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rectorsquid
climber
Lake Tahoe
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If God decides who dies and when they die then we have no choice. If that is the case then statistics mean nothing and there is no roll of the dice. Just wait your turn and do whatever you choose.
On the other hand, if you can take action to keep from bad things happening by deciding to get proper training and to not climb K2 then those statistics become very important.
Most religeuous people seem to beleive in an active God when it is convenient and sometimes they believe in people instead. At times, people get themselves killed by their own actions and at other times, God takes them in an untimely manner. It's all very strange how it changes depending on how well you know the person who died. Their age seems to be a major factor too. Babies are always taken by God and old criminals and mountain climbers always do themselves in.
But I love those statistics. Makes me want to climb more and drive less (knowing the odds of getting killed in the car).
Dave
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John Moosie
climber
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Hi Dave,
" If God decides who dies and when they die then we have no choice."
Your understanding of God is similiar to others but not necessarily correct. In your explanation God treats us like we are puppets. Yet the major religious teachings explain that God made us in his image, meaning we have power, we have choice and we have free will. God placed us in this domain with certain laws. Some laws are physical laws, such as gravity. Some laws are spiritual laws, such as Karma.
You have most likely heard of the law, " Do unto others as you would have them do unto you ". Perhaps you do not believe it is a law, yet many people do and choose to live their lives accordingly. Just because you might not believe there are spiritual laws does not mean they do not exist and that your life is not subject to them.
It is funny to me how people can only see God in the extreme. Either there is a God and he makes all choices. Or there is no God.
What if there were a third option? What if God actually did give us free will and set us here with certain guidelines. And what if God were willing to help us if we asked? Perhaps not as a magician, but as a guide. And it was our choices that dictated the kind of life we lived. Not some capricious God living off in the distance, but our own choices inside a set of laws. And what if God offered His/Her help? Then the choice of how we live and how we die would up to us, at least in how we interact within the laws of this universe.
Both physical laws and spiritual laws exist. The key is to understand how they coexist and live your life accordingly. Not ignoring either.
Of course, then one could get into the relationship of the two sets of laws. Which has precedent over the other? Jesus revealed that spiritual laws have precedent over physical laws. He walked on water. He changed water into wine. He healed the sick.
Modern Christianity teaches that Jesus was extra special and therefore we can't do what he did. Yet Jesus himself said that we could do everything he did and more. John 14:12
So if we are not able to, then the question becomes, " Why?".
And there begins a whole nother quest. One which I am not prepared to try and answer right now so will leave to those better prepared then myself. That plus this is getting long and I don't wish to bore you. haha... I know that there are those who cringe at the mere mention of someone like Jesus. Oh well. I apologize for disturbing your day.
Peace
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Jay Wood
Trad climber
Fairfax, CA
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I talked to a girl at the gym last night- hadn't seen her for a bit. She has a cast on her leg. Got out of bed in the morning when her foot was asleep, and stood on it wrong. What odds?
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John Moosie
climber
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Yes, I tore my achilles tendon while dancing with a 70 year old women in church. Still can't walk properly as I couldn't have it fixed do to problems with blood clots. What are the odds.
It is kind of funny because I was raised devote southern babtist in a church that believed dancing was a sin. Uh oh.......cursed....my bad luck....
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Topic Author's Reply - Feb 9, 2007 - 02:54am PT
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OK, more statistics...
from this interesting paper about an injury rate estimate for indoor climbing
http://www.allenpress.com/pdf/weme_17_308_187_1901.pdf
significant injury rate: 3.1 per 1000 hours
if I go to the gym for an average of 2 hours per session, then I'd expect to a significant injury in 150 times to the gym. Assuming I go twice a week, average, this would take 75 weeks or about 1.5 years between "significant injuries." This seems almost reasonable.
This paper refered to a paper on outside injury rates: Outdoor injury rates:
[url="http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/picrender.fcgi?artid=1026367&blobtype=pdf"]Rock-Climbing Injuries in Yosemite National Park[/url]
in which the number of climber-days are estimated to be 25,000 to 50,000 in Yosemite in 1987 (Dill, private communications).
The 1988 ANAM had the following 5 accidents reported for Yosemite National Park:
solo ice climb
stuck in weather on "Great White Book"
ground fall on p1 of Steck-Salathe
RNWFHD - fatal rock fall
ground fall solo "Peruvian Flake"
the accident rate would be something like 1 in 5,000 to 10,000 climber days. With fatalities being something like 1 in 25,000 to 50,000.
How many climber days in a year? a weekender maybe 70 days? so the accident rate in the Valley would be 1 in 70 to 140 years for a climber, that is, almost never. And the fatality rate 1 in 350 to 700 years.
