbers above and rock tossing tourons above, you will see a lot of rock fall, and there will be some rock fall related accidents at this god forsaken crag.
lumping both areas together just makes a mess.
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eeyonkee
Trad climber
Golden, CO
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karma, shmarma!
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MisterE
Trad climber
White Van
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The more risk one takes, the greater your awareness of danger becomes, the more one can avoid/respond to said risk.
This combined with one's karmic balance are what really determine your chances out there.
I plan on living a long, mildly dangerous life.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Topic Author's Reply - Feb 8, 2007 - 11:28am PT
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I agree with you to a point dirt but the idea is to get an estimate of the odds, which I think the numbers probably do a good job at.
In the past these considerations were limited by the denominator... "how many people were climbing" rather than the numerator, how many accidents. I can look in the ANAM and generate a detailed breakdown of the types of accidents, and we can debate forever what does and does not constitute a "climbing accident."
The real problem is to get a sense of how many people climb. So what are you odds given a total climber population, of being involved in an accident, being injured or being killed.
I don't think the numbers are at all compromised. The question is: do they have any meaning? I think yes, simply because our experience is that reportable accidents are rare, though a reportable accident almost always has a serious injury or death associated with it.
Reporting to ANAM is not comprehensive, as Greg mentioned above. Given 10's of reported accidents a year in North America, you might guess that 10% of all accidents that should be reported are not. That looks like a reasonable ball park. Still, this provides a starting point for the discussion on risk.
As far as luck, karma, divine intervention, fate, humor, etc.... it is a natural reaction which absolves the accident victims, and the community of responsibility. "Hey, his number was up, nothing we could do about it," and then we continue to practice climbing in the same old ways without consideration of what these "accidents" mean.
The next level of analysis puts the blame at the individuals, "hey, he had it coming, we was a real hotdog, irresponsible, testosterone fueled, ... climber" translates to the idea that individual choices determine the accident, "I would never do that." Of course, when you find yourself in a similar situation it might just be too late to do anything about it.
I'd have to say that for what it is, climbing seems to be relatively safe, statistically. Given all the potential hazards. However, we have the opportunity to consider how to make it safer with every accident. A careful analysis of all the parts of climbing is time well spent. John Long did us all a great service in authoring those two books on anchors. He would admit that it was a "work in progress" in terms of suggesting specific solutions to the "anchor problem." I think we should take advantage of this and build on it with continued efforts to analyze our practices and make them even more safe.
Certainly no one here can argue with that.
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dirtineye
Trad climber
the south
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I'm all for analizing practices, and I'm also for meaningful stats, but let's have a correct interpretation of those stats.
As for figuring out if climbing is risky or not, it really depends largely on the climbers involved. IT's no good to be a dare devil, what-me-worry kind of guy, look at the low death per 1000 stats of climbing, and think, hey I should go climbing, it's safe!
On the other hand, if you are careful, you have training, and you climb with good safe climbers, not many sporting activities are safer.
To me, a meaningful look at stats would be by the area, and would involve how much rockfall an area sees, and how many people climb in an area, what experience and training the accident victims had, and what sort of rock is there, for starters.
I just see too many pitfalls in global stats for them to be very useful for anything other than the most general statements.
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Magritte
climber
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Part of what Werner may be addressing (he can correct me if I'm wrong) is there are basically three contributors to these events. One; user error, two; equipment failure, three; natural event/act of God.
I believe in God. I believe that man or woman can put him/herself in a place of wreckless danger. We do this knowingly either by ignoring good practices or not educating ourselves about such practices or just being lazy because of fatigue or arrogance.
It's surprizing to see a discussion of when to retire gear only have three posts. One of the posts being a timeline (three to five years).
Climber practices include everything from trying to keep the new-car smell on your gear to gear thrown in a heap in a car in the sun, filthy with dirt and food or whatever.
I was in Bend at Metolius one year and Doug Phillips, the owner, was on his way out to Smith Rock one day to do maintenance on some bolts he noticed needed to be replaced. He did this on a regular basis. Impressive to me because it was as though he had an attitude of ownership, not of a crag, but as a climber.
Two of the three things that can take your life or hurt you, and your loved ones, you have a great deal of control over. I think that's what Werner was also saying. If you just blow off your responsibility to replace your gear, or maintain routes, or get educated about good climbing hygene and protocol. It sounded like he was saying you have waaaaaaay more control over this than you think.
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jstan
climber
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Discussion of rockfall here suggests some of us are including subjective danger in the discussion and others may be limiting themselves to objective danger only. The two are defined by the difference in our ability to control danger. Weather, rockfall, and a belayer who is ticked off fall into one class. Into the other falls all our other mistakes.
Cheerily,
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TradIsGood
Happy and Healthy climber
the Gunks end of the country
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Ed, you are right, the denominator is important. Likewise, how you define the denominator depends on what probability you wish to calculate.
For example, you might want the probability of accident per pitch, per day, per year, or even per climber, or any of a multitude of others.
An insurance company writing a term policy might want to use a climber-year.
