TrogdortheBurninator
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Posts posted by TrogdortheBurninator
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So much sickness!
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4 hours ago, genepires said:
I think if you look at the total number of solo climbs where they came back safe (quit possibly thousands for those two) vs the number of hard alpine climbs before succumbing to the mountains, then soloing rock climbs looks "safer". for them anyways. I would die soloing a 5.9.
Gets back to that frequency argument though. A smaller risk at a higher frequency can give a shorter expectancy than a larger risk with lower frequency.
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29 minutes ago, JosephH said:
Compare differences once choices are made? Sure, but that's the difference between the assumption of subjective vs objective risk. The former is basically known and static and the latter dynamic and unknown. That's a big difference from my perspective. Navigating the assumption of high levels of subjective risk is a matter of judgment and skill whereas the assumption of high levels of objective risk unavoidably being a matter of gambling and luck. We had some of this discussion on ST and I put it this way:
Assuming subjective risk beyond your limits is hopefully something done incrementally with small increments. Objective risks are just that and really aren't about you and your limits but rather a matter of how much you are willing to gamble and at what odds...
I'm not sure it's quite that black and white. Luck is a benefit for both the subjective risks and the objective risks. In the case of something like freerider, you still have risks like rock fall and broken holds. The likelihood of those is perhaps less than encountered in alpine envions, but the consequence is pretty absolute. Also, dont forget that Honnold has practiced his craft in patagonia and other alpine environs.
A quick look at the fate of a number of pure-rock soloists still reveals that it is a risky endeavor. Were Bachar or Hersey unlucky on the days they passed away?
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I'm happy to accept that Rad's calculator was oversimplified for fatal events. Do you know if it is even suitable for ball park estimates? I tried to dig deeper, but couldn't really come up with a good formula/method.
For comparison, I did a bit of googling on base jumping. Apparently, base jumping has a death rate on the order of 1 death / 2000 jumps (contrast with the 1 death / 100,000 ski tours targeted by R=1 in the link from above: http://arc.lib.montana.edu/snow-science/objects/issw-2012-501-505.pdf). This provides a bit more context for the unacceptability of a 0.1 % failure rate in fatal-outcome activities. I would not climb/rappel if I thought rappelling was twice as deadly as base jumping on a per rappel basis. I tried to find complete statistics for rappel deaths/failures, but came up a bit short. On Steph's website (http://www.stephabegg.com/home/projects/accidentstats) she says that rappelling accounts for ~3 % of mountaineering accidents, but doesnt differentiate injuries/deaths.
Another point of contrast, mountaineering on denali has a fatality rate of 0.063/1000 hrs of performance - how many hours are in 2000 base jumps?
I bring up risk assessment because I feel that it is poorly understood at the true upper levels of mountain sport (e.g. throw out guided parties on 8000m peaks etc). The further we get from typical/average behavior, the less accurate our understanding of risk becomes. I think it is extremely difficult to compare the risk exposure of Honnold versus Marc, versus ColinH, versus Loren. Its a combination of frequency of exposure and specific hazards of each objective. If somebody came to you and said that your particular approach gives you a mean predicted life span of a couple years, would you change behavior? Taking it a step further, is there a level of risk where instead of applauding, we should just stay quiet? Is there a level where friends/family should intervene?
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12 minutes ago, JasonG said:
How do you define "risky activity"? All in life carries risk. Do you try and figure odds for driving (what kind of car do I buy??), using crosswalks, etc? And do those calculations change your behavior?
Seems like a lot of work.
I’d consider a risky activity to be anything where your choices influence the likelihood of death or bodily harm. You could just as easily consider broader outcomes like financial consequence etc. I do pay some attention to risk in these activities as a benchmark to compare higher risk activities to. I’m comfortable with the risk of driving. I always wear a seatbelt and I prefer cars with airbags to mitigate risk. If I came to a realization that my skiing or climbing risks were 100 or 1000x higher than my driving risk, I would absolutely change things up in my behavior. A factor of a couple seems like a reasonable price though for these experiences.
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1 hour ago, JasonG said:
My experience is that the avalanche reports aren't all that accurate. I've been surprised several times when I shouldn't have been, if you had believed the report. Therein lies the problem. The data you're trying to use to come up with your risk calculation isn't at all precise, but you're treating it like a point value. I'm not talking about either extreme of the scale, which is often pretty accurate, but the middle ground where several avalanche professionals die each year. It's not a simple math equation you can stake your life on.
