Mt. Rainier Interactive Map, Climbing Incidents

[Belle]

This is my first time posting on cascade climbers. My cartography partner, Bert and I just won our category at the 2008 NACIS conference for a map spatially depicting climbing incidents at Rainier. I should point out that the application is complete, but we're still working on data placement. All incidents haven't been placed. It was created with the support of the climbing division at Rainier (thanks, Mike!).

 

It is an application, and while we have more data, it begins with the year 1981, but other data can easily be applied. 'Just wanted to share the link: http://www.mtrainierincidents.com Please keep in mind, we are fine tuning the data placement, and rigorously checking data. Stay tuned for the final map in a few weeks. Feedback is great.

 

Peace,

 

Sarah

[denalidave]

Cool. Pretty sobering though...

[Belle]

Thanks, denalidave. The further I got into this project the tougher it became because it really was sobering.

[Clarence]

It's interesting that the majority of fatal accidents occur on either the Ingraham or Liberty Ridge. Most of the fatalities on Liberty ridge are falls, while most of the fatalities on the Ingraham are avalanche related. Makes sense, given the terrain.

[DPS]

This in an interesting project and well implemented.

 

I am curious why you used the map you did rather than an AJAX map (e.g. Google Map, Microsoft). There seems to be a prejudice against these maps within the GIS/geography community.

[Belle]

Good question, Daniel. I love Microsoft maps, and Virtual Earth. Sometimes using their tiles gets a little into the "who owns the data" territory. Also, our map took more of a thematic tone. It would be a great idea, though to use a higher resolution map, especially on an incident-by-incident basis.

[KaskadskyjKozak]

 

some of the data points seem to be wrong. The point for "Jeremy Zaccardi" on the Emmons says the event occurred at 9500 feet, but the data point is way down on the glacier.

 

[Bigtree]

Nice work/very interesting Belle. Lot's of head scratchers like this one...

 

"Fell 800 feet from Disappointment Cleaver. Tied together with a 25 foot rope with companion Patrick Hill. Neither of them were registered climbers, their outfits consisted of blue jeans and tennis shoes, as well as loose crampons." Wow.

[Belle]

Thanks for pointing this out. The map still is undergoing data placement tweaking. I definitely want to get the points correct; stay tuned for about two more weeks. Thanks for the feedback. Keep it coming!

 

Peace,

 

Sarah

[KaskadskyjKozak]

It's interesting that the majority of fatal accidents occur on either the Ingraham or Liberty Ridge. Most of the fatalities on Liberty ridge are falls, while most of the fatalities on the Ingraham are avalanche related. Makes sense, given the terrain.

 

11 people died in an avalanche on the Ingraham in a single event, so a lot of points are for that route.

 

in my recent memory, it seems more people die on the Muir snowfield than on the DC or Ingraham routes. but that's just my recollection

[KaskadskyjKozak]

 

The Peter Brooks event is listed as occurring in Aug of '81 and the body recovered in July of '81...

[Choada_Boy]

Only fatal events?

[Buckaroo]

Good effort, looks like a tricky project.

 

You need more resolution if you want to place location accurately because of the crowding. Maybe even different resolution break-outs for crowded areas.

 

Maybe the incident with the 11 climbers you could make just one x and have it link to 11 separate links on the sidebar.

 

Many of the locations are way off, maybe get with a climbing ranger. You could get closer just by going off the altitude.

 

""Kleinschmidt was climbing together with Keeta Owens and Cornelius Beilharz, who both neither survived the climb.""

 

I take it English is not your major, maybe "neither of whom" would work.

 

""Suffered fatal asthma attack on Emmons Glacier at 9,500 feet.""

 

Is an asthma attack classified as an "accident"?

 

For this thing to be more useful you would want to cover all years.

 

Interesting though, looks like Liberty Ridge has the highest rates by far.

[Buckaroo]

The Peter Brooks event is listed as occurring in Aug of '81 and the body recovered in July of '81...

 

The guy worked at Timex R&D, he was wearing a prototype time-shift watch.

[ivan]

the summit appears to be a very safe place

[Tod]

Interesting project, however it is dissappointing that it only focuses on climber fatalities.

 

Wouldn't this data (and the public) be better served by a complete incident map showing all backcountry fatalities of incidents. All I get out of this is something scary to look at, when in reality it only is a small number compared to the actual number of incidents that occur in MRNP.

 

It is information like this that misserves both climbers and outdoor enthusiasts in general and causes people to think that climbing is a deathwish sport. With some tweaking and adding of more complete information, this could be very useful to learn and teach from.

Edited October 14, 2008 by Tod

[Braydon]

I think it would also be helpful to see not just fatalities but occasions where they made it out okay.

[Toast]

Cool project... sad topic

 

Anyway, thanks for putting this together.

 

[KaskadskyjKozak]

the summit appears to be a very safe place

 

i've read reports of folks having trouble on the summit. not fatalities though, if I recall.

[Belle]

It should be pointed out that the map is still in the working. We have non-fatal data as well.

[Belle]

Braydon, I totally am with you on this idea. We have the data to do this, but the map isn't quite finish "ready to be unleashed." I thought it'd be great to get this kind of feedback. So much can be learned and appreciated from incidents where people made it out okay. Thanks for your feedback!

 

 

[Belle]

Todd, wish you didn't feel that way. The scope of this map was that it was a semester grad school project. Sure the more data, the better it would serve the public, but we had to draw the line somewhere, so we focused only on climbing-related incidents. I'd love to map the whole world, but we only had a semester

 

Also, the primary goal for me, anyways, was/is to educate future mountaineers. If you have any suggestions, please send me a message. I'd love to hear from ya', and like I said, we're still in the data placement process. Perhaps I could take your ideas into a new project

 

[Belle]

Good point! Actually, Bert, my partner in this project is Dutch I hope you check out the map when it's complete! We'll need a proofing We toiled a long time about how to depict the multi-party incidents. We had to stop toiling, and just put it on the map. Regarding the resolution, the map is thematic, in that it is more about the text and spatial distribution than the map itself. It is unknown where many incidents occurred, in which case, a higher resolution map would actually work against the theme, i.e. we'd be pinpointing an unknown. However it would be a great project to go higher-resolution on an incident-by-incident basis, where the major details are known.

 

When the map is complete, I'd like to have at least as early as the 1970s. Any thoughts?

 

 

[Buckaroo]

""When the map is complete, I'd like to have at least as early as the 1970s. Any thoughts?""

 

If you're going that far you might as well go all the way. In the entire climbing history of Rainier there were only 17 deaths prior to 1970. See "The Challenge of Rainier" by Dee Molenaar. Very good info in this book, all incidents located pretty accurately.

 

Another good resource is probably "Accidents in North American Mountaineering" See the mountaineers library for all issues.

 

Most incidents are easy to locate, all you need is a topo map of the routes and the knowledge of what route they were on and the elevation.

[Belle]

Thanks, Buckaroo, for the ideas. We referred a lot to Molenaar's book. I think you're right about going back through the history.