UKC

I'm off to Indian Creek soon (lucky me) and wonder what other folk use as insurance for single/multi pitch trad these days?

My main interest is in the necessary medical coverage and also baggage. Companies like TrueTraveller limit claims for sporting gear to around £400 which is useless.

Thanks in advance!

Other people? Well my house insurance gives me 10 grand baggage insurance and my health insurance gives me unlimited worldwide cover. So no help to you whatsoever!

I’ll look into the household insurance thing. Good idea. 

I can’t help much other than to warn that some health insurance policies contain, in the fine print you never read until it is too late, restrictions for ambulance costs, which includes the use of helicopters and airplanes. Some years back a friend got hit with a $15,000  bill for a heli evac from a cragging area, and his health insurance didn’t  cover a penny.

I know the AAC offers rescue insurance and I imagine the BMC does too.

And/or they don’t cover rock climbing.

To the OP - rescue is one thing, medical is another, baggage is another again. I’ve mostly used BMC. Austrian Alpine Club (Sektion Britannia) is cheap and brings rescue and medical insurance with it but the last time I checked the medical was capped at something like €20k and that may not last very long in the US depending on the situation.

I use a company called sportscoverdirect www.sportscoverdirect.com

Have used them several times as go abroad to the US a couple of times a year to climb. Has an option to select an additional sports equipment cover. Have also had a medical incident where insurance was needed with them in the past. So good experiences so far.

I normally play safe and use the BMC but have used sportscoverdirect for a long US trip which went beyond the (then) BMC time limit. The cover seemed almost as good.

You must really make sure the cover is adequate for US medical and so on.

Thanks for the comments so far. The issue for me is the lack of cover for baggage. A sack full of cams (for Indian Creek) is well over many baggage claim limits. Cover by e.g. sportsdirect limits you to a few hundred quid for sports gear which is useless, so if your bag went missing in flight or was stolen you'd be facing a big loss.

I'm starting to look at truetraveller for medical, rescue and other things, and then buying a separate cheap policy from Tesco or whoever that has much higher baggage limits and no restrictions on "sports gear". If I need medical help then I use one policy, if I need baggage help then I use the other.

It's not as simple as it used to be, this US insurance business.

I'm looking to take out travel insurance for a quick trip to New York in June, during which I intend to boulder in Central Park, Manhattan, and so thought I'd add sports insurance. I had a look at sportscoverdirect, but their policy doesn't cover having to cancel because you're refused boarding if you test positive on the pre-flight Covid antigen test, which USA still requires. Hopefully the States will drop this requirement before the summer, but it's still there at the moment. BMC website isn't currently offering USA as a destination, but I called them and they said that should be changing in the next couple of days and they would cover being denied boarding because of a positive test. I shall probably go with them as I've done before for big road trips.

(In case anyone's interested, the Central Park bouldering even has its own guidebook, written by Gaz Leah.)

ETA: Just discovered I'm too old for truetraveller!

BMC and Snowcard have for many years been the default insurance policies for climbers wanting climber specific insurance that won't find excuses not to pay up.

I've generally found BMC to be cheaper for Europe and Snowcard for the USA. You can tailor the levels of cover you want for different risks with Snowcard.

https://www.snowcard.co.uk/

Does the gold policy not have an option to increase the value covered of sports equipment?

I had a good look at Snowcard and I have to say it's a really good deal.

Around £130 for multipitxh trad climbing, £3k of sports gear cover, £2k of travel disruption/cancellation including Covid cover and a few other things. Much better than truetraveller.

Thanks for the suggestion.

I'll have to see what the search & rescue cover is, which I wouldn't usually worry about but we'll be climbing in the Fisher Towers and you just never know.

The Fisher Towers are basically roadside cragging 

I'm glad you think so youth. Let's hope that when I'm 7 pitches up Titan with a broken leg or whatnot it's as easy as being lowered off directly into the back seat of a jeep down on Potash Road. It's a fit and healthy 60 minutes to get back to the Fisher's parking lot, but when injured it might be a little more challenging.

I'd check out snowcard - i think you might get a much better deal than the BMC which I hear is very expensive for the US. I'll be stopping off in NY on the way back so I'll check out those boulders, maybe.

Yes, thanks to this thread I looked at snowcard and it's much better. It's been very helpful.

I was commenting in relation to your half read Indian Creek post above. The Fisher Towers are more roadside than most/all of the Indian Creek cragging.

Obviously not as roadside as Potash Rd!

Is this not a recipe for having no insurance?

You end up with Truetraveller saying "Tesco will pay" and Tesco saying "Truetraveller will pay".

Out of interest, do you really need baggage insurance? Surely the rescue and especially medical are the only important ones.

Just self insure on the baggage.

( though I appreciate that a creek cams rack is indeed a seriously expensive thing )

I used TrueTraveller last time I went to the US - which was to Indian Creek. I self-insured the baggage and accepted that risk.

I've not heard of self insuring, what does that mean?

You're right that it's rescue and medical that are critical, but I have over 50 cams from 0.3 to 6, as well as aid gear, tent, sleeping bag and suchlike which - new - is upwards of £4k

Snowcard give me £10m of medical and rescue cover and £4k dediucated sports kit cover for around £140 which is extremely good value.

It probably is, so I'd ditching that idea. TrueTraveller are crap when it comes to sports kit and rescue cover. The absolute max they pay for rescue is £25k which is very much on the low side, and £4m for medical.

It's just a flowery way of saying don't insure

I work on the following basis:

Insurance companies are out to make a profit, so on average the punter loses out ( bit like casinos if I think about it)

Insurance companies are basturds and use any excuse not to pay you. Any claims you have will make getting essential insurance harder in future.

So I only ever insure stuff I couldn't pay for myself if needed: eg car crash, house burning down, foreign medical costs and helicopter evacuation.

Baggage,  missed flights, cancelled holidays etc just come under the shit happens category.

Bikes are currently a middle ground. I've got them insured but am pretty sure they wouldn't pay out if I ever did claim

Did not be so doubtful. Mine got pinched, albeit years ago, and I ended up with a better bike.

We're talking n+12 here.

Joke 1 - that's a lot to take on holiday !

Joke 2 - a cynic would say getting some stolen would be doing you a favour in the long run..

Yes, insurance is generally a big rip-off, but all those visiting the US should be aware that US medical insurance is one of the biggest scams on the planet. If you want to make an estimate of how much medical treatment is going to cost (via a US insurer), make high-end estimates for all the treatment, add it up, and then put a 0 on the end, and you'll be about right!. Be very wary of any insurance bought outside the US to cover medical insurance there. (Many non-US insurers don't want to touch the US.)

And you would still be underestimating a bit!  Medical costs are easily the biggest cause of bankruptcy in the us.