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It's a good discussion. Very good. I'm not at all suggesting otherwise. Just that it's very damn easy to armchair judge the risk choices of others without all the information and/or from the perspective on one's own abilities. And I'm not immune from it- sure seems like maybe Dean Potter and Dan Osman had adrenaline habits that led to increasingly risky behavior with narrower and narrower margins for error. If someone can go solo Astroman, which I couldn't aid up, all the power to them. It would be insane and too risky for me, and entirely within their abilities and risk margin. And in terms of the 'not being in a hurry to get out' thing you mentioned, I think it's helpful to evaluate one's motivations. If this kind of behavior becomes "need" and "have to" it's a pointer to an addiction that can easily overrule/cloud other aspects of risk evaluation.

Bill, I think events have made it very clear to Jens that luck plays a huge role. We live in a state of denial around that because it helps us to function, but sometimes events strip that illusion away. Sure, training, prep, and all that ala Messner makes a difference, but it's a fallacy that we're in control and if we just make the right choices everything will work out fine and predictably. For me, I think it was Craig Leubben's death in the relatlively mundane location of Torment's moat. a place many of us have been, that underlined the amount of random risk that defies preparation and planning.

My name was mentioned above (I think). It seemed in reference to my ability to stay alive and climb in the mountains. Just to be clear: I’m alive because I’ve been lucky. No more, no less. Sure, I try to mitigate risk as much as possible, but when you are going for it in the mountains on a regular basis, the odds of an accident increase. Climbing is a dangerous sport. It always has been. Life is dangerous too. I know that for me, climbing and skiing in the mountains is absolutely worth it. That said, the pain is crushing when someone is lost. Absolutely crushing. I still don’t know how to make sense of it, but I’ve accepted that there are many things I’ll never wrap my head around in this lifetime.

You are the person who has judged, I guess. It might be more accurate to say "Too much objective hazard for me". I would much rather be dependent on my speed and skills to get through that threatened slab section on Jberg than be stuck under a clusterfuck of bumblers knocking shit (and themselves) down on me on the Cleaver or below the Pearly Gates. Similarly, I fret less climbing up the Haystack Gully in thin, difficult ice conditions in winter than I do in summer when the hordes are sketching about above me. Only two people fully understand the risk on the Jberg route. Both measured it against their abilities and chose to proceed. To this day anyone else passing judgement on it is doing so with incomplete info. It's no different than big-mouth Krakauer writing a book about the 96 Everest disaster from the perspective of someone at sea level- the frame of metrics is just wrong. I've been in situations where I needed something from the lid of my pack and, as Beck Weathers said about his gloves, it might as well have been on the moon. "He should have just stopped and put on gloves" might make 100% sense at sea level, but at 28,000 feet or, as was my case, in 100+ MPH wind, it's nonsense. Thousands of people a year spend about the same amount of time under the Ingraham Icefall, where Peter Whitaker and team nearly got the chop, as we spent on those slabs. There is a trench-path below the icefall and with it comes a false sense of security. That said, Jens' (Klubberud, not Holsten) description in the TR he posted is more dramatic than I recall and than what I wrote for my TR and the AAJ article. My Dad came home from work in April of 2000, went for a run like he did almost every day, and then fell over dead at the kitchen sink from a heart attack. He didn't even have time to turn off the water or call out to my Mom, who was asleep one room away. Another friend had both his parents killed and his wife and newborn kid severely injured by a drunk driver as they stood at a crosswalk in Seattle. The only guarantee in life is death. In the mean time, I try to make conscious, reasoned, internally-referenced choices and refrain from judging the risks other take.

