UKC

In the thread on those choosing to not climb, GrahamD said:

'Per participant, I bet it [the proportion of climbers ending up preventably in hospital] won't be insignificant.'

I've always wondered about the actual numbers when it comes to climbing accidents in the UK, because I don't think I've ever seen them. Anecdotally, in ten years of regular climbing, I've only ever witnessed (the aftermath of) one serious accident - or accident at all, come to think of it. I've always had the belief that rock climbing on outcrops and in the UK hills is actually really quite safe - or certainly can be if you choose your routes well and understand your capabilities.

The coronavirus climbing threads make me realise that this clearly isn't a universally-held belief. Does anyone have any numbers to hand for participation, accidents, etc?

(I realise that I could Google - but I figure someone might already have an answer that doesn't require trawling through and collating the information from however many different websites.)

We have poorer stats than the US... but this might give a flavour (although written for a different purpose, the rates can be deduced):

http://www.bluebison.net/yosar/alive.htm

The BMC paper which got submitted to various government bodies ahead of the lockdown mentioned the number of climbing related mountain rescue call outs in the last year for which info is available. It was something like 50-60 in England and Wales. I don't know if that would have included cliff rescue in places like the Wye Valley and presumably it didn't include Coastguard call outs which don't involve mountain rescue. Still probably somewhat less than 100 serious accidents in a year in England and Wales. That's not a lot. Of course there would be more minor accidents (walking wounded) but most of these won't burden the NHS to any significant extent.   

It doesn't really answer your question but if you look at the recent callouts from any mountain rescue unit in the country you will realise that for every 1 climbing accident there are 20 callouts for walkers/hikers/lost city dwellers who have gotten themselves into trouble. 

Obviously this doesn't make life any better for mountain rescue or the NHS. But if you're not climbing because you're worried about straining public services you should probably be telling your elderly parents/navigational challenged friends to also stay off the hills and stop heading to the national parks for their walks. Those are the real strain, not us. 

I suspect that accidents involving MR call-out are only a small proportion of all accidents. The walking wounded tend to take care of themselves or simply need an ambulance, but still end up in hospital.

I agree that climbing accidents in the UK won't burden the NHS significantly. I watched a TV show last night on the Merseyside ambulance service. The programme offered a snapshot of the daily pressures in the control room and on the streets. Last night's focus was the evening shift of St Patrick's day in Liverpool.

What got my attention was that the control room took (and the crews answered) ca. 250 calls in the first 30-mins or so. By comparison, the proportion of climbers ending up in hospital with preventable injuries does seem insignificant. 

However, anecdotally, serious accidents are expensive. I was once air lifted to the Royal Melbourne in Australia after a cycling fall. The ambulance/helicopter alone cost in excess of $7000. Thankfully I had insurance cover* (most people living in Australia do).

*Obviously, we pay for health cover in the UK too, through NI contributions.  

I based my 'claim' both on knowing enough people who have had hospital treatment (at least half a dozen off the top of my head, I don't  think any of them were part of MRT call out either because their partner shipped them to A and E or the ambulance was able to get to them) but, probably more significantly, on the fact that my all sports cover insurance puts it in the same risk category as off piste skiing.

Somewhere in the vast region of middling risk, in other words - but definitely not low risk.

I've been walking wounded in casualty with suspected broken wrists twice - both from bouldering in the days before mats, so I haven't affected the stats for this decade/century/millennium

Many years ago I was involved in the rescue of two climbers on Pavey Ark. We had been climbing ourselves and whilst descending via Jack's Rake, heard their cries for help. It involved a significant fall and one casualty that had to airlifted to hospital with a broken pelvis and another that was able to walk off the hill. I have a copy of the annual report of the mountain rescue team from that year and from memory, the team attended around 60 call outs, including two or three fatalities. The call outs were a combination of assisting the ambulance service with access, slips or falls by walkers or searching for people who were lost. Only one related to a rock climbing incident, the rescue I was involved in.

I appreciate that this is just one (popular) area of the lakes and just one year, but it surprised me at the time how rare the rescue of climbers rather than walkers was.

I have been in the Pembroke coastguard team for 6 or 7 years now. Last year we had I think 2 climbing callouts - one broken ankle and one possible concussion. That's a pretty typical year. There has been one climbing fatality while I have been a member.