Avalanche forecasting correlates quite well with the probability of triggering an avalanche - this is proven. If it were 100% accurate, backcountry travel would be trivial. It is really difficult to discuss or assess risk without accepting that it is a game of probabilities and uncertainties. If you start weighting anecdotal evidence (e.g. I saw an avalanche once where somebody said there shouldn’t be one), while ignoring all the times that you didn’t see an avalanche when there shouldn’t be one, you lose sight of the problem. That makes risk assessment impossible. The value of statistics, is that even in the presence of imprecise data, you can draw valid conclusions.
I also hate to break it to you that every time you engage in a risky activity you are staking your life on an equation. It is up to you whether you want to go into it with some idea of what that the equation predicts, or even which variables affect it.
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6 hours ago, W said:
I've come to realize that as long as I have a chance of dying of cancer, and that if I could choose the manner of my death between that or climbing, I'll take the mountains. Ultimately, between the all or nothing of the above examples, I hope to walk a fine line right down the middle on my way out of this life, whenever and however that happens. Onward, and upward-
Really glad to hear you’ve been able to battle the cancer. The conundrum it sets up between taking accepted risks while climbing versus beating the uncontrollable risk of illness is really tough to comprehend.
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26 minutes ago, genepires said:
originally this thought to quantify risk came to me after I had my rappel failure at index. My thinking was that we all feel fine with a act that is 99% safe. If I were to offer you a gamble where If you won with a 99% chance to receive something positive and a 1% of something negative, I feel most people would take it. 99% safety feels safe but in reality and over time, your 1% will catch up you.
My goal was to not suggest that anyone stop climbing but to encourage that we pursue reducing that chance to .1%. Keep safety at forefront and be ever vigilant for along climbing career. A 1% failure rate at rappels in unacceptable in the long run. as seen by my accident. and so many others.
Not to beat a dead horse, but 0.1 % failure rate rappelling is no where near acceptable. That would give you a 65 % chance of failure over a relatively modest 1000 rappels. That seems like a typical 1-5 years for an avid climber. Maybe less for some folks.
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2 hours ago, bedellympian said:
Can you summarize the 3x3 concept for us Trogdor? I was Googled it and got lost pretty quick.
Also, while I agree mining accident data on a large scale is useful, I think that its important to compare against the number of successful ascents and the caliber of climber that is attempting. For instance I don't think that the South SIde of Mt. Hood is nearly as dangerous as a meta study of accidents would make out. On the other hand, despite having zero accidents and several successful repeats I would argue that the Slovak Direct on Denali is pretty darn serious and has some major risks involved.
The basic idea is that for avalanche risk, you have a hazard rating (H = 1-5 = Low-Extreme). That rating sets a base line hazard for the day. Then you can take steps to reduce your exposure to that hazard (lower angle slopes, avoiding N aspects / problem aspects, controlling group size and travel habits). The steps are given a corresponding reduction factor RF. The equation is risk R=2^H/(product(RF)). At R=1, you get to the 1/100,000 likelihood of dying on that tour. At R=2, 1/50,000, and so on. The table in your link does a good job of distilling those daily odds into lifetime likelihood based on ski days / year. So, if you like the idea of having a 99/100 chance of not dying in an avalanche in your life, and you ski 20 days a year, and you plan to ski for 50 years, you need to average R=1. If you think you have a 99/100 chance of not dying in an avalanche, but you run some quick calcs and see that you are averaging say R=3, it might be time to revisit your basic big picture behaviors. I like the simplicity of the tool for pointing out how a rather trivial decision can quantitatively affect the risk you expose your self to. For example, how much more dangerous is it to always ski 37 deg terrain vs 33 deg terrain - turns out its a factor of 2. What does group size do to risk? I don't calculate a munter risk for every tour, but I do think a lot about how it is the accumulation of risky behavior that catches up with us, not a single risky decision. I try to be honest about the risk I expose myself to, and I try to honestly assess what risk I am willing to accept. In skiing, most of the time you will get away with bad decisions, so having a statistical framework around decision making, rather than waiting on bad consequences from your bad decisions can be helpful.
I think rock climbing is quite a bit different. For R/X trad or free solo we generally go into it with a strong sense of technical ability and likelihood of success based on well protected climbs performed in the past. For example, what's the likelihood I'll fail on a 5.4, 5.6, 5.8, etc. Am I comfortable soloing or running it out given what I think those odds are? What if I'm off by a factor of 10, is that still acceptable risk to me? In contrast, if I tried to solo 5.14, there would be a 100 % risk of failure.
Alpine climbing gets more complicated. There is no simple avy report for alpine climbing. And as I complained above, there isn't really great data that breaks down the risk factors (beyond say 8000 m peaks vs not). So instead, you get the gut feelings about risk exposure described above.
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2 minutes ago, JosephH said:
And then there's the curious case of Michael Reardon - basically eschewed roped climbing altogether and then dies from a freak rogue wave. Life is unpredictable.
