Die Officially
Sunday, June 1st, 2008
Why chance everything on anything less? Many have! Whilst searching the Internet, many potential mountain clients will see and read about “official” mountain guides, with UIAGM/BMG/IFMGA-qualifications. What they will not see and read about, is the number of BMG/UIAGM/IFMGA clients who have been killed and seriously injured whilst their guides survived (apart from Paul Potter who had unroped from his client). The guides have then continued in their chosen career. John Barry was apparently, ”thrown out” of the Association after losing 3 young clients on the West Face of the Eiger in 1992 being reinstated after a period of being (according to the BMG web site at the time) “an aspirant guide”. The oldest aspirant guide ever one assumes! Due to a ‘cone-of-silence’ the exact details are hard to establish.
Potential clients will not be aware that the one widow who finally received compensation for the loss of her husband (covered by BMC insurance), a client of the BMG, waited 7 years to receive the compensation, bringing up alone her young son, a son who his father never saw. At the time of her husband’s death, BMG advertising: “The Association has a comprehensive insurance scheme in operation, and a 70-strong membership of highly experienced mountaineers. When answering adverts displaying either of our two logos, you can be sure of ADVENTURE WITH SECURITY. Why chance everything on anything less?”
This reminds me of some words of Reinhold Messner from the inspirational address he gave to the Alpine Club Symposium held at Sheffield Hallam University in 1999. Whilst Messner’s words were directed primarily at commercial operators on the 8000 metre peaks, his words are just as apposite in a more general context.
“….. mountains are dangerous places”. What right has anyone to advertise “security” in this context, particularly members of an organisation which has regularly lost clients to (in my view avoidable) accidents certainly since 1988; in recent years.
According to my records (and my investigation continues), until very recently it was very rare for a UIAGM/IFMGA guide to be killed alongside his client. In the vast majority of occasions when a client has been killed, the guide has survived. Those guides, in the main, are still working to this day qualified as they are supposed to be: in all aspects of client care.
Apart from the comments and the judgement of Mr Justice Dyson in 1997, there has never been any ‘official’ word of condemnation regarding what are in my view these avoidable, fatal accidents. Certainly not from the governing body (as it now calls itself) of climbing and mountaineering the British Mountaineering Council (BMC) or The Sports Council, now Sport England (quango).
On the contrary, even though the BMG have ‘lost’ so many clients, the Sports Council (with the support of the BMC) after offering out to tender the management lease of Plas-y-Brenin (PYB – the multi-million pound outdoor centre at Capel Curig, North Wales) under an EC Directive to the highest bidder in pounds Sterling by October 1996, gave away PyB to the BMC/BMG etc. They quickly formed the so-called Mountain Training Trust and against every aspect of the EC Directive received PyB for a nominal sum, along with an annual £450,000 grant (£6.5million to date with which to compete on the open market that is Outdoor Pursuits).
In my opinion, no other organisation offering climbing and outdoor pursuit courses with such a safety record or, lack of one, would have been given the management lease of PyB. On the contrary, they would have been hounded out of business (many were).
You could become a statistic. Think very carefully when you choose to engage the services of a BMG/UIAGM/IFMGA mountain guide. Eleven have been killed (2009/2010) and little is known as to the fate of their clients.
Wear helmets.
As pleasant as the picture below may seem [picture to be reinstated] the climber could receive severe head injuries in the event of a fall. [If you have at least half a brain, protect it with a helmet]. The 1,000ft rock face above her is notorious for rock fall and loose rock. The following day, when I was climbing at Sella (Spain) another female climber fell from high on a route. She had gathered in enough slack rope to clip the next bolt running belay above her when she slipped and fell. The fall, plus bad belaying by her second, meant that she fell a good 50 feet before hitting the rock next to me, very heavily. She hurt herself, her unhelmeted head just missing the rock.
She was a client on a rock-climbing course with the National Adventure Centre (the principal venue for rock climbing in Ireland), Tiglin, based in Wicklow, Southern Ireland.
It is also with “official blessing” that the young lady above is climbing whilst not wearing a helmet. Many adverts emanating from the so-called governing body of mountaineering and climbing, the British Mountaineering Council, show rock climbers not wearing protective helmets.
Advertising from Tiglin in a specialist magazine also shows rock climbers not wearing helmets. I call this enticement.
I always climb with a helmet. At Les Gaillands in Chamonix, I am often asked by the local climbers:
“Monsieur, pour quoi le casque?” Why the helmet?
My answer: “Monsieur, pour quoi les chausseures?” Why are you wearing boots? Why are you not climbing bare-footed?
Category : Misc
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