Alpine Decisions

My buddy Scott, who writes for the AP, posted a story today in AP's ASAP news service, about an experience we shared in the upper reaches of the California sierra this past Memorial Day weekend.

Good mountaineering practitioners will usually take the time to put together an analysis of experiences like this after they occur in order to prevent them from happening again. Like the stories put out annually by the AAC, these analyses tend to improve the overall safety of alpine adventures as alpinist gain insight into the factors contributing to accidents.  Thankfully, Scott's near accident on this steep bowl at 11,000 ft. did not qualify for the 2006 publication.  His was the result of circumstances that converged on him as the lead in our party of four climbers seeking a great corn snow descent.  Preceding the event we had made decisions as a group, and as individuals, some deliberate, and some passive.  Decisions were deliberately made by the group like choice of destination, others were passive group decisions like time of day to make the assault.  Every relevant decision bears inspection, but the most influential decisions were the ones that were made passively, or individually.  This is the case in the vast majority of alpine accidents, and underscores the amplification that can occur from a seemingly minor decision.   Influential individual and passive decisions that might have been reversed by deliberate group scrutiny were:
- choice of equipment - while the group did agree on certain specific gear to bring, including safety devices like avalanche beacons, we did not agree that ice axes were not required.  It's doubtful that the group would have reversed this decision had we deliberated over it.
- choice of route - it's not clear whether this decision would have been reversed by the group, but a suggestion was made to pick a lower line prior to commiting to the line where the fall occured.
- climber order - only two of the four had proper self arresting equipment, so the group probably would have sent one of the ice axe holding climbers first, rather than Scott, or would have redistributed one axe to the lead.

It's impossible to know whether group scrutiny of these decisions would have changed the outcome,
but it's certainly true that a leader with proper self arrest capability is a better assessor of risk, than the canary in a cole mine strategy we passively employed with Scott.

For me, the experience of watching him slide consumed a lot of mental and emotional energy.  The circumstances present that day just below Franklin Pass, like the distance from help; a sudden slip with potential to be followed by another, more catastrophic fall; the euphoria inspired by awesome beauty contrasted with the adrenalin of life threatening danger were all reminders of an accident I experienced in 2001 when I broke a vertebrae, dislocated a shoulder and generally traumatized most of my body falling down the side of a granite wall in Desolation Wilderness.  One of the commitments I made as a result of that accident was to be more safety conscious, particularly in the wilderness.  Ex post facto critique of decision making for the purpose of reducing risk in future adventures is a core piece of that commitment. 

Personally, I feel more prepared for the next alpine adventure, and I suspect that is true to for Scott and the rest of our party.  There is truth in the saying, "That which doesn't kill you makes you stronger".