The epidemiology of mountaineering and rock climbing accidents

Abstract

From 1981 through 1986, 43631 climbers registered for climbs in the Grand Teton National Park, USA. There were 108 climbing accidents. The accident incidence was 2.5 accidents per 1000 climbers per year, or 5.6 accidents per 10000 climber-hours. There were 23 fatal accidents and 25 fatalities. Mountaineering appears to be a more hazardous activity than rock climbing; travel over snow or ice-covered terrain accounted for high numbers of accidents, climber errors, and fatalities. Effective use of proper equipment (ice axes and helmets), climber experience, self-reliance in difficult situations, and appreciation for the dangers involved in mixed (rock and snow) climbing are all preventive factors that can decrease accidents and injuries among climbers.

The Epidemiology of Injury in Mountaineering, Rock and Ice Climbing

“…In fatal accidents, significantly more men are involved than women (p < 0.05) [30]. Schussmann et al [32] reported an incidence of 2.5 accidents/1,000 mountaineers and year or 0.56/1,000 h of mountaineering. Most studies on mountaineering fatalities and accidents present the injury/fatality number per 1,000 climbers or per 1,000 32] reported that most climbing injuries involved the lower extremities and resulted from big swings into the wall or big falls [4,23].…”

“…Schussmann et al [32] reported an incidence of 2.5 accidents/1,000 mountaineers and year or 0.56/1,000 h of mountaineering. Most studies on mountaineering fatalities and accidents present the injury/fatality number per 1,000 climbers or per 1,000 32] reported that most climbing injuries involved the lower extremities and resulted from big swings into the wall or big falls [4,23]. The authors suggest that these findings may be partially explained by the minor nature of many rock climbing-related injuries recalled by participants in the other surveys.…”

“…These statistics do not differentiate between traditional, ice and sport climbing. A retrospectively conducted study on mountaineering reported an incidence of 0.13 fatalities/1,000 h [32]. For alpine climbing, Bowie et al [4] documented that 13 of 220 injured climbers died -a case fatality rate of 6%.…”

Feet injuries in rock climbers

“…So far, most research indicates that the upper extremity to be the most injured body region in non-alpine rock-climbing [2,3,5,6,10,14,15,40,60,[64][65][66][67][68][69][70][71][72] . Schöffl et al [61] analysed 604 injured climbers (sport climbing, indoor climbing) and reported 247 of 604 (40.9%) injuries involved the hand, 9.1% the foot.…”

The UIAA Medical Commission Injury Classification for Mountaineering and Climbing Sports

“…In the past 20 years several studies (pro-and retrospectively) were conducted to evaluate the injury and fatality risk of rock [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18] , ice 19,20 and mountain climbing [16][17][18][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30] . Injury incidence was reported per 1000 hours of sport-specific performance, expedition days, summit attempts or other.…”