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well_balanced t1_itoxk0d wrote

I've always known that most accidents happen on the descent but this proves the opposite. Can anyone shed some light on this?

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crispin1 t1_itp8by5 wrote

This is the one thing that stood out to me too. The other stats on this graphic are harder to take any conclusion from as you don't know participation rates in each activity (e.g. rock, ice, rappel) or experience level, but you do know for sure that what goes up must come down.

And yes it goes against accepted wisdom doesn't it, which is interesting. Maybe the old cliche about descents originates in other areas e.g. Alps (where afternoon thunderstorms/avalanche is a common risk), Scotland? Or from different activities e.g. hiking? Also I wonder if it looks different if you compute risk per hour of ascent/descent?

Always good to ask this sort of question.

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gibson_se t1_itpbcb5 wrote

Yeah there's plenty of ways statistics can be skewed one way or another. For example, perhaps the "accidents on descent" wisdom refers to "mountain" objectives (where there is an actual descent to deal with, and it might be different from the ascent route) and the stats in this post might include all climbing, where indoor climbing (including top ropr and auto-belays) and sport climbing might not have so much of a descent, you're just sitting down in the rope and that's it.

And this is why I'm not a big fan of infographics like the one we see here. It looks nice, but it's actually quite hard to understand what it's actually saying.

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Turtley13 t1_itqem68 wrote

How have you always known? Do you have an actual source of data which says the opposite?

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well_balanced t1_itql4vf wrote

Not at all. I've just heard experienced climbers say it consistently so I took it for granted. This is the first time I'm seeing actual data on it. Proves the point that without data we just have opinions, not facts.

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