One thing that I have noticed is that the climbing callouts almost invariably involve a runner which has failed.

I'm sorry Graham - I didn't mean to sound like I was casting aspersions on what you said. Claim seemed like the natural word for a statement without corroborating evidence immediatey to hand. I don't mean to imply that I don't believe you!

Some data here https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/20632737/

Apology totally unnecessary- I think it's a useful debate which deserves discussion. 

My personal gripe is that dangers inherent in any pastime are too easily dismissed as negligible (and maybe to that individual,  they are) but when aggregated across all the mid risk activities and across the whole population they are not a negligible load on emergency services. 

I assume the BMC 'Near-miss and incidents reporting system' could help generate some stats, although this isn't its main purpose. Furthermore, having had a quick scan of the entries, I can think of several serious incidents that aren't logged, including some high-profile ones.

I agree but those will be relatively minor injuries. You aren’t going to be walking out with a broken leg or major spinal injury. 

You may be right to some extent but what’s the solution - stop climbing? As well as all other adventure and contact sports. Or do we just accept that accidents will happen and as long as there aren’t many of them it’s not really an issue?

Yes, there is a certain demand on emergency services as a result of various sports but that’s what we have the emergency services for - to deal with emergencies. Clearly we should do our best to avoid accidents (for many reasons) but sometimes accidents will happen and that’s why we pay taxes which fund the emergency services among other things. Just in case things go wrong. I’m not being flippant - we should all take care and frankly some people are accidents waiting to happen who shouldn’t be out. But I don’t think it’s the case that we can’t go climbing or whatever else because accidents might happen. 

The fundamental problem with your OP is that you are trying to quantify risk in an activity where the risk profile is so individual dependent that an average overall profile is near meaningless - new routing ground up on a chossy sea cliff on a remote uninhabited island is just completely different compared to making the 100th repeat of a well protected classic on a short, roadside, inland crag.

In personal terms, I've had a couple of occasions on big mountains in Europe where I've felt about 1 lemon away from being completely stuck and having to await rescue and once where I had to scramble out and get help for a partner. In cragging terms, 3 accidents that have involved emergency response, perhaps surprisingly only one of these was at what you might think of as a high-risk venue but interestingly, all 3 were because of loose rock (and for your stats, 1 was in Scotland, 1 in Sicilly and 1 in Australia).

You did get me thinking about why it is that I can't recall being at a crag when another party needed an emergency callout... I think it might be because I am so often climbing at crags where nobody else is there.

In terms of people I know, I do know a few people who have had serious injuries from climbing accidents. It's very hard to put numbers on these things but I think I would estimate that 90 to 95% of the climbers I have known have not, to my knowledge had a serious injury at the crag. (the percentage drops a bit if you include overtraining injuries and indoor wall injuries).

Edit: Oh, just remembered being tangentially involved in an accident in spain where someone else from the group of the guy I was climbing with was helicoptered off, they were not at the same crag as us at the time though.

In better times,  obviously climbing is something we all love, and we all make our own call on acceptable risk/reward.  I've come to the conclusion that mixed Alpine is something too risky, for instance (although I'll admit that older knees and ankles also played a part. 

Right now ? I know our opinions differ on this.  I don't have an issue with being out climbing per se.  If I had a crag within cycling distance of home I'd have done it.  Im mighty envious of those that do.  Hell I might even have invested in a bouldering mat.

What I don't accept is that its OK to drive the length and breadth of the country to do it.  I know from other threads that you see no difference between long and short journeys whereas I see the aggregated risk from everyone back on the roads and inevitably increasing contact as avoidable and unacceptable. 

It's easy to have a go at the hoards on Blackpool beach but in our own way, climbers are exhibiting exactly this sort of behaviour.

It’s a question of balance. Crowds on a beach or any kind of gathering in a group are not sensible right now. Outdoor BBQs etc in a group of up to six are permitted but, if asked, I would politely decline. Wandering around Birmingham on my daily walks, I sometimes see small groups of people ignoring the rules. Understandable but hardly sensible. I’m working from home, going out of the flat only once a day and being obsessive about hand hygiene.

