I find it sad and tragic that some people need to live on the very edge of death all the time to make life worth living. Where you draw the line is very personal. But I'd say being addicted to near death adrenalin rushes is just as dangerous as other hard drugs.

I think I've just found someone who is uninsurable...

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Sad and tragic simply is if you die. But that there are risks involved when you go swimming or bungee-jumping, or simply car-driving or skiing etc is obvious. And I am in favour of taking certain risks, as long as you are not foolhardy and not idiotic. Strangely enough, the risk to die is part of live. In case of the young man in question here, something went tragically wrong. But I oppose the conclusion that you in life should stay out of any risk, as you then have to stay in bed all the time !

Don't be daft Woolie - but there are risks... and risks. What makes some people need to be living on a knife edge all the time, is what I am trying to understand.

Would you care to give an example of one of those people who "need to be iving on a knife edge all the time", cos I don't recall anyone who falls into that category being mentioned in this thread so far...?

Falling down mountains isn't always fatal. This climber survived a 1000 foot fall in Scotland on Saturday with just minor injuries

The Guardian

Just spotted this video. It doesn't look quite as dangerous as base jumping, but close.

FunVid

Indeed so. Only the 9 deaths in 2009 compared to 15(2009) or 16(2010) for base jumping

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(couldnt find a 2010 figure for speedflying...)
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Don't you understand the "lust" of living on a knife edge at times ? This has nothing to do with "daft" but, as strange as it may sound, with a "lust for life" and the desire to make life interesting

Have to agree completely on this.

One of the reasons I am still participating in this thread is because I have hiking friends who are reading this, with whom I end up having similar debates about rock climbing. They annoy me by saying "they love life too much, so they don't do rock-climbing", meaning I don't value life as much. I appreciate an intelligent discussion and well-meaning advice which I can use for introspection, but in this case what annoys me is they never engage in a complete discussion backed by some familiarity of the sport and some objective facts.

For comparison, the average fatalities on simple mountain hikes (T1-T2 SAC grade, the kind that Longbyt posts) in Switzerland is about 30. Alpine hikes (the hairy kind that I used to post last year, T4 and above) see about 2 deaths on average, which is still small even after factoring in the fact that non-alpine hikers outnumber the Alpine hikers. And sport climbing deaths is also very small, something like 2-3 per year (this is my deduction from pieces of data I have about different sources; someone correct me if you have direct figures. I have split the total annual climbing deaths in CH of approx 40 into 30-35 for mountaineering, 5 for trad climbing and 1-2 for sport climbing). And believe me, a HUGE number of people are climbing in Switzerland, so the patterns remain like that even if you speak in percentages and not absolutes.

I quote (don't worry about exactness, just understand the broad picture):

The British government, comparing the risks of various activities, assembled these statistics:

* Maternal death in pregnancy 1 in 8,200 maternities [someone posted that for BASE jumping it is 1 in 2,000, and I would guess it is far worse for K2]
* Surgical anesthesia 1 in 185,000 operations
* Hang-gliding 1 in 116,000 flights
* Scuba Diving 1 in 200,000 dives
* Rock climbing 1 in 320,000 climbs [Make that 1 in 3,200,000 if you speak of sport climbing and leave out trad, speaking from a predominantly Swiss perspective]
* Canoeing 1 in 750,000 outings
* Fairground rides 1 in 834,000,000 rides
* Rail travel accidents 1 in 43,000,000 passenger journeys
* Aircraft accidents 1 in 125,000,000 passenger journeys


Based on this, you can argue that 1999 out of 2000 Base jumps you come back alive, so it is worth doing.

Or you can say it is about 160000% more dangerous than sport climbing, so may be it is an unreasonably risky sport (meaning so long as people pay in advance for their rescue/recovery of remains, and sign organ donor cards, it should be fine).

Or you can say, my hiking friend who drives 10-15 times more often than I climb in a year, and I, face about the same statistical risk of dying from driving and climbing respectively, "doing what we love doing". [we don't have data for car accidents, but I am assuming it is significantly higher than for train. for which we have data]


I have never seen a base jumper in real life, so I thought I could easily arrange to meet him over lunch at the canteen one of these days, and broaden my perspectives. So I explored a bit more. Unfortunately, I found that "Geoffery Robson was said to be the only person in the world who combined the scientific capacity for this kind of research with the ability to test it himself in the air." So apparently, this guy was an isolated case.

I can't meet him now because he died in a tragic base jumping accident on 12 April 2010, as the cliche goes, "doing what he loved doing", at age 31.

Anyway I spent the last 2.5 weeks in bed with a bad case of flu, my first and worst illness in years, and I seriously felt my chances of dying from flu exceeds that of dying from climbing, hiking, and public and occasional car transportation put together. On some things we have a choice, on some we don't.

Cheers,
N

Of course I do- that's why I love travelling, skiing, snowboarding, and so many other things. For me, personally, jumping off a mountain is beyond my acceptable limits. It is a level of risk which I cannot fathom - but I can respect that others put their limit at a different level. Enjoy, and may your God be with you.

It is such a simple thing innit? And I posted a whole page long post to make the same point; brevity in writing is not my strength .

I admit that this base-jumping also is beyond my acceptable limits, BUT some may regard skiing and snowboarding as "beyond limits". Experts now will check up the reasons of the accident and what possibly can be done to prevent a repetition of that kind of accident

Niranjan - our posts crossed! LOL. Yes Woolie, I'll be 60 next month and many friends think I am totally mad to do some of the things I do!