If this is the number per year, then the probabilities are something like:
0.01% to 0.02% probability of accident per year
0.004% to 0.002% probability of fatality per year
most interesting quote from this paper:
"The most unusual sources of injury included a bat bite and an episode of assault by another climber with a piton hammer."
Anyone know the assault story?
In 1990 it was estimated that there were between 150,000 and 500,000 active rock climbers from:
Webster 1990 (1990, November-December) To bolt or not to bolt. Sierra Magazine, pp. 30-36
Gooding in Moser, 1990 (Moser, S. (1991, April) A tenuous hold. Outside Business, pp. 27-29
The 1991 ANAM had the statistics:
136 accidents
245 persons involved
125 injured
24 deaths
Take the 61% fraction of accidents being from rock climbing... then
83 accidents
149 persons involved
76 injured
15 deaths
translates into:
0.03% to 0.1% people involved in an accident per year
0.02% to 0.05% injured per year
0.003% to 0.01% killed per year
In a 30 year climbing career?
0.9% to 3% would have been involved in an accident
0.6% to 1.5% would have been injured
0.09% to 0.3% would have been killed
Pretty low rates, actually..
OK, for the Shawangunks 50,000 climber visits/year (2007)
And the statistics?
2005 ANAM
fatal leader ground fall (failed cam)
17 climbing accidents
2004 ANAM
fatal leader fall
23 climbing accidents
2003 ANAM
29 accidents
so:
0.05% accidents per year (with injuries)
0.001% fatalities per year
similar to the Yosemite values above...
Bottom line, significant injury accidents (reportable) seem to occur at a rate of about a few in 10,000 per year, and deaths a few in 100,000 per year.
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raymond phule
climber
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Thanks for the statistics.
You have interchanged per day and per year for Yos and Gunks.
Yosemite
"0.01% to 0.02% probability of accident per year
0.004% to 0.002% probability of fatality per year"
These numbers are for days, not years. 1 fatality in 25,000-50,000 climbing days.
Webster
"0.03% to 0.1% people involved in an accident per year
0.02% to 0.05% injured per year
0.003% to 0.01% killed per year"
1 fatality per 10,000-33,000 particapants per year.
Shawangunks
"0.05% accidents per year (with injuries)
0.001% fatalities per year"
These are also per day. The fatality number is incorrect or you used data without showing it.
1 fatality per 75,000 days given the data.
"Bottom line, significant injury accidents (reportable) seem to occur at a rate of about a few in 10,000 per year, and deaths a few in 100,000 per year."
You have made a misstake by changing per day to per year for yosemite and gunks.
If we assume 70 climbing days for the averega climber. A pretty high number. We get.
Yosemite
1 fatality per 350-700 climbers per year.
The gunks
1 fatality per 1000 climbers per year.
Webster
1 fatality per 10000-33,000 participants per year.
The first two are actually very bad numbers compared to other aktivites. The bad numbers are probably there because most people dont climb 70 days per year.
Statistics for hg/pg is about 1 fatalitity per 1,000-5,000 participants and year.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Topic Author's Reply - Feb 9, 2007 - 11:24am PT
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Thanks, never post late at night.. the statistics are difficult in light of the fact that we don't know how the participation numbers were generated.
My guess is that the 'Gunks and the Yos statistics are telling us the number of climbers, total for a year, based on some method of calculating climber visits... in the 'Gunks it's just the total revenue for climbing passes, where they sell a certain number of season and day passes, and try to figure out from those stats the total number of "visits" for a season. The people sitting at the Uberfalls don't off season, if I recall correctly.
Similarly for Yos, where "day" replaces "visit" in the 'Gunks scheme. I thought this would make sense simply because of the reputation of the places, the proximity to large cities, and the ease of access. The numbers of climbers at the 'Gunks and at Yos around the same time could very likely be similar, that is, somewhere in the mid 10,000's per year.
So the stats should be per visit I believe:
Yosemite
0.01% to 0.02% probability of accident per "visit"
0.004% to 0.002% probability of fatality per "visit"
Webster estimates are for a total population of climbers that during a single year the probabilities would be:
0.03% to 0.1% of climbers involved in reportable accidents
0.02% to 0.05% of climbers are injured in reportable accidents
0.003% to 0.01% of climbers are killed
Since the accidents are "per visit" the above represent an estimate of what would happen on a given visit.
'Gunks
0.05% accidents per visit(with injuries)
0.001% fatalities per visit
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Topic Author's Reply - Feb 10, 2007 - 01:17am PT
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ok, now how about anchor failures?