In that context, I think driving somewhere to go climbing is ok, as long as you don’t lift share with non household members. It’s not feasible to drive too far anyway as you can only do day trips (even though I have a camper van, I think it’s important to respect that rule). Furthest I’ve been so far is 75 miles and my nearest crag (which I would actually want to climb on) is 60 miles and just over an hour away. Appreciate that not everyone lives within easy reach of climbing (whereas some people live a lot closer).

I do admire your self-discipline though.

I think there is going to be a much bigger question mark over climbing walls reopening. It’s not going to be for another month at least and we’ll have to see whether R and the level of infection have reduced much further by then. Also depends what Covid safe measures will be put in place. I can walk to the climbing wall but would see the risk of transmission as much higher compared to driving to the crag to climb with one other person. However if there will be a cap on numbers and people wash / sterilise their hands before and after, perhaps it will be an acceptable level of risk. I think it will be manageable, especially with a lower level of infection by then, particularly in areas of the country where infection rates are relatively low anyway, but we’ll have to wait and see.

I've spent the best part of two decades trying to find good data on the risks of climbing and mountaineering. It doesn't really exist however there are some rough comparisons that can be made. 

The mortality risk from UK rock climbing is on average probably no higher than any of the other most common mortality risks from life in general (road traffic collisions, homicide/suicide) and other activities such as scuba diving, air sports, cycling, equestrianism etc.. As such, the risk is probably lower than both many participants and non-participants may think. 

It's also, highly likely that the risk of being a climber is probably (on average) slightly less than that of being a motorcyclist.

On the flip side, the risk of Winter hillwalking is probably at least as high as Summer rock climbing as well as higher than many think.

Winter climbing is probably around an order of magnitude (5-20 times) more risky than rock climbing. Alpine Mountaineering is significantly more risky again.

Some climbing venues do appear more dangerous than others. From my reading of accident reports over the years, Scottish high mountain crags and inland limestone crags seem to be more dangerous than average. However, the numbers of fatalities are thankfully so low, and participation data so poor that it is almost impossible to say whether that's is actually the case or not with any statistical certainty.

Hope that is of some use. 

Years ago I analysed data for a large and varied group of climbers and mountaineers, members of a mountaineering club, covering a 10 year period. The death rate was 1 fatality per year per 1000 -2000 participants. These were mostly mountaineering accidents. The number is not insignificant. The number of road causalities in UK  is 3 per 100 000 inhabitants per year, 15 to 30 times lower.

Over several decades of climbing etc I have had several casualties, eg, a death on clogwyn y person arete, a head injury from poor protection on grit. I have climbed with someone who took a groundfall which gave a serious outcome, a rockfall on a crag which lead to a fractured pelvis, a friend who fell off an abseil rope, as well as the death of a well known guidebook writer.  We know the risks.  I have probably climbed with less than 20 partners.

To attest to how random and sometimes unrelated to skill or equipment the nature of accidents can be, 6 of us were at a welsh crag, 5 in crocs or flip flops and the one guy in walking boots slipped down the approach and broke his ankle. 

Interesting. Did the club in particular have 1000-2000 members or is that adjusted death rate? Were they UK based or further afield?

Wow. 1 in a thousand is high (in Covid 19 territory,  in fact).  Non fatal accidents are likely significantly higher.

As PMG said, there were significantly more mountaineering accidents than rock climbing ones. The figure for UK rock climbing is therefore far less high than one in a thousand.

Fatalities,  not accidents,  though.  Still a sobering number.

It does correspond with my personal experience - I can think of two climbers from the club I used to be in who died (together with their partners) on big mountains after going out in atrocious conditions after sitting out spells of bad weather. They nonetheless made summit attempts as the dates of their return flights approached. Or there were the two who died on the approach to the Brenva Spur on a traverse which Rebuffat says in one of his books is only safe in sub zero temperatures. These were all accidents caused by bad judgement rather than lack of climbing ability.

I don't know anyone personally who has died rock climbing in the UK.

This equates with my experience. The oft-quoted fact on here is that driving to the crag is more dangerous than the days climbing, in 50 years on the rock I only recall one death through a RTA (Dave Cook knocked of his bike somewhere in the Middle East) but I have long since lost track of the people I knew, at least to say hello to, who have died climbing,

Chris

I was several years in RAF MRT and also helped fairly regularily with several Scottish teams over the years and personally never had to deal with a serious accident caused by trad climbing in summer. Two accidents I do know about with serious outcomes were both caused by ground falls after a hold or a big block came off and all the gear ripped. 