These guys got plenty of grief for the risk inherent in their FA on Johannesberg. Yes, yes we did. And for the Willis Wall climb as well. I guess my position is that it's important to evaluate one's motivations for taking risks and, externally, to refrain from passing judgement on the severity of risks others take based on my abilities. Jens and I soloed a lot of unprotectable low-5th on those J-berg slabs. It was well within our abilities at the time and we'd done a lot of similar climbing together for years. At that point we didn't much need to talk to one another on-route, we just knew what the other would do. So while the consequence of an error was high and there was unavoidable objective danger (indeed, the slabs were swept by ice shortly after we got off them), we were able to move quickly and confidently through that section. As far as motivation goes, it comes down to internal or external. My sense is that people taking increasingly high risks in order to get press, "spray" (to drag out an old term from this site), appease sponsors, get Instagram "likes", etc. are in a higher risk category, as are those who have become addicted to adrenaline. For me, over 25 years, the most helpful question has become, "Can I stop doing this?". If the answer is "no", then it's no less a risk that a drinking, drug, gambling, etc. problem. If the answer is "yes", then it is (for me, at least) important to do so occasionally. There was a period when I thought of myself as "Loren the climber". The first time I lost my climbing motivation for an extended period I had a bit of an identity crisis. The result was a reorientation of my self-concept; I am who I am regardless of what I do..."Loren. A person who climbs." This connects to the idiotic and profoundly damaging "You complete me" movie idea. No one completes anyone, no one needs another *anything* to be complete. We are all entirely complete all the time. Start from a genuine embrace of that self-definition and the world is a brighter, more beautiful, less heavy place, where one can go have fun climbing and go have fun not climbing.

If I ever thought that luck played only a minimal role in surviving years of alpine climbing at a higher than average level of risk, this feeling was nothing that couldn't be altered by the compounding effects of a collection of personal close calls, and a long list of dead friends.

How To Climb ice in Oregon in March Step 1) Drive to the Tilly Jane trailhead Step 2) Hike / skin to 8,000 feet on the Eliot Glacier Step 3) Look to your left Step 4) Climb it