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Doug Hemken
climber
Madison, WI
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Ed,
Well, I'm really interested in where numbers come from and what they mean.
The Forest Service asked people if they had been climbing in the last year. My experience with collecting survey data on outdoor recreation suggests to me that the number who say "yes" is a bit higher than the reality. A shorter recall period would be more accurate ... but then the USFS data would not be comparable to surveys they have going back to the 1950s. Take 7 million to be on the high side, not the low side as estimated by Cordell et al.
My experience with accidents and Accidents is that the quality and consistency of reporting varies enormously from reporting unit to reporting unit. Reporting from a place like the Tetons or Rainier is very consistent from year to year, while reporting from places like Devils Lake can be great one year and non-existent the next. Accidents has reported on maybe 10% of the accidents I have been in or seen myself. So take the numbers from Accidents to be on the low side. My gut says you need to multiply them by a factor of 2 or 3 at least.
Despite which, your main point that climbing accidents are rare events is, I think, a reasonable conclusion.
I wouldn't agree that 1 person in 10 involved in an accident is killed. I think this high ratio should give you an idea of what kind of reporting bias there is in Accidents.
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John Moosie
climber
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HI Ed,
" As far as luck, karma, divine intervention, fate, humor, etc.... it is a natural reaction which absolves the accident victims, and the community of responsibility. "Hey, his number was up, nothing we could do about it," and then we continue to practice climbing in the same old ways without consideration of what these "accidents" mean. "
This would be a misunderstanding of Karma. Karma means you can control your experience. Because the universe is so vast many people define events as luck, but this only means they are unaware of the laws of Karma. There is much to be learned from the laws of karma. The problem is that it is often much more complicated then simply, " the climber should have stayed on belay or the climber should have replaced his gear ". But just because it is more complicated does not mean that you can't still observe that these were contributing factors and work to avoid them. That is part of the lesson of Karma. If you refuse to learn the laws of life, then you will eventually suffer the consequences. Everything we do interacts with everything else. So pay attention to learning the physical laws of life, ie gravity hurts if you ignore it, and pay attention to learning the spiritual laws of life, ie, karma is a bugger if you also ignore it. They both have play.
Moosie
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WBraun
climber
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Fattrad that was funny.
John M and Margritte, very good.
And Ed I apologize if it looked like I threw a big wrench in your thread. Sorry.
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WBraun
climber
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Intellectuality is another casualty of the bewildering age of Kali.
Modern so-called philosophers and scientists have created a technical, esoteric terminology for each branch of learning, and when they give lectures people consider them learned simply because of their ability to speak that which no one else can understand.
In Western culture, the Greek Sophists were among the first to systematically argue for rhetoric and "efficiency" above wisdom and purity, and sophistry certainly flourishes in the twentieth century. Modern universities have very little wisdom, though they do possess a virtual infinity of technical data. Although many modern thinkers are fundamentally ignorant of the higher, spiritual reality, they are, so to speak, "good talkers," and most people simply don’t notice their ignorance.
From the symptoms of Kali-yuga.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Topic Author's Reply - Feb 8, 2007 - 04:38pm PT
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Not so difficult to explain karma to an LLNL physicist who has more than a passing understanding of karma and the philosophical well from which it springs.
Interesting that Chuckcar feels the need to resort to sterotyping as a way of understanding the members of the ST Forum. I forgot to welcome you when your first posted September 19, 2006...
And Werner, you always have appropriate comments, and I do not doubt for a minute your genuine interest and significant contributions to safety over the years. I do worry that there are Forum responders that might use your arguements as a way to say... let's not understand accidents and how they effect climbers.
As far as criticizing the statistics, well, we really have only ourselves to blame, really. We do not go for "regulating" climbing so we have data from which we can infer statistics. But to explain what the key issues are to study, we have to have some information that goes beyond our own, gut feelings. So we start with what we have. Doug has some experience with this... I did see the WI report but I couldn't get my hands around the numbers easily, the quick reference I found on the web didn't contain the numbers I needed to quote instantly. But I will try to dig a bit deeper later.
Anyone else know of studies that could shed some light on some of these numbers?
One thing I thought of were the yearly statistics from the 'Gunks regarding the total number of climbing passes sold. They sell both yearly and daily passes. The ratio of these gives insight into who climbs a lot (yearly passes make sense only if they are cheaper than the sum of daily passes, at least that is how I thought of it when I used to get them)... answering a part of the question.
We can also estimate climb lengths, etc, mostly from the distribution of climbers to various regions (where different types of climbing are engaged in).
So any help is worthwhile.
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eeyonkee
Trad climber
Golden, CO
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I wonder what statistics the insurance industry uses in order to justify the significant riders that they impose on life insurance for climbers? As part of my divorce settlement three years ago, I had to get life insurance with my daughter as the beneficiary. The fact that I was a climber (I told the truth) raised my premiums to over double what they would be otherwise. And of course I'm thinking, what about the fact that we are in (quite a bit) better shape than the average Joe?
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