After 50 years of climbing my own personal hospital visit was after a fall on a sport climb in Mallorca where I fell through a tree and speared my leg with a small branch. 

It's really bloody sad the way we're now describing people who are injured as 'burdening the NHS' - it's a very toxic concept. If you have an accident climbing you're burdening the nhs unncessarily to do something fun, if you burn your hand whilst cooking after a few glasses of wine at home you're burdening the nhs for being 'stupid'. What's next - suicide attempts are selfish burdens on the nhs? ambulances for someone whose been domestically- well maybe they shouldn't have burnt dinner to avoid using up resources right now..

I think people need to reflect on their terminology and 'blaming'/guilt tripping tactics and how in a wider context its a dangerous concept. Everybody in need of medical attention right now deserves it no matter how it happened. 

Not UK based. The group was was more than 1000 people.

Nobody ‘deserves’ medical treatment. It’s something we, rightly, provide as a well structured society. Too many believe the NHS is a safety net there to fix them when they abuse their bodies. They think it can work miracles. People would do well to think about how lucky we are to have the NHS. 

Statistical risk and actual risk are different things entirely. 
 

That 1 in 1000 was over 10 years.

My father broke his Pelvis in the lakes, and pretty sure it was At Pavey Ark. Late 80's-early 90's at a guess. Wonder if its the very same  

This was late 90s, August Bank Holiday 1999. Casualty was a woman.

I think I know what you are getting at, but why don't you explain.

With statistics you’re looking at a whole population, not an individual. 
 

When we say the risk of you being killed in a car accident is 1 in 10,000, that’s not strictly a true interpretation. It depends greatly on the individual’s behaviour and depends on that individual not taking any action to mitigate risk. All we are saying is 1 in 10,000 people die in a car accident. It’s not random chance, although it would appear to be. We narrow those behaviours down. We look at speeding, driving while drunk or tired, age, experience. Some of it is going to be random, eg you may not be drunk or tired, but you may be hit by a drunk or tired person. 
 

If we look at climbing, I’m sure we could look at behaviours and narrow down what the risk factors are. How many die top roping? How many are leading and pushing their grade when a runner fails? Etc. 
 

Essentially statistical risk covers the risk within a population of someone having an accident taking into account multiple situations. Actual risk is the risk you are undertaking by your own actions. Statistical risk is used by insurance companies and healthcare to spread the risk and make predictions, and maybe introduce laws to change people’s behaviour on a population basis. Actual risk is used by you to alter your behaviour based on your specific situation. 

We have discussed this many times before Chris. I knew almost as many who died in RTAs as climbing and I know quite a few who died climbing as well. Such anecdote isn't relevant.

I ran the gear allocation and library in a student mountaineering club most of the time from 1990 to 2010. We were active in most aspects of climbing. We had probably 400 active climbers through that time and about half of those did at least one Scottish winter week (starting with basic training with a guide)  and about 40 at least one Alpine climbing trip (using Conville training where possible). I stress the training as we knew where the high risks were.  We had one death in the club but not on a club trip (abseiling accident on an alpine route). 4 club members were involved in serious accidents (one pair avalanched off a cornice on the Ben in unpredicted bad weather on a club trip, one scrambling fall in wet weather on the Cullin not on a club trip and one stupid abseil accident on grit due to a banned member offering dangerous instruction outside of the club). I've lost count of near misses (most winter or alpine) as I have for soft tissue injuries ( most indoors). I've lost one other close friend to exposure in the alps and I knew quiet a few others who died climbing and as many more who were lucky not to.

In contrast to all those I know who died or had a serious accident in any adventure sport, people who nearly all lived full and highly varied lives,  I knew more who in their lives mainly focussed on their work and sadly died before or soon after retirement, of causes like heart attacks, cancer, strokes or pre senile dementia.

I think I was first on the scene on the same rescue and involved from early afternoon to 10pm. A very unlucky accident from which the woman (and her partner, who I never met, as he fell to a ledge above) was very lucky to survive. A horrible half day wth an eventual good outcome.