In an ideal world this would have been posted on the sites anniversary, Oct. 2, which would have been 17 years in existence. Also ideally this would have been posted three plus years prior when I first started working on the migration. We actually started talking about it much further back. Something I’ve learned is things don’t always work out like you planned, you just have to keep moving forward and learn from you past mistakes. I’d like to thank those who are still around, some of you who have been here from the beginning. I’m sorry to those of you who have given so much to this site in the form of great discussion and trip reports, to the moderators that dealt with so much of the not so great moments, and that I let you down in not keeping this place working better and in a more modern state. We'll make it up to you. Porter, thanks for helping keeping the stoke alive with me and being such an amazing friend. Trip Report Tool v1 I’ve got the new trip report search working. In some ways is a few steps back from the old search in that you can’t facet by month or forum. It’s a step forward in that it works and works well on mobile. http://cascadeclimbers.com/forum/tripreport This only works if you are logged in at the moment. This wasn’t by design just what happened as I added this on the work of the developer I hired who did the TR submission work. We’ll get that sorted out. What we have on deck will be polishing up some of the trip reports and probably adding better geographical data for being able to search trips on a map. We certainly view trip reports on this site as our crown jewel, we are just shy of 9000, and we’d like to make sure they are easy to find and easy to add. I think we’ve nailed the later with the forum upgrade and I’m confident we can come up with better search. The Future Like I said we have now been in existence for 17 years. Not many things on the internet can claim that. But the upgrade of the forum and the work we are doing now is the beginning and not the end. I was 24 when I started this site and really didn’t know a whole lot. I was trained as a biologist and had no experience or really knowledge of web communities. My (still) good friend Timmy and I just decided to create something. I’ll never forget an email I sent to a pretty notable local climber when we first started. I actually don’t remember what I asked him, but I remember his response “Good luck getting traffic, that will be hard”. He seemed pretty pessimistic, but he couldn’t have been more wrong. Getting the traffic ended up being easy, managing it was the hard part. There were certainly some real wild west early days with cc.com and it was difficult to know how to handle them, especially our spare time for what was a hobby. We’ve made mistakes. We can acknowledge that. And we have learned from them. There are people and behaviors that will no longer be welcome here. What is sad is many of those people just took their dump and left. I realize we have a bad rep with many people and that’s unfortunate. I also think it is what you make it, and maybe it’s time to give it second chance and be part of the solution. We’ve solicited a lot of feedback, we’ve read feedback posted on Facebook. We’ve taken a lot of it to heart. I understand Facebook is easier to use, they are a multi-billion dollar company with scientists who’s sole purpose is to get you hooked. I get that Mountain Project is a nice tool, I have nothing negative to say about them, but again they are owned by REI now and have huge coffers of money. It was also incredible to read how people met their climbing partners here, or even their partners in life. Yes there has been some bullshit, but there has also been a lot of good. Cascadeclimbers is a unique and local product: an opportunity to interact online as a community rather than as the product. We are not here harvesting you and your information. This is still a hobby for us. We turn down offers every year to sell this site as we know it’s not in it’s best interest, we know what will happen if a corporation take it over. We have turned down advertisers because we have stayed true to our commitment to supporting retailers. We run the site, we own the site, but the content belongs to the community. We will be better stewards of this place and we hope people will give it a second chance. To those sitting on the sidelines, sometimes reading, but not participating. I get that you don’t want deal with the spray, and I assure you things will be different forward. But I also challenge you because the only way to make something better is to make those positive contributions. If everyone just steps away because they don’t like certain things then all you are left with is what people don’t like. This is a community driven site and only works with contributions from the community. We will be better listeners and stewards; please be better contributors. Why we allow anonymity. This is actually pretty simple; we have no way to prove someone’s identity. Facebook doesn’t either. We also made this decision pretty early on because we felt this would make it a safer place for women to contribute, without a bunch of guys stalking them. Again keep in mind these decisions were made 17 years ago, but I still think it’s a valid point. We recently added JasonG to the moderator staff. You probably already know Jason from his Trip Reports and amazing photography. We are always on the lookout for trusted and committed people to help the site grow, so let us know if you are interested. We may have more roles in the future that need filling. And of course a huge thanks to all the existing moderators that have stuck with us through thick and thin. Our current path forward is pretty simple: We expect people to leave things better than you found it. If you can do that simple things you can be a part of this. If you can’t you will not be welcome here. We want the site to grow, in people, in posts, in trip reports, and new personal connections. Thanks for reading. Onward.

Actually, I don't believe that's true. Time spent in areas of high objective danger is a key metric. I've soloed the North Face of Chair in less than 20 minutes and seen people take many hours on it. I accept one form of risk- that a technical error on my part will lead to a large fall, to reduce another form: Objective. Relative to Jberg, Jens and I free soloed the slabs in about 20 minutes. Roping up and pitching them out would have taken hours. As it turned out, that time difference would have been very critical. We had to skills to safely solo and the time we saved doing so likely saved us. More recently, a slow guided group, including a friend of mine, on Liberty Ridge was forced to make camp on the ridge. They were all wiped out by avalanche during the night. More skilled climbers simul or free-soloing would have made Liberty Cap that day and not been on the ridge when the avalanche happened. That isn't to say that the going fast in one place couldn't put you in the wrong place at the wrong time later. If you've been up the DC you've climbed under active seracs. As mentioned, there's a people-trench there and most folks assume incorrectly that lots of people going somewhere means it's safe. I have always felt uncomfortable under that icefall and rest before entering the shooting gallery on the way up and routinely jog past it on the way down. Ignoring objective danger is a recipe for trouble. Making considered choices about it, even if they are contrary to what other people would do, is my preference.

you also usually don't hear of climbing being classified as text book addiction though. the whole "died doing what they love" thing...well that i think depends on your outlook on life and death. as has been pointed out several times in this thread already, life is fatal. we all go, and most of us don't get to choose when or why. "died doing what they love" is something not something that dead people say...its what the survivors say when they are trying to cope with the loss of a friend or a loved one. it just sounds better than the alternative. it does seem a bit silly, but people cope how they can. What will you do when the Risk Gestapo show up to take away your paragliding equipment because someone else deemed it too dangerous a sport?

