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Most of my climbing injuries happen when I nut / pull out, too.

the "fall or slip" causes are a bit weird as categories, because it's something that's frequent and expected when climbing; by themselves, a fall or a slip shouldn't result in an accident, so usually there's a different factor at play (foot around rope, back clipping, belayer error, etc.)

Bs, without firearms is it really "American"?

i could imagine many falls on R (5.9 R) rated routes have ledges you can fall on. Or there are swing risks if the route traverses at all.

The chart doesn't really say the severity though i might guess this is hospitalizations and death? not sprains and scrapes.

amazing that such a small number is attributed to gear failure. Misplaced gear is user error. but im surprised there aren't more snapped rope injuries from people using old ropes, or have sheaths cut by sharp edges.

Really gotta give the manufactures credit for their load tolerances.

Climbing lingo can be easily misinterpreted by non-climbers. Saying "nice rack" to a dude is perfectly acceptable, for example.

Agreed. And climbers are encouraged to use redundant systems of safely so that might be a factor too.

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

I haven’t looked at the sources but there is not a chance equipment failure is less than lightning!

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.

I would suspect part of that is how they assign "main causes". If you fall, and a piece pulls out when the rope comes taught, is that a "fall" accident or a "piece" accident?

I can see how someone might get hit by lightning, but I can't really see how an accident could happen from gear just failing spontaneously.

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.

If the radial chart's legend is already sorted descending, then maybe drop both and replace with a sorted horizontal bar chart for more readability

Are these just accidents in 2018 or what?

I agree, but then where are "belayer error" or "clipping error" categorized? I would imagine those count for a lot more than happening to hit a ledge while falling.

Data is taken from the Year & Country section.

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

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.

You have to think of equipment failure as a MAIN cause.

For example a typical failure may be on a quick draw. That draw is only going to break once there is a big load on it. So would happen during a fall. It would then be categorized as a secondary cause.

Exactly. Not many people are going to be taking out ropes that are on the verge of breaking without something happening before. When they do it's going to happen when taking a fall.

Have to think about it in terms of Main cause and secondary.

But when a cam pulls out it's also because of a fall. Why does that get its own category?

Not necessarily. You can be 'taking' on a piece or using it as an anchor.

but aborting a fall is the primary function of many pieces of gear. saying that the fall is the main issue and absolving the gear is kind of meaningless. that would basically mean that you could only fault the gear in a static load situation.

i'm still a gumby though and cant climb overhangs. i tend to down climb and take rather than risk a big fall on slab and vertical walls... lol

Think about it this way. I'll give you examples.

Scenario 1

Climber falls while leading and his last draw breaks (equipment failure). Get's injured. MAIN cause FALL, SECONDARY EQUIP FAILURE
Scenario 1 doesn't occur if the person doesn't fall.

​

Scenario 2

Climber takes a take and loads his draw. It breaks (equipment failure).

Main cause is equipment failure.

​

See the difference?

yah, thats essentially what i said.

except that falling is part of climbing. if your equipment fails on a fall and you get injured, the equipment is the primary reason for the injury imo.

It would be like having statistics on why most skydivers die and the top result is sudden stop. It's just not interesting and informative.

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Falling while single pitch and pushing your limits sure falling is common.

Alpine climbing a fall is not something you ever want to do. Running out gear is very common in say the Canadian Rockies where gear placement is terrible.

It's not the same as your sky diving comparison.