By MARTIN JOHNSTON
A study has confirmed what most non-climbers have always known - mountaineering is dangerous.
An Otago University researcher calculates the fatality rate in Mount Cook National Park is 1.87 deaths for every 1000 days spent climbing.
The chances of dying from a work-related injury were about 5000 times lower than
that, Dr Murray Malcolm wrote in the latest New Zealand Medical Journal.
With the risks of rock-fall, avalanches, frostbite and falling off or into a deep crevasse, mountaineering is surpassed by few pastimes in the danger stakes. Many mountaineers are used to vainly trying to conceal the risks from their loved ones, comparing the dangers of driving, crossing the road or airline travel.
They will wince at Dr Malcolm's results, which rely on coroners' reports and Department of Conservation figures on the number of people staying in the park's mountaineering huts.
Mountaineer and guide John Glasgow - who, when aged 25, made the first successful ascent with Peter Gough of Mt Cook's notorious Caroline Face in 1970 - said yesterday that he had always tried to be honest with his family about the dangers.
"The most dangerous mindset is that you're a safe climber. The mindset you have to have is that it's a dangerous environment and you will be as safe as possible."
When asked if he was still an active climber, he said, "I would be more active if my family were more at ease with it."
He had pulled out of a planned climb of Mt Cook when his wife, who was pregnant, "freaked out" after hearing the broadcast of alpine guide Rob Hall saying goodbye to his wife by radio as he lay dying near the summit of Mt Everest in 1996.
Dr Malcolm's research was based on the 46 deaths in the park between July 1981 and June 1995.
Of the 33 deaths he included in his calculations, nine had no witnesses and no bodies were found - they may have fallen into glacier crevasses. Eight people fell while climbing unroped and five deaths were from falls in which climbers were roped together.
He said his study "provides a little more data to help climbers answer the question, 'Is it worth the risk'?"
