Risk tolerance in partners

Hey ball, I'd never drop you on a grigri, cause the rope would be jammed before we ever got that far!

Good point about comfort. There's still someone's judgement call to start something without enough daylight left, but these things just happen anyway. Part of that, is also not letting mistakes start compounding.

Old lady H wrote:@climbnplay, I didn't quite get your last sentence. You've not gone out again for various reasons, but never because you felt superior, or never when you felt someone else was superior, or have I got the whole thing mangled?

sorry to confuse u! I meant to say that I have never decided against a partner because I felt a "superior" climber. To clarify, I never climb multipitch (sport, trad or alpine) with anyone whose abilities I am not familiar with and that makes things less complicated. It's easy to just spend a session with them at the gym or at a sport crag and then you have an idea of what to expect, more or less.

climbnplay wrote: sorry to confuse u! I meant to say that I have never decided against a partner because I felt a "superior" climber. To clarify, I never climb multipitch (sport, trad or alpine) with anyone whose abilities I am not familiar with and that makes things less complicated. It's easy to just spend a session with them at the gym or at a sport crag and then you have an idea of what to expect, more or less.

Thanks! That's what I thought, but not sure.

This is an old thread, but meaningful, so i thought i might bump it.

Recently I tried to do a remote climb (canoe approach, long scree field, very rarely traveled). We slept poorly in hammocks in cold weather, and despite a dry forecast got soaked (mountain weather). Any rescue there would have been embarrassing, expensive, and definitely time consuming if possible at all.

When evaluating the first pitch of the route my partner, despite the two of us having hauled up a mountain of gear, couldn't be talked out of ascending the first pitch to 'take a look' in hiking shoes without a helmet. This was 5.easy climbing, but we were well exposed (50m up over the scree, plus it was loose) and I couldn't even watch him free solo it. My head was really not in the climb after the bad rest and this interaction.

After bailing the climb, he threw his helmet in his pack while we had 1.5 hours of hiking left on goddawful loose and steep crap. I actually took a digger at the bottom and got pretty hurt when a boulder shifted and i was sent flying down a pile of rocks through trees.

Does anyone have any tips about how to get more aligned with a partner? I broached the subject in the car and he thought we had good communication, but I didn't feel the same way since my concerns weren't respected. I probably have till next summer to think about solving this issue as the weather window is closing, but it doesn't seem to bode well for the partnership either if we simply have different risk tolerances. 

It is also making me question alpine a bit, if I am too soft to shiver awake a whole night and be expected to perform the next day, but I am hoping better prep can solve some of that... in another thread.

My backcountry and alpine climbing career objective success rate is probably less than 50%. That means half the time we either bailed early off the climb or more often, never set foot on the climb at all. A lot of this experience was with tried and true partners. Each of us, me and my friends, we had our good days and we had our snail-eye days. And on some days we ruled the wastelands and owned our route and our destiny.

Yes, different partners for different objectives. Sometimes they are the weak link, more often it was probably me. 

A tough night's "sleep" before a big objective should be expected, in my experience and opinion anyway. The bigger the objective and the more hazardous the approach, the less sleep I got and the raunchier I felt at Showtime. Many mornings included a good old fashioned bile-puke on the way to the base of the climb. 2 lessons that really stuck with me:

1. Sort out your partner dynamics ahead of time. 

2. Don't stop moving forward toward your objective until something stops you. Always be willing to "take a look" at the next bit. If you keep doing that you'll end up on the top of your objective more often.

Now don't be foolish, obviously. What stops you may be the serious threat of inclement weather, for example. So you still have to know when to throw in the towel. Just try not to let yourself or your partner throw it in simply for the snail eye. There has to be a reason! A real reason, to turn back. And sometimes "I'm too scared" will be reason enough, perhaps many times! That's ok. Messner got scared too. Peter Croft backed off many a solo. 

Know when to say when, but dare to push yourself too. 

Lastly, when it comes to bold partners, there's a fine line between bold and foolhardy, calculated risk and recklessness. Running down a loose scree pile once set one of my partners off on a tirade of acceptable risk lectures, right there mid-descent. He did not appreciate the needless risk I was adding on to myself and him and he let me know about it in no uncertain terms. (this was the morning after an unplanned open bivi at altitude, so he had ample reason to be crabby haha). We went on to do many more back country routes together, ever tightening our relationship and success ratio.

You can't insist on molding your partner's risk tolerance to your own, nor vice versa. The trick is to select objectives that work for you both, and then, assuming its a big ojective, insist from yourself that you take it one step at a time and you don't turn back unless something ligit stops you. 

This is a great topic; it doesn't get enough discussion in my opinion. 

