Mt. Whitney Portal Store & Hostel Forums General Mt. Whitney Portal Store Message Board Camera as a cause of accidents?

Hi , Last 50 feet of the Mountaineers Route a lady I know ask if we could get a picture together. I jumped down on a ledge that had always been solid, now it was loose scree and I was on the BIG RIDE the one they send flowers. I was able to catch a large rock and look for the next one that may stop me .It worked

Another friend ,we had hiked the Mountaineers Route several times and he has taken groups up many years never a problem , several years ago we got a report of a fall at the ledges, after calling S&R I ran up , Erick a local guide had heard the fall and thought it must be fatal but went back up to check and found my friend in very bad shape but alive . I got upto the site and found the large camera with attached gear that was worn around his chest , he had fallen from the top portion of the ledges, you know where the wall pushes you out also a very large day pack with camera gear, and the pack was soft and would shift . I carried the pack down and thought maybe the camera and loose pack shifting could of started the fall???

I know of other accidents that involved cameras .

So as we think about avalanches, rock fall, snow bridges and the standard HAPE , HACE, AMS , are we missing the cause of a common accident waiting to happen?? Thanks Doug

There are many many documented stories of folks stepping off ledges in and around Grand Canyon, because they were looking with their lenses instead of their eyes.

B

If you read Death in Yosemite by Ghiglieri and Farabee, there are plenty of cases of folks taking one step too far to get that perfect shot. A very interesting and unfortunate part of human psychology.

Angel's landing in Zion has had similar mishaps.

Not only cameras but solo hiking weirdos like me with their music plugged into their ears and the wires going every where.

That's one that has always surprised me more people don't die on, given the heavy use and sense of overconfidence the fixed chains provide. Between the Wiggles, the ledges and the fin, plenty of opportunity for one mis-step to be a florist's bonanza. And to Bee's point, I've seen more people take ridiculous risks at the Grand Canyon than anywhere else for that perfect shot, especially around the south rim. I've always wondered if Mallory and Irvine died the same way on Everest.

There is some interesting medical physiology going on in this "take picture-fall off the cliff" scenario.

Our sense of balance is poor. The inner ear-brain connection is just not that good. Ask a pilot and he will tell you that in a white out, if he did not have a horizontal horizon indicator to look at, his sense of balance would be so poor that his wings might be tilted at 45 degrees. Look at inner ear balance as coarse tuning, and the far more important visual clues as fine tuning.

As for standing on a cliff with a camera.... when you are looking with the naked eye, you maintain a sense of spatial orientation to objects around you to remain bolt upright. Take those visual clues away and you are in trouble. Examples

(A)standing on cliff with visual clues a long ways off (Grand Canyon)
(B) standing on cliff looking through view finder or looking at screen of digital camera - you lose the spatial orientation.
(C) cloudy conditions
(D) wind to knock you around
(E) attention diverted to other items, etc etc
(F) all of the above at once.

No wonder people just pop over the edge

Harvey

And then there's the subject of the photo, typically at the top of a waterfall, being told by the photographer to "step back another foot or two" and going over the fall.

Scary story, Doug. I’ll just start by saying that I’m glad it turned out the way it did… I don’t want to be sending flowers to you…or Earlene.

There are probably a lot of “camera” stories out there – mine was in 2006, while spending the night on the Whitney Summit. The following morning I slept later than I expected to and when I realized the sun was already coming up, I jumped out of my bag and with camera in hand, raced to the “perfect spot” for a sunrise picture. I was watching the sun as it started to show and not paying attention to how far I traveled, when I realized with horror that I was only a couple feet from the edge. It was pretty sobering to realize I almost went right off the edge….just for a picture.

Yikes!! Makes my knees weak...
Glad you all lived to tell about it!

About 25 years ago a hiker fell from the top of the Aguille Extra, on the summit ridge of Whitney. He had gone back down from the summit to take photographs, telling his family he'd be meet them as they descended. We (Inyo and China Lake SARs) searching for 8 days, all over the mountain, on foot and from helo, and then gave up. A group of French mountain guides found his body on a ledge near the start of the difficulties on the Aguille - camera still hanging around his neck by the strap.

And another prime example at Mt. St. Helens about a month ago.

Pretty, memorable pictures are nice, but they're just not that important.

I remember this one well, although I had forgotten about the camera connection. Summary of the search for James Wolter is here, on page 8:
www.clmrg.org/TP%201-99/044.doc

Another instance of an injury when using a camera came up in another recent thread. It has a pointer to this.

I just had to post this for the relevance and to show how crazy or stupid some of us are...

Me taking Photos on Glacier Point

A man yelled at me while I was out there that maybe I should give them a number so they can call my family when I die and that he rescues idiots like me for a living =P

given the weight of that monster camera of yours, I think the chance of being pulled forward and down the cliff was quite real

Rogue -- Love the picture!!

CaT

Just muse on what a neat tale you could have told your grandkids if a nice 7.0 quake would have hit while you were taking those photos. (The reason that this one is sideways/upside down....)

One of my all time favorite "trying to get that best photo position" sequences are the following photos from the Grand Canyon:





What was this guy thinking!! Not only did he jump to a highly unstable position to take a photo, he jumped back using his one free hand in flip flops!! How dumb. Lucky he didn't take his last photo there! Amazingly lucky!
(I would have loved to see how he got there in the first place!)

Unbelievable! Looking at that sequence, the concept of natural selection comes to mind . . .