Potential Disaster Averted - I hope! Beginners please read.

Hey John your comment kind of pisses me off - my partner and I most certainly did not step in and correct these guys for selfish reasons about access or to feel better about our actions. We took the time to assess a potentially unsafe situation and correct these guys to keep them from hurting themselves. While we won't be there the next time it was our hope they will take our advice and get more instructions or at least practice the little we showed them.

Looking out for one another in climbing is what we should be doing and not with a "whats in it for me attitude". So please refrain from judging a situation in which you were not directly involved.

My reason for posting this in the first place was to start a conversation about what the climbing community needs to do to address the issue of more and more people showing up to climb that have little to zero training or experience. I should have titled it differently but then again MP is probably not the site for this discussion.

I called these guys out for another reason. I've participated in 1 too many rescues, I was 2nd on the scene where this guy grounded out from 40 ft., the WFR and EMT asked me to stabilize his neck and head while they cleared his airway and began CPR. As a PT as soon as I placed my hands around his neck, I was 95% certain he had a high cervical fracture. For the next 45 minutes my wife (she was right behind me) and I looked into this guys eyes encouraging him to stay with us. He is now a high level Quadriplegic. When someone clearly does not know what they are doing I will speak up with the hope of avoiding them getting hurt. And it has nothing to do with maintaing access or feeling good aout myself. You might want to look into Buddhist ideas about non-self if you think everyone acts for their own benefit.

Burn.

Peter D. wrote:Hey John your comment kind of pisses me off -

Good. Challenges to our unexamined beliefs and the resulting introspection is good for a body.

Peter D. wrote:my partner and I most certainly did not step in and correct these guys for selfish reasons about access or to feel better about our actions.

Really? Not wanting to participate in a rescue is selfish. (Been there, done that.) "Looking out for one another" is also selfish. Why? Because there may be a time when you'll be the one needing help. And ask yourself this, "How would I feel if I just walked away, and these guys got hurt/killed?" Would you feel good? I doubt it, so selfish again.

Personally, I don't equate "selfish" with "bad". You seem to.

Peter D. wrote:You might want to look into Buddhist ideas about non-self if you think everyone acts for their own benefit.

As a counterpoint, you might study evolution.

Jake Jones wrote: My point is this- I understand both sides. The more callous (for lack of a better word, because it's a somewhat justified perspective IMO) side of things- holding people responsible for their own actions and level of competency and lack thereof, and also the side that steps in if something is wrong- regardless of motive. After all, I think if trying to keep a crag open by preventing injuries is selfish, then how bad can being selfish be?

Well said, Jake.

Selfishness is evolution personified. Humans live in societies because it increases an individual's chances of survival; someone helps us when we need it. As a member of society, you are obliged to help others.

Problems occur when mainstream society (land managers) deems the behaviors of a subgroup (climbers) too risky. Why? Because they are obliged to help that subgroup "too often" and the benefit/obligation ratio gets unbalanced (or is perceived to be unbalanced). That's society, as an organization or entity, being selfish.

So as I tried to imply in my first post, there's no clear answer, and rational comparisons (driving vs. climbing) are lacking. We want to be allowed to climb, but we want to be rescued if we fuck up, and we don't want to spend our time and resources rescuing other people. Much easier to teach 'em. Here's a doughnut.

You mean to tell me none of you guys go to bruise brothers, practice wall, or land before time wall on your rest days just to watch the shit show go down? It's quite entertaining, grab a 6 pack and watch it all play out. Seriously though muir is the perfect storm for gumbies, high concentration of easy climbs with easy access and everyone recommends it to beginners. I was a first responder on an injury at bruise brothers a couple years ago because the victim saw a mouse, got scared, and let go clipping the second bolt... I feel bad for the guides down there, I helped them out one day, we went to practice wall to teach a gym group how to lead and clean and I felt like I became a guide for everyone at the crag just to avoid having to rescue people. People would be better off if they just ponied up and hired a guide their first time out.

DrRockso wrote:You mean to tell me none of you guys go to bruise brothers, practice wall, or land before time wall on your rest days just to watch the shit show go down? It's quite entertaining, grab a 6 pack and watch it all play out. Seriously though muir is the perfect storm for gumbies, high concentration of easy climbs with easy access and everyone recommends it to beginners. I was a first responder on an injury at bruise brothers a couple years ago because the victim saw a mouse, got scared, and let go clipping the second bolt... I feel bad for the guides down there, I helped them out one day, we went to practice wall to teach a gym group how to lead and clean and I felt like I became a guide for everyone at the crag just to avoid having to rescue people. People would be better off if they just ponied up and hired a guide their first time out.