With my closest climbing partners (who I now see once a year or less), we knew each others risk tolerances so well that we could anticipate when the other might need a rope, and we were comfortable enough with each other that we pushed each other to take risks. Most of these partners were college classmates, so we lived together or in close community 24/7. They were climbing partners, but also drinking partners and buildering partners. Mostly we learned each others ask tolerances through buildering, then we knew what to expect at the crag the next morning. During this time I did a lot of climbing by myself, but also a lot of climbing with about 6-8 others. For me, I had lots of opportunity when I could completely follow my risk tolerances (and go free soloing), so I was totally willing to come to a happy compromise on the days I was with partners. Additionally, most of my time with partners was cragging, which is the environment most suited to mismatched risk tolerances.

Now in real life, I don't have that type of close community to draw from for partners. Mostly I rope solo. Partners can be great, but partners are also a liability, as shown by the experiences in this thread.

My biggest fear around (unforeseen) mismatched risk tolerances is that there is either no way to protect the climber who wants it, or that doing so will inadvertently endanger the team. I was briefly put in the position of being roped up with a new partner with no gear in the rock at the top of Snake Dike. I met a guy the day prior, and I decided it would be more relaxed to climb with him than solo. If it was up to me I would've used the rope up to getting on the dike, then put it away. I figured we would put it away when we hit 4th class slabs. He wanted the rope. I ran it out 70 m and belayed. I was on 3rd class. He still wanted rope. I ran it out again, but had trouble finding a good anchor. I was fiddling with some gear, distracted by the realization that we needed to pick up the pace to get up and down. Before a had anything clipped to the rope, I see my partner walking up the slab towards me. On one hand we were on terrain that we could walk on, but with 70 m of rope piled up between us an unchecked slip would kill us both. I would rather have not been in that position, and I was frustrated by it because in trying to cater to the unrealistic risk tolerance of my partner, I ended up tied to a rope when I otherwise would not be, then my partner changed plan which greatly increased the risks to me, and ironically, my partner as well.

Back in the late 1990's I was involved in a number of rescues some of which had nothing to do with me and my partner and a few of which had to do with my partners. I'm a lot more risk-averse since then. although up until this year I have climbed with a number of new partners every year. I no longer climb with anybody who I consider to be a liability. When I first meet a new partner I almost exclusively go sport climbing unless they are someone who I've seen around for years. But everybody has their own level of acceptable risk. But when  heading out for bigger Adventures I think it's critical for both people to be on the same page.

Start communicating earlier. Days before, the car ride there, the hike in, earlier the better. Ask them to take a look at the topo with you and discuss how you'll climb it. If they say "We don't need to, we'll figure it out" then you have your answer right there.

If you believe something should happen (ex: "we can scramble the first pitch, then rope up" or "we can rappel here instead of downclimb") communicate that and let them respond. Ask for their input.

If they don't have the confidence/experience to tell you what they expect to do in a situation, then you both should evaluate being on that route. If you two still want to make it happen, you have to take charge and make the safe decisions. There's a reason the person on the sharp end (up and down) is called the Leader.

Remember that in every partnership, you should be the one carrying the off-belay knife

The most common source of disagreement for me in the past year has been simul climbing. Sometimes I've been the one who wants to do it, sometimes the one who wants a belay, but this in my mind is one of the more consequential decisions where people's varying tolerances for risk lead to differing preferences, and it can be hard to plan for as people can't always predict how freaked they'll be until they are up there.

Funny this got resurrected. As I've been on and off from climbing due to getting divorced (not on account of risk aversion), ive always found that my headspace has mostly stayed the same after many years. Lots of folks here with more years under their belt, but mine still exceeds a decade. 

The point somewhere back about pairing abilities is fair, and at the extreme end very important. Would I take my novice girlfriend out for something well under her abilities, no. Hell no. Would I take a 2 year guy out that is yearning for big adventure, absolutely. But I'm in charge. That has to be part of this equation, when there is an imbalance in skill level and experience. Someone has to be in the lead and direct the team, and likely be a little more conservative of what you ask from your partner. 

With more evenly matched pairs (which is likely more preferable), that burden can be more evenly split and carried between the two when it comes to assessing risk. End of story, you have to spend time with someone to know if you'll trust them. 

I wss lucky once to pick up a partner here for Red Rocks, and Dan was flat out one of the best giys I've climbed with in a long time. We clicked, synced, and were able to communicate and boogie quickly. I doubt that's the norm, but I knew where I stood as a confident and experienced climber, and was able to assess him. I suspect he did the same of me.

