Todd Skinner dies in accident on Leaning Tower
October 25, 2006
Much has been going around the internet about Todd Skinner’s death Monday while rapping off the Leaning Tower in Yosemite. I received an email today from a climbing partner who just moved out to California. His friend and fiance were on Leaning Tower right before Skinner. They were rapping down as he was jugging up and helped afterwards. Their report from the scene is that
His harness broke. It was old and worn out, and he had a new one on the way in the mail.
If that isn’t a sad reminder for all of us to check our gear regularly, I don’t know what is.
The SuperTopo forum has a long thread with a lot of stories memorializing Todd. Will Gadd (Gravsports) and Dougald MacDonald (The Mountain World) relate their thoughts about Todd and there is some more media coverage at MSNBC, MountEverest.net and The Mercury News.
UPDATE: More from my friend on the accident and the harness failure:
what he heard from one of their SAR friends was that the belay loop gave out
Again, remember to check your gear…
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Indoor climbing considered safer than soccer
October 8, 2006
A recent study found that indoor rock climbing has a low risk of injury and is 10 times safer than soccer. The study was published by the quarterly medical journal Wilderness and Environmental Medicine (PDF) by the Wilderness Medical Society.
From the scotsman.com,
The study by German researchers was based on the rates and types of injury at the 2005 World Championships in rock climbing in Munich, Germany, which involved almost 500 climbers from 55 countries.
The championships had an injury rate of 3.1 per 1,000 hours compared to adult male national soccer competitions where players face an injury rate of 30.3 per 1,000 hours.
Over the course of the competition’s events that totaled 520 climbing days, only three of 18 medical problems were treated as significant injuries, including a broken ankle, back sprain and knee sprain, while the majority of the problems were just bruises.
An interesting study for the average person who thinks climbing is more risky than other sports, but what I would be more interested in reading is a study that compares the injury rate within the various climbing disciplines. Personally, I find I get more injuries when climbing indoors (especially bouldering) compared to climbing outside. With bouldering, I think the reason is obvious. If you’re bouldering outside, all the problems are spread out across more time, usually the whole day. When bouldering indoors, a climber typically compress the same amount of problems (or more) into a 2 hour session. This simply stresses the body much more.
joost.climbing.nl also has some additional reporting on this study.
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