Agreed. I also feel bad for the owners, because Rick and Liz Weber are the kindest most generous people.

I ponied up the dough and hired a guide the first two times I climbed outside, and the first time I climbed a multipitch. Coincidentally, on my first climb the guide took me to Bruise brothers. In addition, instead of having friends teach me how to belay, lead, and lead belay, I paid for classes, that way I knew I would be getting solid instruction.

Since then, I've always wondered how guides made money since no one wants to spend money to hire a guide. But I did my part.

Christiney wrote:... I've always wondered how guides made money since no one wants to spend money to hire a guide.

I understand if people have no money, but most of the novice climbers I see could afford to pony up for a guide for a day or two. I don't understand the aversion. Maybe it's because I'm a professor, but the idea of paying a professional for some instruction before doing something with serious consequences seems pretty sensible to me. Tuition does get paid, one way or another...

Lee Green wrote: I understand if people have no money, but most of the novice climbers I see could afford to pony up for a guide for a day or two. I don't understand the aversion. Maybe it's because I'm a professor, but the idea of paying a professional for some instruction before doing something with serious consequences seems pretty sensible to me. Tuition does get paid, one way or another...

It's like avalanche safety. People wearing and riding thousands of dollars worth of gear in the back country that won't pony up $250 for their avy I class. The secondary part is that if you are going to skip training you need to be sure to study your butt off.

at least one of the guys involved said he had hired a guide, sure didn't leanr much iof he did, so.....I don't know.

My partner also thought they might have been on something.

taking a lesson from a guide doesnt mean a thing if you dont practice these skills over and over again ...

ive seen folks who took a course years ago, never practiced, and couldnt do it confidently and safely when it counted

its easy to practice basic skills at home, just set up 2 bolt + quicklinks hangers on your wall or fence post ... do it a hundred times and youll be fine

i see folks all the time trying to do "advanced" stuff without mastering the basics first ... like jump on multi without being practiced on anchors, learn self rescue without being able to master belaying/rapping first, etc ...

you dont need to know a lot of skills when you climb ... but you better have the necessary ones practiced over and over again till you can do em in your sleep

zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

;)

Let's not forget the fact that if you do get sucked into a rescue, it can be very dangerous for you, and this could understandably be motivation to walk away from a situation that seems to have bad potential. Sure you want to do the right thing, but may not want to risk your life or your good health to save folks from their own stupidity. I say this as someone who has done some rescues, one of two or which were very risky for me, and who has also taken one look at a situation and said, "I'm outta here."

As for offering advice, most of us who have done so have encountered a spectrum of responses from grateful to hostile. A lot of time I've gotten a very cold "yeah, thanks" that makes it clear no one has any intention of listening to anything I suggested, and after a while there is, I think, a natural tendency not to bother trying.

Of course, it matters how you come off when you try to help, because if you make people defensive, they are less likely to hear anything you've suggested. Sometimes an incompetent party consists of folks who just don't know anything led by someone who thinks they know a lot more than they do. Calling out the "leader" in front of his or her troops is almost guaranteed to be an exercise in futility. If at all possible, get the "leader" aside out of earshot and make the suggestions in a way that allows them to save face.

Having said all this, the fact of the matter is that climbing is dangerous and people new to it are at increased risk. I know several highly experienced really good climbers who started by soloing things. I know someone who, after having been top-roped up a 5.4 for his very first climb ever, was instructed to untie and solo the remaining 30--40 feet of 5.0 ground to the top, and he did it because the "expert" who had taken him out told him to do it. I know people who started with a rope from a hardware store just a little better than clothesline, which they threaded around things, sometimes untying it and retying it, for "protection." I myself mostly learned from books, some of which, from a modern perspective, had the most ridiculously wrong information in them. None of us knew the first thing about what is now called self-rescue, this at a time when we were no longer "inexperienced" and were climbing things like the North Face of the Grand Teton. (And indeed, there was a tragic fatal accident in the Tetons during my early years that would nowadays be considered a standard self-rescue exercise.) I could go on and on. The one thing I will say is that we sucked up information like sponges from anyone experienced who would take the time to talk to us---they didn't get any attitude back from us.

What I'm saying is that ignorance and stupidity (from the perspective of experience) has been a feature of new climbers from the dawn of the activity, and is not some new phenomenon entirely caused by gyms, although the gym atmosphere has almost certainly made things a lot worse. And although I appreciate where John Byrnes is coming from (see paragraph 1), I also think beginners evolve and that the stupidity, rather than necessarily remaining constant, gives way to something more like wisdom if the folks in question, perhaps with a little help, manage to survive their beginnings.