UKC

Where do you draw the line between pushing yourself and needlessly putting yourself at risk of injury?

There's a lot of hype in climbing about expanding the limits of what you think you can do and challenging yourself. I am interested in how people reconcile this with a consideration of the risks involved. For example, would it be silly to try and push a grade on a highball boulder, where it is fairly likely you will fall - and might sprain/break an ankle? I'm speaking of attempting climbs which seem above your ability level, and have some risk involved. This seems like the kind of question that might divide opinion, as a large part of it comes down to personality. 

I wonder how progression can be made without taking some risks. When would you say pushing yourself becomes silly? 

Are you specifically talking about bouldering? 

I was thinking about highball bouldering. But could apply to climbing in general - in the sense of attempting climbs which seem above your ability level, and have some risk involved. 

I go climbing every weekend. 

I attempt to manage my level of risk so that I can continue to do this indefinitely - no groundfalls, rare falls from moderate highballs. I'll occasionally do quite serious routes if I am certain they are within my ability.

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If the likelihood of walking away from the route uninjured is anything other than high it's not worthwhile for me. That is built up from the likelihood of me falling off and the consequences of me falling off.

So climbing a highball boulder problem where there are tenuous moves low down plus easy climbing up high is relatively justifiable for me, while doing something with the crux at the top wouldn't be if I didn't have a well arranged set of pads and some spotters.

My point is that it's a really personal choice which will vary on a day to day basis and depends on loads of different factors.

 Just do lots of climbing. Safely. Use your common sense. Eventually you will build up a working sense of the risks involved and the possible outcomes and consequences.

Yeah absolutely. I've got a fairly high risk appetite - on trad I like climbing stuff that's fairly easy with terrible consequences of falling, and soloing, and I like highball bouldering - I've never hurt myself doing any of this. There are ways to reduce the risk, basically by knowing at what point it becomes dangerous and only committing to those moves when you know it's unlikely you'll fall off. Slapping wildly for a non-existent hold 6m above a shit landing is pretty stupid; but gently creeping up to explore the holds, then reversing into a controlled jump-off onto a couple of pads might be quite safe.

Life is risky. When you drive a car, you mitigate the risk of death (and the life-changing horror of killing someone's kid) with competence. You do something similar in climbing. Make sure that your competence is sufficient to mitigate the risks involved.

When your competence doesn't mitigate the risk!

Yes. I guess it's tricky to know to what extent your competence does mitigate the risk though, especially if you are continually improving. 

Hate to say it but you answered your own question in the OP.

I'm interested in hearing other people's opinions.

I think you’ve identified the essence of climbing. Isn’t it easy enough to identify the consequences of failure, which is highly dependent on how far off the ground you are, how easy is is to continue to safety and what the landing is like?

I think you get tuned into it with experience. Although on paper my risk appetite is high, I would never push into unknown territory where there might be a big risk of falling coming up. I'm happy to suck up the low-probability risks like a hold magically exploding or a seagull dive-bombing me off the crag, but I won't get myself into a position where I'm totally committed to moves that I might fall off, if the consequences are bad.

You can't tell this stuff just from the grades. If you're highballing, work out where the crux is, and what the consequences of falling are. Put the pads in the right place. If you think you could fall and hurt yourself, don't commit. If you think you could fall and be fine, commit (easier said than done). Once you've committed, press on and hope you weren't wrong about where the crux was.

Sounds sensible. Thanks! 

There are loads of ways to push yourself safely. Sport climbing, low boulders, crack climbs (see Recovery Drink; well protected 8b+ climbing on trad). 

If you're worried about risks then I wouldn't bother with the bold stuff anyway. It catches up with a lot of people eventually, and they either eat shit or dial it right back. 

If the objective is to push your grade, there are plenty of suitably safe ways to do that.

If the objective is to challenge yourself, and the challenge you set appears to involve reasonable risk of injury, then you need to ask yourself why you have chosen that challenge. What is it that you're hoping to gain from overcoming that combination of difficulty and danger? In any case, a core part of such a challenge is risk management and you personally must balance any residual risk (once you've considered steps to reduce them, such as pads, beta, practice, specific training, etc.) against expected rewards (ideally personal fulfilment but there are plenty of temptations for sponsored or indeed any climbers in our social media obsessed world.)

In my view 'progression' should not be expected to involve greater risk, but it may well involve greater potential danger alongside better performance and/or better risk management.

In reply to NERD:

I have to say I loved soloing that. Just beautiful.

Jim Perrin wrote an article years ago about soloing it with Nat Allen and it really stuck in my mind so the first time I went to stanage I soloed it too. It didn't disappoint.

In reply to NERD:

Mitigating risks is all relative, soloing VS is pretty easy for some climbers with years of experience, i walked up to it knowing nothing about it, other than the fact it was VS it was a pleasant casual solo, but thats me, i have always been fairly bold, from years spent winter climbing, whats bold and sketchy for one person is steady for another.

As to highballing the Art when it gets above a certain height is have a serious trad head on and don't fall off, highballing above a mountain of pads, is just not practical for most people, unless you are with a massive group or a sponsored hero that still doesn't mean you won't miss the pads and break an ankle.

I'm really new to climbing, however, soloing is tempting. Still, there is that voice of reason in my head telling me "it's not time yet" Usually, I know when to abort and my head runs hundreds of scenarios of "what could possibly go wrong?". I know that it's also a mental block from progressing but at my age and all the responsibilities I have I'd rather keep that block with me.

However, I have a friend (not a part of our crew anymore exactly due to his recklessness). He's even newer to climbing but seems to have no sense of fear. Sometimes, I just expect that we will need to make a stop in A&E. What he does is pure recklessnes. If all people tell him "don't do it" and he does it, barelly sticking to the rock, all muscles shaking and he keeps pushing then, well, I'm just waiting for the worst that may happen. So far he was lucky and now he stepped back. Recklessness had more faces in this case. One thing not caring about own life but risking other people's lives... When he was supposed to be my spotter suddenly he disappeared. Just got bored spotting. I looked down, no crash pad and no spotter. Magic!

For me, pushing myself is important, but I'm always trying to think a few steps ahead assessing potential risk. There is no fun for me in being seriously injured. Sure, I would like to be able to solo one day like some other users who replied here, but some responsibilities will always take a priority over that.

“When he was supposed to be my spotter suddenly he disappeared. Just got bored spotting. I looked down, no crash pad and no spotter.“

Did you thump him? 

I hope you shouted at him. There's subjective ways of being crap, and there's doing things like that.

It's about the type of risk as well imo.  Risking getting into the unknown unknowns territory here but there are risks you can assess accurately based on your experience and those you can't. 

If you can accurately assess the risk, you've more "justification" for want of a better word to push your limits.  If you can't assess the risk then you need to wind it in. 

An obvious example - if you're a good slab climber you can likely assess well the difficulty, risk and consequence of a slabby route and hence have a narrow margin of safety, but if you've always avoided roofs / overhangs then likely you can't assess the risk as accurately so need a wider margin of safety and vice versa.

Cheers,

Stu