A rock climber who fell hundreds of feet descending a steep gully in Washington’s North Cascades mountains survived the fall that killed his three companions, hiked to his car in the dark and then drove to a pay phone to call for help, authorities said Tuesday.
The surviving climber, Anton Tselykh, 38, extricated himself from a tangle of ropes, helmets and other equipment after the fall Saturday evening. Despite suffering internal bleeding and head trauma, Tselykh eventually, over at least a dozen hours, made the trek to the pay phone, Okanogan County Undersheriff Dave Yarnell said.
The climbers who were killed were Vishnu Irigireddy, 48, Tim Nguyen, 63, Oleksander Martynenko, 36, Okanogan County Coroner Dave Rodriguez said.
How is climbing so safe, when you can slip, equipment can fail, weather could bring additional risk, a rock can fail under you and so on?
Training, decent modern equipment, understanding and managing risk, gear redundancy, and wear a frickin’ helmet (esp. when belaying).
Yeah, there are some yahoos, but there’re also people who drop dead playing table-tennis.
Any of that can happen just by stepping outside of your house.
With the same level of probability?
I have no idea how to begin measuring that.
If they can measure force in Newtons I see no reason we couldn’t measure danger in Napoleons. Let’s say Napoleon was responsible for 4 million deaths in Europe, that would mean the annual US traffic fatalities of around 40,000 would be 1 Centinapoleon.
Hope that clears things up.
Life is dangerous. Seriously, you can easily slip, fall, and die in your bathroom.
Statistics are how we determine how risky an activity is. Mountaineering and rock climbing are statistically safer than driving. Yes, driving is dangerous, but nobody says shit about not having compassion for those who die because they take a road trip.
All of those risks you mention associated with climbing exist, but you’re dramatically overestimating how common they are
You’re not wrong but we need to ban travel to mountains based solely on tire pollution alone. It’s not our right to destroy all these areas the way we do