dmuja1

Thanks for all the thoughtful replies. I try to learn as much as I can from all sources - especially acident reports. One of the more scarey moments of my own short climbing career occured while solo down climbing 45-50 degree snow, late on a sunny warm morning, south aspect, when the snow balled my crampons into uselessness, it was such a beautiful day! but I was barely able to stay upright, and i doubt I could have self arrested on that steep a slope. Sunny+warm+beautiful= lulled me into a reckless stupor ;-)

I'm glad that the climbers will apparently make full recoveries, but please someone answer a question or two for me if you could. I mean NO disrespect to anyone, (and I really don't know exactly what happened in this particular case) but please explain, why do climbers rope up on steep snow (minus crevasse threats) and then fail to anchor their rope to the mountain? It seems to me that failing to anchor a rope would only ensure that in the case of a fall, the entire team would go down as well as the individual who started the fall. Is it unethical to have one of your partners fall alone? Is this the "all for one" etc., philosophy applied wrongly? Or, is it just that those who use this "technique" (or lack of) are trusting that know one in the team will fall? It seems that there are so many of THESE KINDS of falls taking place, especially on Mt Hood. I hear that in Europe they use team roping much less, is this true? My thinking on this is simply that - I will NOT rope to others UNLESS the rope is anchored OR we are on a nearly flat glacier with crevasse threats. Am I wrong on this?

"Mudede couldn't see past the utter senselessness of it given the lens he was viewing the film through." Pardon my barging in, personally I was a bit put off by Mudede's review. I understand it (I think) and BG too. But it seems to me that when someone sees this film exclusively through the "lens" of politics or class to such an extent that they seem to completely miss the basic humanity of the situation (Simpsons suffering, fear, doubts etc,) well, frankly they scare me. Suffering is suffering, no matter the cause, in it's midst is not the time to question what got you there. And another thing, we're all on a raft headed down stream for a big fall, all of us, wether in a poor African village or in Beverly Hills. We can try till the cows come home to be "fair", "rational", "even minded" and that is -in many ways- a good and noble thing. But in the end we still have a deep desire for the irrational, for risk, for pushing the limits, the realm of art and the heart. I too used to think that people who "needlessly risked their lives" were idiots. Now I'm more inclined to believe that some people just seem to get it - that you don't live that long no matter how safe you try to make it. There's a lot of ways to change the world, a lot of ways to inspire an appreciation for life. I think there is plenty of room left here in the raft for the likes of Simpson and Yates, and Mudede too. This is a very good movie! Though (strictly speaking) not just a "climbing" film. The first half certainly, yes, but the second half speaks to something much deeper than "pick placements". jmo - Doug