Interesting you mention drinking. I talked a couple of days ago with RN working in mental health. Funny thing: in some instances climbing could be classified as text book addiction. Somehow when someone drinks themselves to death or o.d. on heroine or fentanyl, you somehow don't usually hear that they died doing what they loved. Here is a short definition of addiction: "Addiction is a condition in which a person engages in use of a substance or in a behavior for which the rewarding effects provide a compelling incentive to repeatedly pursue the behavior despite detrimental consequences."

Another thing I've often wondered about is how people approach the question of what approach to take with their kids when it comes to high-risk outdoor activities. I'm definitely trying to expose them to the natural world as much as possible, and there's a certain amount of risk involved in that, but there are a handful of activities that I've engaged in that I'll continue to participate in at some level, but not only won't encourage, but will quietly hope they never develop an interest in. Alpine climbing and WW kayaking are at the top of the list. There are only so many "there but for the grace of God go I," moments you can experience before the universe's serene indifference to your existence, and the capacity for low-probability/high-mortality events to negate any level of skill, experience, or preparation make you question the wisdom of encouraging your kids to head down the same path that you've taken, no matter how much you've enjoyed it. Once they reach a certain age, if it becomes clear that they're hell bent on one or both no matter what I say I imagine I'll relent and do everything in my power to make sure they understand the risks they're taking and how to mitigate them, but I'll be quite content if it turns out they never develop an interest in either.

I was just thinking that I was amazed no one had said this yet in this thread, but of course... A tip of the cap to you guv'nor.

cheamclimber

I have to say, I thought at the time that that JBerg ascent was a shitty idea. Still do. Too much objective hazard. Who am I to judge, though? They wanted to go that way and they did. Friends and family get to deal with the grief. I think more and more these days that participants in "Adventure Sports" are self-serving and often selfish thrill seekers, myself included, who rationalize what they do in whatever way makes them feel best, damn anyone else. Die doing something dangerous and the rest of the adherents hold you up as "ballsy" or whatever. No grieving parent wants to hear how ballsy their child was, no grieving partner can heal their broken heart and try to put their life back together knowing how sick your ascents were. I don't buy the "died doing what they loved" BS, either. See above. I'd rather die of a heart attack in my sleep than crushed and broken in terror. I read the Gadd article Bob posted, and I get it. The Reaper stands behind us all, waiting. Should I give him extra reasons to tap me on the shoulder? Not so sure these days, as the beard gets grey. My worthless $0.02.

I've been having good conversations with friends and partners this winter about the difference between risk tolerance and risk awareness. Some people I know recognize the risks and hazards accurately and are ok putting themselves into situations that I would not be ok with. Other people I know will go into the same situations never even knowing they are at risk. My conversations have been in the context of avalanche hazard while backcountry skiing but it applies to alpine climbing/mountaineering as well and the conversations have been positive. I'd rather have a partner with a high risk tolerance and enough experience to recognize the risk than a partner that will charge into less risky situations thinking it's just as dangerous as walking down the sidewalk. It's easier to have conversation about mutual risk acceptance with someone who can see the hazard even if they are willing to tolerate higher risk.

