201–210 of 474 posts
I recently went on a 60 mile gravel bike trip with a rather large group (50 riders) in the PNW. It was ~May of last year, and a freak storm came out of nowhere over the mountain, while we were in a large national forest. We were all wearing shorts (weather was in the 60s), and woefully unprepared as the temperature dropped into the 20s. I had thin gloves with holes in them. The storm dumped sleet on us and we had to…
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Honestly the three things you can do easily: 1. Only go deep into nature (out of cell range) with someone experienced. 2. Obtain a rescue device (Apple satellite cell, Garmin GPS emergency beacon, etc). 3. If stranded in a vehicle stay with the vehicle!
> 1. Only go deep into nature (out of cell range) with someone experienced. I think the above is probably the most important. Having someone experienced within arms reach would be the best bet when/if shit hits the fan.
Not just that. One can learn a lot from the mere presence of someone more experienced. How do they prepare, what do they bring, how do they pace themselves, how do they make decisions. Basically it makes it more likely that you don’t even get near the bad situation.
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I think it's basically an "informed consent" thing. If people are clearly informed and consciously aware of the risk, that's completely up to them (eg. free solo climbers). Where it gets tricky, in my opinion is: - we aren't convinced the person is currently capable of making rational decisions - we aren't convinced the person is fully informed and equipped with an intimate understanding of the risk they're undertaki…
I'm not sure how we could enumerate all the possible risks in a wilderness or near wilderness setting.
One time, I was driving at night in the Sierra after a storm - roads were covered in snow. It's a drive I've made close to 100 times without incident. Going around a bend, I saw a car in the ditch on the outside of the curve. I stopped the car, put on the hazards, and went to see if there was anyone in the car. As I was about to cross the highway a car come sliding around the bend more or less sideways. I stopped and…
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Yes, risk can be fun. But everyone I encountered in risk sports knew the difference between "smart crazy" vs "dumb crazy". It is the difference between using knowledge, skill, technology, and mental focus to reduce risk to manageable levels, vs "getting away with it". Getting away with it, riding on PDL — Pure Dumb Luck — can work for a long time. Until it doesn't, and you're dead. Like those YouTube idiots in the ar…
In my experience, some people operate on PDL because they never learned about risk in general, or are incapable of operating differently. If you get hurt as a kid in a lower stakes fashion, you start to learn that breaking the rules hurts. That opportunity for lower stakes learning might be shrinking as we legislate away some "risky" stuff. Some people simply can't handle the "constraints" of being responsible... lik…
Yup, humans are generally awful at understanding and managing risk, and it is in no small part because there is almost anti-training about risk outside of high-risk activities, and even some of those are very low on guidance and high on PDL.
>> I still wouldn't feel bad - that's the way they chose to live thier life.
True, 'tho I feel like it is my better to not die soon-ish doing what I love, but enjoy many decades of doing what I love; doing it a little smarter and sometimes not quite at Warp-9 every second, so I can do more Warp-9 seconds later.
I used to be an alpine ski racer, downhill my best event. At one national championship, the lower half of the race course was pretty flat and the race organizers decided to spice up one of the drop-offs with a bigger jump, building an illegal ramp before the drop-off (the FIS rules for Downhill stated that features cannot be sloped up before the racers leave the ground, level or down-slope only). I decided I had the knowledge I needed without pushing it on that feature in training so shed some speed every training run. For the several days of training runs before the race, every afternoon we were visiting friends in the hospital with fairly serious injuries from that feature (one back injury never raced again and never fully recovered). By race day, they'd decided to make it legal and shaved off the ramp. I have never felt that I missed out on anything by being aggressive on the top and skipping the Warp-9 attitude there...
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The key in surf is to never fight against the rip. While it can feel scary to get pulled out, remember that 99% of the time, it will end after you are pulled past the break, at which point you can swim laterally a bit and then go back in with help from the waves. Breaking waves naturally create alternating channels in the sand that either push you towards the shore or pull you back out to the break. The other 1% of t…
The good news is if you don't struggle against the current you should be able to stay afloat for a couple hours, long enough for help to arrive
Rip tides pull out, so let them pull you past the break then swim side to side. You shouldn't need more than 15-20 min to get past the worst of it, and can work laterally to inbound waves.
I've been on mountain peaks on nice summer days when storms appear as out of nowhere (not the typical afternoon rains), and there's lightning, high winds, and 50ºF temperature swings. In that kind of situation, things can turn very dangerous very quickly. Stuff that you take for granted suddenly isn't true any more: some rock which is rough and gives great traction suddenly gets slippery, winds that come from a prevailing direction suddenly come from somewhere else and the formerly sheltered areas aren't any more, clouds and fogs may come in and visibility may drop to zero.
A common trap is slot canyons in the southwest desert in the summer, when it's hot and dry, and hikers don't know about the rains in the distant mountains.
It's easy to turn your back on the ocean, which isn't forgiving. Large waves can happen when least expected.
One time, I was driving at night in the Sierra after a storm - roads were covered in snow. It's a drive I've made close to 100 times without incident. Going around a bend, I saw a car in the ditch on the outside of the curve. I stopped the car, put on the hazards, and went to see if there was anyone in the car. As I was about to cross the highway a car come sliding around the bend more or less sideways. I stopped and…
It only takes 80ma across your heart to stop it. Mains voltage, in both the US and the rest of the world, can easily develop that kind of current, especially if there is moisture involved. And yet plenty of folks have accidental contact without lasting effects. Electricity is fickle that way. The difference between, no problem and totally dead can be subtle, random and not obvious. It all depends on the path the curr…
I think that’s because most accidental contact doesn’t produce much current across your heart. Touching the two wires of mains electricity with one hand? Not a good idea, but unlikely to kill you. Touching one with your left and one with your right hand? Way more risky. Grabbing one with your left and one with your right hand? Even more risky.
And of course, modern circuitry often has circuit breakers that in many cases rapidly stop the current from flowing.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Residual-current_device#Purpos...:
“To reduce the risk of electrocution, RCDs should operate within 25–40 milliseconds with any leakage currents[clarification needed] (through a person) of greater than 30 mA, before electric shock can drive the heart into ventricular fibrillation, the most common cause of death through electric shock. By contrast, conventional circuit breakers or fuses only break the circuit when the total current is excessive (which may be thousands of times the leakage current an RCD responds to). A small leakage current, such as through a person, can be a very serious fault, but would probably not increase the total current enough for a fuse or overload circuit breaker to isolate the circuit, and not fast enough to save a life.”
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Look to your local Community College or State University extension office. Many of them offer outdoors classes. The problem with private wilderness survival classes you may find in the community, even the light versions, is that they tend to come with a very particular political slant. And that slant tends toward the paranoid.
As long as the paranoia is about how nature is going to try and kill you at any chance it gets, sounds good to me!
Although, that is my experience in multiple mid-western states; so it may not translate to other parts of the country.