Mt. Whitney Portal Store & Hostel Forums General Mt. Whitney Portal Store Message Board Responsibility in Mountaineering!

I just wanted to open a discussion about what are our moral responsibilities when on the trail? I love meeting new people while hiking and I don’t mind dishing out beta if I know it. But through the years I have gotten wind of folks giving out information either second hand or omitting certain important information or assuming the parties they are educating are as skilled at certain techniques as they are. I hate to sound vague so I will give an example;

A 70-year-old couple on their way up the main trail of Mt. Whitney, meet a climber on his descent. He mentions the “short-cut” above the 96 switchbacks, how it is an easy and fun glissade. The elderly couple summit and when they reach the top of the snow chute. The wife has second thoughts and expresses her fears to her husband; he assures her and reiterates what the young man that told them about this route, he had said it was “easy”. They sit down on a tarp and using a single walking stick they begin their glissade. This is at 10:00 pm, the chute was now iced over, after being shaded for more than six hours. Quickly they are out of control and separated, the wife was able to claw herself to a stop, the husband bounced through an unseen rock outcropping resulting in his death and a nightmare trek for the wife to seek help at Trail Camp.

Obviously the couple did not practice very good judgment in selecting this descent, nor did they have the experience or the proper gear to perform a safe glissade even in perfect conditions, but had they not been told of the route to begin with this accident would have never taken place. This is just one story of many I have witnessed or been told of over the years and I guess I want everybody to think before they spray. This is just one issue of the many moral responsibilities I wished to discuss. I look forward to others input.

Happy Trails!

Moral responsibility is certainly a topic that could occupy any group for a long time. In this particular case, I am skeptical that the incident really occurred. Frankly, I can't understand how a couple could reach 80 years of age and then suddenly try a long glissade at 10 PM with obviously no experience. Do the annals of Whitney accidents contain the story of the death of an 80 year old man in this fashion? The story is certainly new to me. I assume that you heard it, rather than witnessed it. After all, the story took place over a period of hours.

Of course, even a fictional story can teach a lesson. One should be careful about talking about potentially dangerous activities as being "easy." And if one witnesses a conversation such as the one between the climber and the couple, I suppose that one might become responsible for passing on some more conservative advice.

We have had some discussions in the past on the subject. The topics So, you want to climb the Mountaineer’s Route in winter? and Climbing Rules come to mind. We also started the feature topic What can go wrong on Whitney.

As for your example, it sounds to me like an enhanced version of an accident that occurred in 2003.

"Do the annals of Whitney accidents contain the story of the death of an 80 year old man in this fashion? The story is certainly new to me. I assume that you heard it, rather than witnessed it. After all, the story took place over a period of hours."

I witnessed the interview of the wife and subsequently assisted in the body recovery.

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Thanks for clarifying that. It seems that, once again, fact is stranger than fiction. Sad way for 80+ years on the planet to end.

I see two lessons. The most important one is that we all have to be responsible for ourselves and not do things like that glissade. That message gets reinforced here a lot. The other lesson is to be careful what we say -- one never knows who might try something truly crazy based on something we say casually. But, since we can't depend on what others say, we need to remember that first lesson.

I disagree with your assessment. Being told of the route did not cause this accident. From the report, the primary reason was that they got to the top of Whitney WAY too late (!), and were desperate to get down, because they did not have a flashlight. As is true with most accidents, they are a series of compounded problems.
Additionally, you are taking the account given by the survivor, given in the most trying of circumstances, as being absolutely true. Maybe that is what they were told, and maybe it was not. We'll never know. We'll never know if the person who told them included precautions, such as "if you have an ice axe", or other things, that all of us have experience with folks simply ignoring, or half remembering.

Should folks not give beta on conditions? My experience is that many, many more dramas are prevented, because people find out about stuff they didn't know.

I absolutely do not think that you can couch such sharing of information in "moral" terms. This sort of judging of what kind of stupid things will be done with perfectly good information seems out of place. The only place where I would consider it a reasonable term, would be when one witholds information that the possessor knows will enhance the safety of the recipient.

If, for example, one posted that the road was clear to Whitney, and when someone drove up, was crushed under a rock avalanche, one could say that if they'd not heard that, it would never have happened. It might be true, but there is no causation produced by the informer.

The only way to conform to this view is to never speak to anyone you meet...ever.

The individual has the personal responsibility to decided if an undertaking is within their skill-set or not.

To not be vague - and since this is the Whitney board - I'll use a Whitney example. As I stood in the notch looking at the North Face, members of my party asked if I was going to ski from the top. I said - 'yes, it doesn't look that bad'. To which two in my party responded 'right. to you it doesn't look bad, to us..that's a different thing' (or something like that).

After skiing from the summit to the notch I met-up with a guy who was on his way up. He didn't see me ski it and asked if I had. He then asked, how was it. 'Fun' I said.

He said I was crazy and went on up. He did not run back and get his skis and attempt something beyond his skill. In my joy and elation of having a great run -should I have stopped and lectured him on the years of training I had skiing steep lines? Should I have taken that light, fun filled exchange and turned into to a dark discussion about all the bad things that could have happened? Would that have been my moral responsibility?

If so, then the next time I'm asked, I'll just stand silent and nod like I don't speak English. I don't want to be morally responsible for someone making a dumb choice based on something I said.

Seems everything is getting the fun taken out of it. Can't we go back to the way it was. Laugh, share stories, and experiences without having to tell all the dark bad things that can happen - It's depressing.

Good sense (if not natural curiosity) already has most of us making at least some assessment of the state of "fitness" and "readiness" of the others we encounter on the trail.

Most of those who we encounter will be and appear to be fit/ready. Most will reach some point to or on the way to their intended destination and will return safely.

But if we encounter someone who appears to be unfit/unready for what is likely to be ahead of them -- even if that person is unaware -- what is the harm in asking a few uninvited questions and/or otherwise providing guidance?

"How are you doing? ... Where are you headed? ... Do you have a map/working GPS? ... Don't know if that's a good idea. ... Are you sure you've got the right gear, etc. for that? ... I've heard that sometimes [relevant event] can occur out here. ... Be careful. ... Do you want me to take your name? ..." Etc.

That being said, can any rational person imagine telling a 64-year old man and his wife encountered on Mount Whitney that a glissade is "easy" or "fun"?

A statement like that, if it was made, is irresponsible bordering on criminal.

I think the problem here was not in giving out information, but in giving information that was inappropriate given the context.

I (mostly!) try to make myself available to answer people's questions. But I also try to match my information to the people asking for it.

Describing a glissade route to this couple sounds like a very poor choice. Describing an exposed down-climb to a group decked out in climbing hardware might on the other hand be perfectly reasonable.

All of this is of course a judgment call, but the experience level of people you meet in the backcountry is usually pretty obvious.

That's not exactly how the story went. The guy did this the previous year without incident. The same basic thing happened 16-17 months later. As I said in another thread, the accidents are the same around here, just the names change.

What is my responsibility as someone who has traveled a particular trail in adverse conditions to the clueless? I tell people the conditions and they don't have the gear for it. Ultimately, it is their decision to make. In most cases, you are not going to deter them from do things that they want to do and, again, in most cases they are not going to do themselves bodily harm. However, when they do they end up on the 5 PM news or their local paper.

I told a lot of folks this past winter what conditions were higher and they didn't have the gear to go there. I don't remember anyone stopping and going lower.