Death rates of rock climbers

ViperScale wrote: Climbing and not dying does not increase the risk of climbing and dying next time (for the most part) these are independent events. No different than flipping a coin 10 times, because it landed heads the first 9 times doesn't increase the chance of landing tails the 10th time. There is always a 50% chance.

This is contingent on everyone being equally likely to die at any given time. (i.e. that a given cohort of climbers follows a Pareto distribution when considering only deaths due to climbing). It seems more likely that a climbing population will consist of relatively risk-averse climbers who will climb safely for a long time, and people who do really dumb things, engage in risky activity, and don't wear helmets while bouldering.

Even if both populations, individually, follow a Pareto distribution, the former will die off faster, and comprise a smaller portion of the population of an older climbing cohort. Over time, then, we should expect a decreasing average chance of death for a cohort of climbers.

Rafe wrote:Maybe Ill play it safe and climb to work from now on.

+1

lol -- good comment

My major issue with this is that it depends on where they get their data. I'll my home crag as an example (Devil's Lake in Wisconsin). Whenever a tourist or hiker falls trying to scramble the talus fields or gets too close to the edge of cliff and falls (a rare occurrence but it has happened) it will usually be reported by the park as a "climbing" incident. Regardless of whether or not the individual in question was actually a climber. So if the writer of the article goes off incident reports it's possible that the number of accidents involving climbers are higher than they really should be.

So does the 145 in a million represent climbers or climbers and "climbers". It most certainly is splitting hairs but in this case it matters.

I'm also only speaking within the depths of my own experiences. Perhaps someone more traveled than I can provide more information.

Maybe this statistic will turn the Outside magazine crowd away from the rock and more towards running, biking and skiing. Share it on FB.

Adam Ronchetti wrote: So does the 145 in a million represent climbers or climbers and "climbers". It most certainly is splitting hairs but in this case it matters.

For the record, I went searching for the actual data behind this "145 per million" statistic...

Outside Online says "Rock Climbing: Fatality rate: 145 per 1 million climbers"

They got this from an infographic on Teton Gravity Research that says "Expert Climbing" death rate of "0.0145 per 100 annually."

Teton in turn got the infographic from BestHealthDegrees.com which lists some sources below. The only thing that makes sense for where they got this number is taking the average of these two: "The mortality rates among trekkers in Nepal during two periods between 1984 and 1991: 0.014 and 0.015 per 100 trekkers."

That in turn is from a paper called Mountain mortality, which says "Since approximately 148 000 individuals were issued with trekking permits from the Nepali Ministry of Tourism, the mortality rates during two periods between 1984 and 1991 have been calculated as 0.014 and 0.015 per 100 trekkers."

Sooo... this statistic has nothing to do with rock climbing?

Edit:

My own estimate is 6 deaths per million participants per year, which is based on 

• 427 US deaths from 2003-2018
• 4,677,500 US outdoor climbers (average of 2017-2018, including sport, boulder, trad, ice, mountaineering)

So outdoor climbing is less deadly than high school/college football, bicycling, COVID-19, skydiving, car rides, motorcycle rides, BASE jumping, smoking, etc. (in order of increasing danger).  Outdoor climbing is about 30% deadlier than hiking.

With motorcycling, I have seen data that with years of experience death/accident rate goes down.

Yet, with rock climbing, perhaps years of experience does not help you remember to tie a stopper knot -- Example Alex Honnold  

Jonathan Bright wrote:

For the record, I went searching for the actual data behind this "145 per million" statistic...

Outside Online says "Rock Climbing: Fatality rate: 145 per 1 million climbers"

They got this from an infographic on Teton Gravity Research that says "Expert Climbing" death rate of "0.0145 per 100 annually."

Teton in turn got the infographic from BestHealthDegrees.com which lists some sources below. The only thing that makes sense for where they got this number is taking the average of these two: "The mortality rates among trekkers in Nepal during two periods between 1984 and 1991: 0.014 and 0.015 per 100 trekkers."

That in turn is from a paper called Mountain mortality, which says "Since approximately 148 000 individuals were issued with trekking permits from the Nepali Ministry of Tourism, the mortality rates during two periods between 1984 and 1991 have been calculated as 0.014 and 0.015 per 100 trekkers."

Sooo... this statistic has nothing to do with rock climbing?

Thanks for the deep dive into the stats. I agree with your assessment, this fatality rate is not relevant at all.

Nothing new here.  99% percent of statistics are just pulled out of our asses anyway.  

Now take out everyone who does trad/multipitch which is probably like 1% of climbers and the death rate plummets to near 0.

Anthony _ wrote:

Now take out everyone who does trad/multipitch which is probably like 1% of climbers and the death rate plummets to near 0.

Probably not so.

Here's a study from January of this year: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6981967/

"belay incidents accounted for 12% of climbing injuries" - it's not separated out in the data here, but I would bet that single pitch accidents account for a good share of the fatal belay mistakes. Many more sport climbers than multi-pitch climbers, and there are often more distractions and a lower bar to participate. 

Gregger Man wrote:

Probably not so.

Here's a study from January of this year: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6981967/

"belay incidents accounted for 12% of climbing injuries" - it's not separated out in the data here, but I would bet that single pitch accidents account for a good share of the fatal belay mistakes. Many more sport climbers than multi-pitch climbers, and there are often more distractions and a lower bar to participate. 

Except that paper says in many places that more injuries occurred in the alpine or on snow/ice. As does the stat you quoted, since "12%" is another way to say "a minority of cases." The paper also specifically says that more than 10 years climbing is a risk factor INCREASING the chance of injury (ie you're doing harder stuff). 

The paper's a nice review of literature, appreciate you posting it.   

Right - stuff above treeline introduces much more objective danger. I agree. Snow and ice introduce additional uncertainties. My objection to Anthony_ is that multi-pitch rock as a category probably does not account for a greater proportion of the fatalities than single pitch climbing. The ANAM archives could probably solve that question definitively, and I'll admit that my statement is just a hunch. Thinking that trad/multi-pitch automatically means 'more likely to die soon' sounds wrong to me.

HUGE Tradifan wrote:

Alex didn't die. How about Brad Gobright?

I don't know most of the elite climbers.  I do remember reading about Brad Gobright now.  They are lucky both climbers did not die.

-Forgot to pull the top to the middle - Fail

-Forgot to close the system with stopper knots - Fail

-Simul-rapping is considered risky AMGA's Dale and Olivia (love) 

SeanC Cahill wrote: WGD Pfffffttttt... Speak for yourself. I plan on living forever.

Me too.  So far, so good.

What's up with people resurrecting all these old forum topics?? Jonathan did you type in "climber death rate" into the search box for funzies?

 

Easy Cheese wrote:

What's up with people resurrecting all these old forum topics??

I knew someone would make this comment eventually

Easy Cheese wrote:

What's up with people resurrecting all these old forum topics?? Jonathan did you type in "climber death rate" into the search box for funzies?

 

Haha.  I did not realize this was am ancient thread.  

ITS A TRAP!

- If you start a new thread- people will leave comments, "Why didn't you use the search function"

- If its a old thread, "why is this thread so old"