That said, there's no getting around the fact climbing mountains is fraught with objective dangers compared to rock climbing and the subjective/objective risk ratio is stood on its head. In fact, in many instances, it's tantamount to gambling and that's an individual call I for one will not second guess.
Life is unpredictable for a single individual, but quite predictable for a sub-pupulation (e.g. excessive risk takers). Reardon lived a very high risk life, and passed away unfortunately early. Leclerc even more so.
29 minutes ago, bedellympian said:Hey guys, thanks for the good discussion. I've posted on and off here for a few years though I wouldn't call myself a regular the way some people are. I avoided reading this thread until after I knew the outcome of Marc and Ryan... burying my head in the sand I fully admit. I recently had an accident myself; I was returning to the car at Smith Rock and in my haste I chose to solo/scramble a short chimney through the basalt rimrock. Long story short I did not notice that it had one or more detached blocks at the top which caught my pack and then came down on top of me. I took a 30+ footer and managed to self-arrest on a small ledge. Luckily I had friends in the vicinity who were able to get to me quickly and keep me stable while we waited for 3.5 hrs for SAR to extract me. I'm super lucky to be alive and with intact head/spine. My knees took most of it and I will be several months repairing and rehabbing the various broken bones and torn ligaments but should be fully functional again.
While I will never be close to what MA Leclerc did, I have engaged in my fair share of solo outings and dicey alpine shenanigans. I'm sure some of you have read my TRs on here about a few of those. For a long time I justified this bullshit by thinking that the variables in the mountains are rational and predictable things that I could assess logically and therefore avoid danger. I used to quip that driving my car to a climbing location was more dangerous than anything I did climbing. The loss of Marc and Ryan on top of my recent accident has really made me reassess what I can (and what I'm willing to) get away with. I realize that while mountain variables are predictable to a degree they are not always predictable. Also, as much as I would like to consider myself rational and focused, I am a fallible human and if I put myself in these positions enough I will screw up.
One of my climbing partners and I discussed risk a lot over this years ice trip to MT/WY and he gave me this article which while focused on avalanche avoidance is also applicable to most of the hazards we face while alpine climbing: http://arc.lib.montana.edu/snow-science/objects/issw-2012-501-505.pdf
With that article we've discussed a lot about how low probability but high risk outcomes are still bad, and asked how often do you have to take that risk before you actually have a high risk of that bad outcome happening one time and really screwing you. There is also some research to suggest that when we put ourselves in a risky situation and get away unscathed that can incorrectly reinforce the idea that such a risk is actually safe. This lets people get too comfortable and drop their guard as well as allowing them to make similar risks in the future without really understanding the probability of f#$%ing up. I would say my accident was in this last category.
Anyway, this all got me thinking that maybe it would be good to try get some actual numbers. It would be good for people to be able to say, well I got away with this 3 times, but statistically if I do it ten times I'll die on one of those occasions so I probably should stop doing that. Or, I know someone who f%^ked up and got hurt doing that once, but statistically that's a 1 in 100,000 accident and so I should be cautious but can do that carefully on several climbs in my life and feel good about my risk tolerance. I have started making a Google Form survey that I'm thinking of sharing here and on other forums and want to know...
What QUESTIONS should I include?
Thanks,
Sam
I saw this discussion, and thought of the exact same paper (and just the general 3x3 risk reduction concept). It is striking how absent (or at least unknown) these concepts and data are in climbing compared to backcountry skiing. Perhaps because in skiing, so much emphasis is placed on a single hazard (avalanches), it makes it easier to distill the root cause and look at objective statistics. The equivalent in alpine climbing would be to control for things like team size, roped/unroped, weather conditions, avalanche forecast, terrain type (ice, mixed, rock, glaciated), elevation.
It would be a worthy objective to investigate risk in climbing, but I dont think a google survey is the correct approach. Rather, vigorous mining of international climbing accident and participation data is probably the only way to come up with something objectively equivalent. -
I wrote an extension in chrome that replaces real facebook names with cc.com avatars. It's like nothing has changed, except Alpinfox never posts anything.
Wish I could spend more time cascade-climbing so I could spend more time on cascadeclimbers.com.
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Rad! Can't believe we walked away from the base of that one thinking it was a choss pile. Blake was questioning his ability to spot lines after our go. Guess his intuition was right and we just didn't act enough like we were having fun!
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Huge sendfestz!!
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Is NDrake Nick Drake? I snowboarded a bit with a Nick Drake in the late 90s or so (probably at snoqualmie and alpental IIRC).
Coincidentally, I made the snowboard to ski switch a few years back myself. For me, as my interests focused more on combining climbing and sliding on snow, it just made more sense. Some minor regrets, but not many...