I went through the ANAM for Yosemite (the Valley as well as Tuolumne Meadows) and came up with this list:
2005 10 accidents,
2004 9 accidents, 1 anchor failure
2003 5 accidents
2002 5 accidents, 1 catastrophic belay anchor failure
2001 13 accidents, 2 anchor failure
2000 10 accidents, 3 anchor failure
1999 12 accidents, 2 anchor failure
1998 9 accidents, 3 anchor failure
1997 6 accidents, 2 anchor failure
1995 11 accidents, 1 anchor failure
1994 10 accidents, 1 anchor failure
1992 8 accidents, 1 anchor failure
1991 4 accidents, 1 anchor failure
1990 4 accidents
1989 9 accidents
1988 6 accidents
----------------------------------------------
131 accidents of which 18 had anchor failures as a cause.
That is, 14% of the reportable accidents had anchor failure as a contributing cause.
What is not known is how many falls were taken in which the anchors held, and there was no reportable accident.
What we do know also comes from ANAM.
Through 2005 there were 2887 accidents caused by a "fall or slip on rock". There were 183 accidents when an anchor pulled out. If we assume that anchors were used for all 3070 accidents, then almost 6% of the anchors "tested" in falls severe enough to cause injuries pulled out.
These two types of accident causes represent 39% of the total ANAM accident reports.
The possibility that 3 anchors would fail when sequentially loaded with a big fall would be something like (0.06)^3 = 0.0002, the dynamics of the fall is an important consideration, this calculation assumes that each anchor feels the same force, probably not correct.
Of course the one catastrophic belay anchor failure (on the DNB) may not quite have happened this way, we'll never know. However, if the forces were equalized on the three anchors the failure probability would have been reduced considerably. The sequential probabilities are not as small as you'd like.
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TradIsGood
Happy and Healthy climber
the Gunks end of the country
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Feb 10, 2007 - 10:27am PT
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The possibility that 3 anchors would fail when sequentially loaded with a big fall would be something like (0.06)^3 = 0.0002, the dynamics of the fall is an important consideration, this calculation assumes that each anchor feels the same force, probably not correct
Actually, the assumption is that the probabilities are independent. There are no assumptions about force.
By "3 anchors", do you mean 3 pieces of a single anchor? If so, then the independence assumption probably gets weakened, since you have perhaps selected from the population of serious falls a subset of very serious falls. That would cause the probability to rise.
But if you are getting at the issue of anchor safety, I think RG's previously expressed idea of having climber built anchors tested at various force factor falls would be better, since the probability of two piece failure is complicated by the pre-stretch in the rope which would increase the load at the second piece, but reduced by the energy reduction from the first failure.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Topic Author's Reply - Feb 10, 2007 - 11:36am PT
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I'm all for experimental data, but an analytic setting can help guide our understanding. I'm all for testing! I think I know, however, how it will turn out.
The anchors independently resist the force, with the first blowing, then the second, then the third, with the force being essentially the same in all three cases.
The fact is that the force changes as each piece is blown, "the dynamics," but just how that happens is not specified and probably depends on why each piece blows.
I can thing of two ways of expending energy in a "blown piece:"
1) the friction of dragging the piece out of its placement.. essentially the normal force times the distance dragged is the work done by the pull. The energy is dissipated as heat and reduces the energy of the fall, so subsequent pieces are dealing with less energy.
2) the failure of a piece of protection, or the rock, where the material can be thought of as deforming elastically to the inelastic limit where it fails, the energy stored in the compression of the material is then lost.
This sort of thing requires an actual measurement as the physics involved can be calculated in only ideal, probably non-realistic cases.
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jstan
climber
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Feb 10, 2007 - 12:00pm PT
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In a test once I had my nose about 18 from a blowing piece. Thought I might be fast enough to see how it happens. Sparks and dust all over the place and the pin got warm. Until there is motion however, there is no work as we define it at an anchor.
I keep coming back to the dissipative rope though. You can imagine the situation where the pin(non extending anchor) fails just as the leader is bought to rest, and all the energy has been absorbed in the rope and friction over biners. Then, at the peak force the first anchor blows leaving the second piece to deal only with the weight of the leader and any subsequent upward acceleration. We are seldom, if ever, at such an ideal case so the assumption of equipartition of force across all anchors seems a good conservative approach.
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TradIsGood
Happy and Healthy climber
the Gunks end of the country
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Feb 10, 2007 - 01:47pm PT
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jstan is right on the energy dissipation. It is the integral of the force times the stretch, plus the factors that Ed mentions.
I was not suggesting so much measuring the forces, etc. as statistically evaluating anchors built by climbers, which I think is in keeping with the thread - but rgold put this idea up on ST before, IIRC. That is measure the probability distribution of failure of climber-built anchors as a function of the fall factor.
As far as independence, what I was getting at is that the probability of a two piece anchor blowing (serially) is perhaps not the product of the probabilities of a single piece blowing for the reasons that I mentioned - an event selection mechanism that is biased toward the serious events (the first piece blowing) (increasing the odds of failure of the second piece) mitigated by the energy reduction of the first of serial failures.
