In reply to Mick Ryan: Another interesting article (or a least an article that inspires some thought - since I disagree with almost all of it).
Firstly this man says...
"Too many climbers get into the sport thinking that climbing is safe." but during the preceeding article states that climbers are so in fear of the consequences of a fall that they focus incorrectly on eliminating (rather than mitigating) this risk. That's a direct contradiction - you can't think climbing at it's core is safe and at the same time try feverishly to eliminate the consequences of a fall. His logic is flawed.
Secondly his use of language is poor since he uses the same term for a unsecured fall and a 'catch' where the rope stops the fall. Perhaps ground-fall and fall or caught-fall and fall would clarify his point, but I doubt it? (At any rate I'm not goint to fall into the same trap). He also doesn't differentiate between the eliminating the consequences of a fall and eliminating a fall altogether, which is important for his premise. This man cannot express himself clearly.
No-one sane ever embraces the consequences of a ground-fall... the consequences of such a fall are injury and death, only a suicide would embrace this. You can only embrace a fall because you have eliminated* the consequences (decking out) already. In short it is no longer a fall, but a caught-fall.
To follow his example of trad leading, when you do this the gear you place and the rope you clip is there to eliminate* the consequences of a ground-fall.
(*It does not do this, it eliminates nothing it only mitigates, simply because gear anchors etc. are fallible (no matter how well placed) human error or rock/gear failure CAN still occur).
Yet the author suggests that holding on excessively can produce greater risk than accepting the fall since eventually you will fall and you will have not learnt the skills to fall safely. What about your first novice falls? And what of simple probability? Surely a climber who falls once a year with reasonably placed gear encounters a similar risk to one with better (but still fallible) placements who falls 200 times a year. The first will almost certainly experience a fall no matter how hard they try to avoid one. The 2nd will almost certainly experience some level of gear failure.
Perhaps he means that ill-informed actions which lead to a false belief that you have mitigated the effects of a ground-fall to that of a caught-fall are dangerous, but duh? Negligence/stupidity is always dangerous... AND someone with a false sense of security is more likely to 'embrace' a fall and kill themselves.
What a garbled ill-thought and poorly expressed article. You could rephrase his artice as...
When climbing mitigate/minimise your risks effectively and then do not fear them disproportionately.
Hardly ground-breaking is it? Now if he offered some practical techiques to assist in this objective he could justify over 100words. Sadly what he's written doesn't.
<Keep the articles coming though>