Staying Safe

Living with someone paralysed in a climbing accident sharpens your thinking.

Reading emails from newly injured climbers sharpens it more. Near misses. Close calls. The ones who didn’t make it.

I’ve been thinking about consequences. And about influence. When we tell stories of epics and near disasters, do younger climbers hear caution — or invitation?

Most of the “gnarly” climbers I know are extremely safe. Their folklore comes from decades. Volume, not chaos. Nick Bullock, for example, may put it on the line more in a month than others do in a lifetime — but he’s still here because he’s very, very good at not dying.

That’s the skill to aspire to.

Here are eight habits that keep you healthy:

• Be observant.
• Be paranoid.
• Be well equipped.
• Climb hard routes.
• Stick to buttresses.
• Adopt better ideas and gear.
• Train.
• Be willing to fail.

Observant. Watch terrain, weather, conditions, rumours in the pub. Watch your partner. Watch yourself. Double-check everything.

Paranoid. Ask “what if?” constantly. Unscrewed gates. Bad anchors. Loose blocks. The safe climber assumes something is wrong and goes looking for it.

Well equipped. Carry enough to move confidently. Enough to retreat. Ask: Will this get me up and down? Speed without survivability is a false economy.

Climb hard routes. Paradoxically, easy alpine terrain can be the most lethal. Low-angle gullies. PDs. Casual cascades. On harder ground, you belay. You place gear. You focus.

Stick to buttresses. They shed snow. They avoid the bowling alley. Mick Fowler understood this well.

Adopt better systems. Don’t fossilise. Watch what good climbers are doing. Steal improvements.

Train. Fitness. Endurance. Skill. Navigation. Moving fast. Reading your partner. Endurance builds judgment because fatigue erodes it.

Fail willingly. Turn around above bad gear. Avoid avalanche slopes when there’s another line. So much is outside your control. Don’t donate more.

Survival isn’t luck. It’s habits, repeated for years.