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Oh no
Chris was an amazing source of inspiration for Darrington stoke. Sincere condolences to his family and all those who knew him well. -
Re: safety - how many injuries occurred on the old rap route? Re: speed - How much faster is this rap route for a skilled party?
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DPS, that seems like an understated way of reporting that meeting
Congrats to Joe, Ben, and Tim!
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Except that jojo clearly states in his book that he is using a different definition for the grades whereby approach, avalanche and serac hazard, length, and other factors all contribute to the grade. He never suggests that his roman grades are equivalent to the classic alpine usage.
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Ice in the shade last weekend was some of the coldest and least sticky i've seen. Lots of cold days in a row. Exhausting, even on easy terrain.
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doesnt anybody want to get paid? 4/1 now for your >50% candidate!
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Lots of polls aggregated out there, but folks will argue a party bias for most of them. Seems to me the least likely has gotta be the vegas-style betting odds: http://sports.williamhill.com/bet/en-gb/betting/e/1451382/Next-Presidential-US-Election---Next-US-President.html
I see folks like Karl Rove (or this guy: http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/why-romney-will-win_660391.html) saying with a straight face they think Romney is the favorite. If that is the case, why aren't those that think Romney is ahead taking full advantage of the house here. Romney pays out 3:1 profit on a win. If Romney is 50.1 odds of winning the electoral college, the bet has an expected value of $1.80 profit for every dollar you bet (in contrast a game like roulette you expect to lost $0.05 on every dollar you bet). Seems a prudent business man would seize this opportunity to spend a large chunk of their high risk investment pool for the year. Certainly the stock market isnt giving that kind of ROI.
Unless of course, +Romney republicans just live in a a fantasy world and their heroes are spewing lies to propagate the myth of a close race
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Ay, but those be old style #5s in those reports. Old 5 = c4 #6. New 5 is largely dead weight. Bring new 6, or just larger cajones
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I think you want the 6 for that route
Denali food planning
in Climber's Board
Posted
I'd say eat like a king. It's a great way to kill time and keep psych. Our dinners were usually some sort of precooked sausage/bratwurst, added to burritos, rice dishes, quesedillas, etc. Bacon for breakfast. Egg beaters. Tortilla pizzas turned out to be a real hit.
We spent a week skiing from a camp at the landing strip and 6 days or so climbing and skiing higher up. For 4 guys, our shopping list was (it probably evolved a bit at the grocery store):
-Camp Condiments-
Butter-4 cups of butter !
Oil- Two small/Plastic
Salt-pepper !
Hot Sauce-two bottles one mild !
Sugar-Small Bag !
Mustard Djon !
-Drinks-
Coffee- 64oz !
Tea no caffeine- 3 boxes/Mint/Chamomile/Normal !
Tang- 16oz !
Emergency- 1 sleeve 30packets
Alpine Cider/Hot Chocolate ! No Cider
Whiskey- Normal
Beer (a few)
-Breakfast (16 Days)-
Granola - 5.5 Kilos (8 Days) (Powdered Milk 1KG)
Bacon- (4 Days)-Bagels- 16 Bagels (4 Days) Egg Beaters (4 Days + Cheese 16oz)
1 Peanut Butter+ 1 Jelly+ 12 (Bagels 3 days)
Hash Browns+ Cheese- 3 bags
-Filler Food/Lunches (16 Days)-
SNACK PACKS (Salts-Sugars etc) (Personal?) Smoked Almonds, Dried Fruit (Apercots,
Banna etc, Figs M&M peanuts) Shot Blocs 20 (Teague/Jason? Whats your snacks
like?) !
Roman Noodles- 35 Packages !
Idaho Potatoes- 8 Bags + Tuna 8 Cans !
Chips/pretzels-
Cheese- 5x2lbs 10lbs of Cheese (Sharp Cheeder, pepper jack)
Salami/meats- 5lbs
Soups- Miso Soups- 7 days worth
Candy- 50-60% Chocolate Bars x 10, M&M’s !
-Dinners (16 Dinners)-
(2 Low Mountain) Burgers- 2 Nights- 8 Jimbo Patties - 8 buns
(2 Low, 2 high) Mexican Surprise- 4 Nights- Tortillas 36, 4 packets of 4 Sausages,
Frozen Veggies 4 bags
(4 Low) Italiano-4 nights- 4 kilo pasta, 4 sauces (200ml) !
(2 High) Salmon with Cous Cous- 2 Nights- 8 salmon packet, 4 boxes- 8 in soups
(2 High) Turkey Sausages with Cous Cous- 2 Nights- 2 big Sausages (diced) and 4
boxes, 8 individual soups
(2High) Taste Bites with rice -2 night- 8 Bags Tasty Bites, 8 Bags rice !