'I found your dad': The mystery of a missing climber

There’s class 4 mountaineers, and WI6 mountaineers. It’s often hard to tell where any one person falls on that continuum.

If you break down the stats, a significant fraction (if not most) of the fatal accidents in GA are in experimental aircraft like kit builds and exotic stuff like fighter jets, despite accounting for a small fraction of the total flight hours. Most of the rest are due to preventable human error like misjudging your ability to fly in bad weather or miscalculating fuel and running out mid-flight.

It’s like driving: it’s usually very safe if you don’t speed and drive tired or drunk.

They were not. The daughter is 31 and her father went missing 22 years earlier.

I think having a commitment that strong to a dangerous activity should factor into whether you have kids in the first place. Maybe it doesn't make the answer an automatic "no", but I think one has to really think through one's decision to create a person who will have a disproportionate risk of major trauma in their early life and should have an extremely clear contingency plan for the child's care by someone who is genuinely psychologically and materially prepared for that eventuality. I think that to do less than that would be negligence—it might be a common type of negligence, easily obscured by romanticism about bold endeavors, but it is certainly not taking care.

It's the same with base jumping. I remember watching a documentary on it one time and almost all of the people being interviewed knew multiple people that died during a jump.

this isnt true. I know some alpinist guides and alpinist. beeing one myself. I can remember the story of maximum 3 deaths and they were not even first encounters. If you are a professional its rly rly rare that you die. accidents with injuries can happen for sure and they are way more common.

the mt Everest hast like 300 deaths on 15.000 successful climbs or so. And thats not an easy one and ridiculous elite.

I know guids in the alps and they do 300 alpinist tour day a year. So how come allmost all are alive and their friends etc. For sure they know people that know poeple or colleges that died by accidents , mostly avalanches and loose rocks, but as said rly rly rare.

but on the other hand there are many deaths in the alps every year.

The guy in the post seemed well prepared and smart and shit happens and I am sorry for the lost. Very glad his family got an answer.

you're right if you like nature go camping or somewhere that you don't have to risk your life imo

>> Objective hazard is risks that cannot be reasonably mitigated. Things like rockfall where a rock breaks off and falls on your head at random, or unpredictable avalanches

Those risks can be mitigated. They can't be reduced to zero, but they can be made less severe.

Avalanches don't typically happen randomly out of the blue any more than thunderstorms do in the midwest. In the midwest, you know days ahead of time that there is going to be a risk of thunderstorms the same way that you know days ahead of time when there is going to be a high avalanche risk. You know the amount of recent snowfall, you know what the weather is going to be, and you know how to recognize avalanche terrain.

Rockfall does not occur completely randomly. If you go to a place overlooking something like the bowling alley on a warm summer afternoon, you will see and hear rocks the size of cars or small houses bouncing down the slopes. If you go on a cold winter morning before the sun hits the snow, you won't see or hear that because everything that is frozen in place will stay frozen in place. You choose the time of your climb to mitigate risks from rockfall, avalanches, and weather. Mitigate does not mean reduce to zero.

Yes, mountaineering can be risky. Everyone decides their own level of involvement. Climbing a walkup in bluebird weather has less risk than driving to the grocery store. Attempting to climb K2 kills 25% of the people who do it. Mountaineer's choice. If you've got kids and you try to climb K2, you're selfish and I feel sorry for your kids. If you're a single guy who wants to risk death, go for it.

> Mountains are inherently dangerous, unpredictable places in ways that roads usually aren't.

Mountains are peaceful places without the majority of people around them required to keep perfectly attentive to their surroundings so they don't kill you. If you're in the mountains, your likelihood of experiencing dangerous situations depends on the environment, your skill and fitness, the weather, and maybe others on the mountain.

Roads are the most dangerous places most people will ever find themselves, much more often, regardless of whether they take on the responsibility of driving. If you're on the mountains, your death is caused by being severely ill-prepared or stupid, or significant misfortune just because. If you're around a road you're constantly surrounded by people armed with killing machines that nobody seems to have reverence for. You're in a life or death situation by default in any time you're not parked or stuck in traffic. All you or someone else needs to do is get distracted for a moment or fall asleep or whatever. Maybe they just decided that was their time to go and drive through a crowd of people.

In the mountains you could be in a very vulnerable spot, or you could effectively be camping, or just out for a trail run. Yes, bad things could happen, but there are all sorts of variables that matter to affect that. I've taken some spills, they happen, sometimes they've been scary, but I opted into that risk.

Both places are dangerous, only one is nearly always dangerous. While it may not literally be the drive to the climb that takes you out, I think the point is that being a car commuter or around roads regularly does pose a greater degree of risk.

Even a cursory glance of mortality rates for driving vs mountaineering show orders of magnitude higher rates for mountaineering.

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6843304/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_vehicle_fatality_rate_in...

Have you driven in the Andes? It is likely far more dangerous driving there. Certainly far more deaths.

Climbing Everest is an elite endeavor. Most mountaineers are summiting 14ers in Colorado or doing something similar.

And "climbing" Mt Everest means having paid helpers so most of the work for you.

> I suppose on a basis of deaths per vertical meter travelled, ascending slopes is probably safer than even air travel.

No, by orders of magnitude.

Will Gadd and his friends are at an elite level. They would call most mountain climbing done in the continental US, summits like Mt. Baldy, "hiking."

It would have many of the same appeals. But it really isn't possible to replicate without being in the high peaks. Car camping and backpacking have some of the appeal, but not nearly as intensely.

> If you could have the same solitude, sweeping views, natural beauty, cameraderie, etc., but without real danger, would it have the same appeal?

Well, yeah. Most of the gear for mountaineering and other pursuits are to try and minimize risk because we deem the gain is worth the risk but still it's worth reducing risk.

After all, that's the same reason people drive despite it being a leading cause of death.