But the analysis presented so far is interesting and somewhat consistent. Is it consistent by selection, or is this all of the data collected?
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Topic Author's Reply - Feb 10, 2007 - 02:21pm PT
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But the analysis presented so far is interesting and somewhat consistent. Is it consistent by selection, or is this all of the data collected?
I am posting everything that I have hoping that you all will look critically at it and help develop an interpretation that makes sense. If you know of more or different data post up!
If you work the numbers differently, or see that I did something incorrectly, post up!
This is not an easy thing to understand. In the calculation of 6% anchor failure there are a lot of assumptions... it is an estimate, but it may be invalid. I invite you all to think about it and question it... being critical is the only way to make progress in understanding this problem.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Topic Author's Reply - Feb 10, 2007 - 02:25pm PT
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work is being done in compressing the rock, even though you can't detect the deformation by eye... because the Young's modulus is so large...
the energy stored in the rope is dissipated also, but the rate of dissipation depends on the rate of elongation, once the elongation stops, the dissipation stops. Ropes are "over damped," they don't store much energy in the extension. The energy goes into heat production which occurs faster than the stretching or releasing that happen in a fall.
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WBraun
climber
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Feb 10, 2007 - 03:05pm PT
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Well you know,
I've seen guys put anchors in boulders that that you can kick with your boots and they move. Now if those had failed it wouldn't be the gear which was at fault but the .......
You know who.
So does that kind of stuff figure into the statistics?
And then I've seen guys belaying with no anchors at all .....
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Tomcat
Trad climber
Chatham N.H.
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Feb 10, 2007 - 03:17pm PT
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Has a lot to do with where. In thirty years of climbing both rock and ice I've pulled people off the cliffs twice,rendered aid to injured on cliff one other and done about nine carry outs.Of those I think four were reported in AINAM.The capper was a guy that fell off the last pitch of High Exposure,went through the trees,landed on jagged talus and broke his ankle.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Topic Author's Reply - Feb 10, 2007 - 03:19pm PT
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Werner, it is a good point, the anchor technology is good, the anchor practice isn't... the statistics only tell the tale of woe because people get in a situation where their "bluff is called."
You know the bluff... you hear it all the time... "that pro is just psychological," "my partner won't fall," "I've done that route a million times."
Every once and a while, nature calls you on it. And that's when you might end up in these statistics.
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jstan
climber
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Feb 10, 2007 - 04:48pm PT
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Long ago when we switched to an entirely new anchor technology the most pressing question was, Is that anchor I just put in strong enough to hold the force I may apply to it? It was a really specific question and I was not inclined to blow it off. So I built a little rig that could static load anchors to 3000# and tested a bunch of my placements up on the cliff. I got the very specific answer I needed and quickly began to trust my placements.
Later on when the camming machines came out I did not get around to testing or trusting them and did not use them. Since they move round so readily I actually would want to perform dynamic tests on those. Again for placements I had made. Those tests would be too tough to do solo. Here you would want to find an area of a cliff with a wide variety of placements, rig a boom, and get together a bunch of people who want to test their placements and to repeatedly haul the dummy up for the drop test. These new digital camera/cell phones would even allow the people down below to see each placement right before the drop. I would purposely push placements into bad orientations to see if they could move a lot and still hold. A worst case test if you will. Actually sounds like fun.
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Jingy
Social climber
Flatland, Ca
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Feb 10, 2007 - 06:18pm PT
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That's a bitchin' report. Good numbers...
I don't believe that I'm rolling the dice every time I go out to climb. I take little chance when climbing. Always within my imagined limits.
Good thread.
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raymond phule
climber
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Feb 12, 2007 - 07:12am PT
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"If we assume that anchors were used for all 3070 accidents, then almost 6% of the anchors "tested" in falls severe enough to cause injuries pulled out.
...
The possibility that 3 anchors would fail when sequentially loaded with a big fall would be something like (0.06)^3 = 0.0002,
...
However, if the forces were equalized on the three anchors the failure probability would have been reduced considerably. The sequential probabilities are not as small as you'd like.
"
I think that make way to many assumptions in your argumentation and that you use a statistic in one area in an other area.
My understanding. An anchor failure in the reports is in most of the cases a single piece that blows in the middle of a pitch. Am I correct?
You make a statistic analysis that show that anchor failure (with the above definition) is quite common in accidents.
The next step is the incorrect one in my opinion. Then you take the statistics for anchor failure and try to show that the likelyhood for a belay anchor failure is not that low.
The main problem I see with this is that a lead anchor is often not a good piece of protection but a belay anchor most of the time is pretty good.
In your argument I see failure of bad pro, small nuts, small cams, heads etc, placed on lead in bad places showing that my perfect cams in my belay can fail. This is atleast how I read it.
The reason for anchor failure, both lead and belay, can be so much so statistics doesn't really show anything at all.
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