alt Hacker NewsDriving to the mountains is often more dangerous than climbing a mountain. Things change at the elite levels, but that is true for any sport.
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Do you have a citation for that?
In my personal experience, that does not seem true. I have a number of friends who have been seriously injured climbing, e.g. from large rocks falling from above, presumably loosened by water freezing and expanding over the winter.
I don't know anyone who's gotten into an accident on their trip to or from climbing. Car accidents are already pretty rare overall, and driving to/from climbing is a teensy fraction of your overall driving.
Mountains are inherently dangerous, unpredictable places in ways that roads usually aren't.
In the context of the article, instead of your parent comment, this sounds like a weak excuse. Is driving to the Huascarán mountains (and it's ilk) more dangerous than climbing it?
Climbing Mt. Everest is three times more deadly than driving -- that is, 3x the chance of dying while driving anytime in your entire life.
That’s a classic ridiculous HN pedantic missing the point statistical response.
I suppose on a basis of deaths per vertical meter travelled, ascending slopes is probably safer than even air travel.
No, stop that. That's bullshit and Will Gadd calls it out:
The problem with mountains is twofold: Many mountains can be climbed without being elite while exposing yourself to major risk, and for some mountains there is objective hazard that can’t be mitigated.
One example of an “easy” but high risk climb is Mt. Rainier in Washington. All you need to go up is a set of crampons and a backpack, no technical mountaineering needed. However the mountain is full of glaciers that can collapse from under you, which has killed many people. Additionally, many have slipped and then slid to their death. In my case, when I attempted Rainier I took a wrong turn at one point and almost walked off a cliff.
Second: Objective Hazard. Objective hazard is risks that cannot be reasonably mitigated. Things like rockfall where a rock breaks off and falls on your head at random, or unpredictable avalanches. Mt Rainier as well has an area called the bowling alley known for its rockfall. The humans are the pins. Rainier also has an area called the icebox where cornices break off and fall into the climbing route. In 1981 the icebox killed 11 people in one day. Those climbers did everything right, but were in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Mountaineering is not the same as other sports. It is sometimes deceptively easy, yet there are risks that simply cannot be mitigated. Any experienced mountaineer can give you a long list of friends they know that have died. That’s the case in few other sports.