An important side note, its important to be empathetic to your partners if they just aren't feeling it that day and their risk tolerance is lower than normal. The worst thing you can do is talk someone into being uncomfortable in a way that makes the situation dangerous. I liked the comment previously about "lets just check out the next bit and see". It could help ease a worried partner. But a "we're climbing this regardless of your feelings" attitude could be a huge problem. Leave the egos at home when safety is legitimately on the line.

I'd recommend caution in writing off fourth class as never needing a rope. Didn't a young world class boulderer just die just from slipping on some rocks during an approach recently? Easy terrain claims way more lives than people realize. 

Whisk3rzz 1 wrote:

I'd recommend caution in writing off fourth class as never needing a rope. Didn't a young world class boulderer just die just from slipping on some rocks during an approach recently? Easy terrain claims way more lives than people realize. 

World class "boulderer", not world class mountaineer. If you need to rope on 4th class in the mountains you're never going to summit.

That's a interesting topic.
95% of the time I m doing someting committing I would do it with my usual partner (which happened to be a woman).
We have more or less the same level technique-wise, I would say she is slightly more risk-averse than I am but always cool with me doing what I feel is fine for me (soloing, climbing certain pitches etc...) and I respect her boundaries as well. The fact that she has kids and I don't may be a big factor I m guessing. 

Last weekend I was doing an easy (AD+) mountaineering ridge with a new partner and, the day before, I realized I had to have a serious conversation with him about what he was or wasn't ok with. 

I quickly realized I had questions I wouldn't normally have with my regular partner, since we are so used to each other and know each other so well, such as:
- Are you ok to solo the beginning of the route?
- Are you ok to simul climb some part of the route? Up to which grade?
- What would make you uncomfortable? Are we both sure we can communicate honestly and with no drama?
- How do you fell about down climbing Vs. rappels? which level are you ok to down climb ?
- Ok to swap lead or you expect me to lead everything or you want to lead everything or you want me to lead the crux etc...
- Are you ok to climb everything with approach shoes? if you re not, are you ok if I don't take my climbing shoes as a back up ?
- How often do you need breaks? Do you want to do a proper lunch break?
- Climbing pace ? Anchor techniques you re confortable with ? etc etc...

Of course, I also had to give him my answers to those questions. 

That's questions I m not asking myself or the other person when I climb with my regular and this time it was alright talking about that with him but I can see how it could lead to awkward discussions. 

My take on this is to stay well below your comforte zone when going outdoor with people you don't know that much and keep the committing stuff for someone else you are used to and that is used to you. 

Edit: on the other end I have two friends which are super strong climbers (winter mountaineering ED+, WI7, M6, dry tooling overhang, climbing 7a trad and 6b trad with boots etc...) they asked me repeatedly to join them and, so far, I always declined knowing that, technically I ll be a burden and a fish out of its pond but also that they are far more comfortable with risks than I am. 

W K wrote:

Remember that in every partnership, you should be the one carrying the off-belay knife

definitively the key takeaway from "Vertical Limit" 

 

IMO, the hardest situation is a group expedition, in which you don't know everyone.  If you're the lone dissenter, the peer pressure can really be there. I once left a Shasta ski mtneering trip under such a scene. The cavalier attitude towards avalanche risk on a steep slope, in a heavy storm, by supposedly experienced folks, was a total shock. Had another bad experience with that group, and that was the screeching end of that.

Pierre Proulx wrote:

definitively the key takeaway from "Vertical Limit" 

 

It's real shit. That footage was taken from Castleton tower on a Saturday

I've really enjoyed reading the responses in this thread so thanks for bumping it. 

Last summer while on a shorter multipitch climb I was just mentally and physically beat on my lead of pitch 2 (the money pitch).  I just really wasn't feeling up to it.  I knew I was beat, I had been climbing 15 days in a row or something stupid, and when I got there and looked at the pitch I just shook my head.  When I asked my partner if he wanted the lead he was amazing.  First encouraging, then double checked to make sure I was okay to continue if he led, and then double checked to make sure I really didn't want the lead.  The biggest thing to me though, was that instead of being frustrated or disappointed, he presented himself as being stoked he got to lead the good pitch.  This isn't a hugely important moment in my time climbing, but watching him find the balance between encouragement, checking in, and staying positive even though I was absolutely weighing us down was a bit eye opening.  I began to think about times when I hadn't handled situations like that as gracefully and became very thankful that he was climbing partner. 

This isn't really on topic or off topic, but I've thought about that sort of mentorship even in fully symbiotic climbing relationships where you don't think of yourself as a mentor or mentee.  It was a learning moment I'm super glad to have had and I think that finding those moments is important in deciding what you are comfortable accomplishing with a partner.  I think in a great partnership both climbers are willing to change based on things they see in their partner.  The worst climbing partner relationships I've had were't the ones where we were way off in strength or experience, it's been the ones where the feedback loop isn't there.