Yes, we have discussed it before. Lynn climbed up from the below and myself and my climbing partner were able to traverse from Jack’s Rake and provide a belay from above.

Not if you refer to "The death rate was 1 fatality per year per 1000 -2000 participants".

That rope from above was important. My belay was equalised multiple pieces of less than bomber pro, too low and sideways on for my liking but it was all there was. Until I had something half reliable Lynn had to wait to make her safe. Continuing up looked too far for my short scrambling rope.  I'm still amazed how she clung on for as long as she did, where she was, in so much pain: human endurance can be amazing.  We remained worried about her passing out until your rope arrived.

So my anecdotal evidence isn't relevant - but yours is?

Chris

You need consistent stats keeping of some kind of which my club official experience was just a small example.. linked to records at the time. Your RTA point is just dumb and I guess it always annoyed me as I've lost a lot of friends who were not climbers, but also as some climbers are too often bad examples when driving... some of the most frightening times I've ever experienced with other climbers is when they were driving recklessly. I think I ended up listing climbers involved in nasty crashes, some fatal, including an infamous disgusting hit and run fatality.

Thank you for an interesting thread.

I find it surprising that no-one seemed to comment after the citation of the PubMed document, which was a statistical analysis of many (presumably) vetted papers. I also note that they commented about protection placement being a factor in many cases.

I had a near fatal accident 13 years ago. No-one has mentioned the type of accident I likely had, i.e. I was pulling on the gear by me, to see if it would hold in the event of me falling, on that section, as it was quartzite, which I had not climbed on before, and did not like the nature of from the word go. The piece came out, and I fell backwards and upside down. I should have held on tighter with my other hand, or placed another piece of gear. 

Once the initial protection came out, then I suffered due to my lack of fear earlier on in the climb, and the consequent business of romping up that part of the route, without paying enough attention to gear. 3-4 pieces ripped out, before one held. I hit my head, and somehow the rope ripped my helmet off (subsequent major problems with my left ear, and hearing), and I hit my head again.

I was in the high dependency unit of the neurosurgical hospital for 3-4 days, then another 7-8 days on the more normal wards, and off work for 6 months. Yet I went climbing (Kransick crack and another VS) before going back to work (Seconding to a friend's leads). It was a combination of evaluation of my need to be more careful placing gear, the idea of not getting worried too much about climbing, otherwise I might not go back, and a quoted statistic, that said, that each climber suffers a major accident every 20 years or so(!).

Sorry for being long winded.

You're not longwinded, nor are you alone. I know of 2 other people who've had similar accidents.

To this end I always ensure a good piece of gear is put in by about 10 feet, then another good one around 15 feet, to prevent a ground fall. I then place gear ASSUMING I could come off at any time (hold potentially breaking whilst moving the other hand ?). It doesn't matter what any second says, I put the gear in - I want to live long enough to collect my pension.

My practice proved itself once; my one and only foothold broke when I had one hand on a crimp and the other was moving towards the "jug" that would have saved me - ended up dangling from a cam about 3 feet from the ground. (Got the move second time, I did by then know the gear was definitely good).

Moral - stay safe out there.

Both can be statistically analysed, but it depends upon how you frame the question. It's the difference between the probability of "a person" winning the lottery, and "you" winning the lottery.

I don't think it's accurate to describe only one of these events as "statistical".

I think those who have mentioned using club data have presented a rather nice experiment that might well be ideal for someone needing a dissertation topic. Club records and collective memory are likely to be reasonably good.

It would contain all the essential elements of defining the problem, the method, data collection and analysis. Together with limitations.

In case anyone is interested in doing so, the following might work well. 

1. define what you are after. Risk per year of engagement with the activity? Or per hour of the activity? I think the latter would be hard to make sense of. For trad, not alpine, most deaths are I guess on lead, and the on lead bit short in a days climbing - even when one climbs as slowly as me. I guess one could just count days of engaging in climbing.

2. run pilot study

3. gather data on deaths (as the club is unlikely to forget these, rather than hospital visits) over the last 10 years. Split into trad, alpine...

4. gather data on the fraction of members belonging to more than one club, the number of climbing members over the last ten years, and how much climbing went on in the last year.  

5. run the numbers, do you confidence limits etc.

Any takers for next semester or the one after?