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Matt's
climber
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Topic Author's Original Post - Sep 22, 2016 - 08:58am PT
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Off the top of my head, at least 5 people died in yosemite/sierras in the last month.
1) east ledges rappels (chris)
2) bear creek spire (maria)
3) onion valley (kwok)
4) evolution traverse (julia)
5) (edit-- this one was a swimming accident)
6) (edit-- a U-notch accident)
As I've climbed over the years, you get more integrated into the community, and thus it seems like anyone who dies is only 1 degree separated from you.
It makes me wonder-- is this the "normal" rate of death in the sierras? Or is it just that I pay attention more to this stuff these days?
Are there any good statistics on how dangerous climbing is?
best,
matt
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squishy
Mountain climber
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Sep 22, 2016 - 09:44am PT
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Sierra
and yes this is pretty normal in an active season.
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StahlBro
Trad climber
San Diego, CA
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Sep 22, 2016 - 10:40am PT
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Condolences to the families.
The cold mountain lakes need to be respected. I have seen bad things happen when someone starts to have problems in that cold water ;-(
We had jump in and save a friend in Upper Boy Scout lake after he dove 15 feet down to retrieve a knife he accidentally tossed in the lake. He barely made it to the surface, gasped for air, then started sinking. We thought he was having a heart attack. The cold water just blew the air right out of his lungs. He was ok, but he would have died if we weren't right there watching.
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Nanobody
Trad climber
Fresno, CA
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Sep 22, 2016 - 11:15am PT
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Climber was also killed on U-notch in July
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anita514
Gym climber
Great White North
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Sep 22, 2016 - 11:21am PT
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Was there more information re: the East Ledges accident?
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Matt's
climber
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Topic Author's Reply - Sep 22, 2016 - 11:22am PT
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no, haven't heard anything about the east ledges rappel accident. yosar will probably publish something at some point in the future
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Matt's
climber
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Topic Author's Reply - Sep 22, 2016 - 11:23am PT
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Sierra
and yes this is pretty normal in an active season.
Squishy-- do you have any references for this-- you're saying, say, 10 california climbing deaths a summer is about the normal rate?
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squishy
Mountain climber
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Sep 22, 2016 - 11:53am PT
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no, unfortunately no one keeps statistics of the deaths, there's no record and you just have to take my word for it. Would be a good annual book or something, like "accidents in mountaineering" or something like that.
http://publications.americanalpineclub.org/about_accidents
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Ksolem
Trad climber
Monrovia, California
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Sep 22, 2016 - 12:01pm PT
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No hard info, just general recollection. It seems to me that this season is unusually busy in this sad respect.
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squishy
Mountain climber
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Sep 22, 2016 - 12:22pm PT
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huh, interesting..
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skcreidc
Social climber
SD, CA
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Sep 22, 2016 - 01:27pm PT
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I don't believe anyone has stated Professor Kwok's cause of death yet. As far as I can tell, the cause of his death remains under investigation.
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Clint Cummins
Trad climber
SF Bay area, CA
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Sep 22, 2016 - 01:34pm PT
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Matt,
Like you said, sometimes the randomness kicks in and bad things happen to several people you know in a short span of time.
I felt that way in summer/fall 2010:
 Chris Chan fell solo on Eichorn Pinnacle, fatal
Wendy decked from 200' up in Owens, spinal cord injury & more
Steph had an open tib/fib fracture in the mountains in a simple leader fall, barely rescued & epic rehabs
Personally, I rarely climb in the Sierra, and loose rock is one of the factors (not the only factor; also the driving time and I'm a weak hiker).
Some years ago I gave up climbing mountains with lots of loose rock,
after climbing Bonanza Peak with my wife and our fathers;
there was so much loose junk on ledges that we couldn't rope up since the
rope would just knock rocks down onto each other....
There are too many other places to climb where the rock is good.
Hence the thread I made a few years ago:
http://www.supertopo.com/climbers-forum/914781/Temple-Crag-too-loose-accident-list
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August West
Trad climber
Where the wind blows strange
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Sep 22, 2016 - 01:45pm PT
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It makes me wonder-- is this the "normal" rate of death in the sierras? Or is it just that I pay attention more to this stuff these days?
Would you have had any idea of any of these deaths if they had all died in car accidents?
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Matt's
climber
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Topic Author's Reply - Sep 22, 2016 - 01:53pm PT
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Would you have had any idea of any of these deaths if they had all died in car accidents?
Yeah, 2 of the 5 people.
With car accidents, there is data on how many accidents there are per year; the likelyhood of an accident per 1000 hours driven, etc...
None of this sort of information exists for climbing, so I don't really have a sense of how dangerous it is relative to other activities...
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Matt's
climber
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Topic Author's Reply - Sep 22, 2016 - 02:37pm PT
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Thanks mike-- it looks like that there are only a few instances where the data is reported in units that are actually interpretable....
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Clint Cummins
Trad climber
SF Bay area, CA
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Sep 22, 2016 - 03:08pm PT
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Matt,
I agree, that tetongravity.com article uses many different types of units which makes it difficult to compare.
The "1 in 60" deaths number for BASE is very wrong, too.
It is actually 1 death per 60 participants in 2002.
I analyzed it in this thread:
http://www.supertopo.com/climbing/thread.php?topic_id=2836663&tn=120
And on the previous page I describe the fundamental statistical problem:
getting a count of number of participants (or participant days) for the denominator of the fraction.
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Matt's
climber
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Topic Author's Reply - Sep 22, 2016 - 04:32pm PT
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thanks clint.
after maria's accident, my wife asked me if this was a normal level of accidents. I realized I didn't know the answer, so I tried to see if anyone on supertopo knew. It looks like real data doesn't exist...
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FRUMY
Trad climber
Bishop,CA
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Sep 22, 2016 - 05:28pm PT
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Try the American Alpine Club.
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SuperTopo on the Web
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Let us know!