First off. No offense taken Bill!! All good man, all good. Thx for pulling me in here I know my answer is kinda simplistic, but for me, this viewpoint helps me understand my decisions about pursuing climbing. I don’t want any illusions. For me, they are a disservice. I really think it’s important to recognize my fragile mortality everyday. I think it’s important to be grateful everyday for health, love, and happiness. Step three is to get out there and do what you love while trying to stay as safe as possible. But like I said above, there are things I don’t understand. I don’t think any of us would ever want our climbing friends to not follow their dreams (maybe I’m wrong?), but the pain is nearly unbearable when a friend is lost. Sometimes our actions in the wake of an accident may seem desperate and that’s ok. We are only human. When a close friend dies your heart may shatter into a million pieces. I’ve come to believe it’s about gathering the pieces that were scattered and putting yourself together again. The pieces won’t fit together quite the same way and that’s ok. Give yourself time (lots of time!) and keep inching forward. Reach out to the people who love you and let them support you. This is all I got after losing friends to both sickness and mountain accidents. I watched my mother die of cancer and Chad died by my side in a horrific accident on Fitz Roy. Both deaths were very traumatic for me and understanding how I can continue living and loving has been the theme of my life the past 10 years. It’s been beyond hard, but I’m as happy as I’ve ever been. I love myself and I’m learning to own my story. It is a wild journey. Sorry to take this thread a different direction. For me, I’ve been concerned about the boys in AK and I’ve applauded their climbing over the years too. As a lifelong climber still dedicated to the game, this seems totally natural to me. Just my take on it!

This has always stuck with me. I was on that route a week prior to Leubben. The last repel is locked in my memory. Partner and I had to do something kind of sketchy. The rope wouldn't make it completely over the schrund, so we had to kick off the wall, jump the moat, and drop off the end of the rope a couple of feet from its edge. It was only a small drop off the rope. I didn't think much of it. In fact, it was exciting...fun even. But then I remember hearing that someone died at that exact spot. I was young at the time...easy to dismiss it and chalk it up to user error. But, the older I get...the more my past decisions get reframed, and really terrify me. How did I survive the learning curve? No god damn idea. All this to say that most of us on this forum have been in a situation that we survived that others didn't. Surprise has nothing to do with it. But empathy makes me feel the loss. Because it could have easily been me. Should have been me.

Bill, you haven't said anything wrong and certainly don't need to apologize. We'd like you to stick around cc.com even if you're done in this thread. Peace

I apologize and mean no disrespect. It's tough, as we all know, nothing I say will change any of that. There are a lot of nuances which we miss in making bold declarative statements, it's harder to type it than say it. I'll bow out now with that final note.

wise sir do not grieve it is always better to avenge dear ones than to indulge in mourning for every one of us living in this world means waiting for our end let he who can achieve glory before death when a warrior is gone that will be his best and only bulwark

This is my experience as well @Off_White. I've lost rock solid partners to situations where it just as easily could have been me. Thanks for those words @JensHolsten, I agree that there are some things we just won't understand this side of veil.

OK, that was me that toss you in there. LUCK you say? LUCK? Pfft. Jens it looks like I'll have to take your name off and sub in Reinhold Messner......(kidding). Not all luck. I will note that Messner noted that if you drill the correct procedures into your own head so many times that when you are exhausted and out of it and the shit has hit the fan (my summation), you still do the correct thing on autopilot that will still get you out alive. That is what luck can be for some and that luck pulled his fat out of the fire many many times. That said, I know luck played a big role in Messners life, as the well known story of Reinhold Messner and his late brother Gunner will attest to. The pain of losing Gunner was crushing for him no question. I think we all choose where we want our own risk level to be. It certainly changes over time, but for some, it is much higher, and those of us still on the ground cradling our children watching others fly to new heights are shocked, impressed, astounded, upset, and a whole bunch of other things as well. It is about choices. No doubt. In this instance, I suspect that they chose to go light and fast. If so, they were out of fuel and thus water days ago and a happy ending isn't to be I'm sorry to say. I hope I wrong and if that were my kid I'd be all over that area trying to get rescue personal in there...... Now, what was Bob saying again? Oh, Polish folks. Amazing. Slovakians and Russians at times as well. Here's something worth reading as well https://marcleclerc.blogspot.com/ I got to cook some rice up for dinner now. Take care all, and may they both found before the rice finishes.

Turning this up today even though I hate it