outsideinsights
Active Terrain Management By Tony Tsuboi, Climb Leader
Jill and Wesley Thornton with sons Werner and Townes on the summit of Buckhorn Mountain in the Olympics. Photo courtesy of Wesley Thornton.
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ne of my first jaunts into the alpine was blindly following friends to the summit of Kaleetan Peak. As we climbed, rocks whizzed passed me, kicked off by my friends above. On the descent, my roommate slipped on a slick patch and was nearly swept down a steep chute that dropped a hundred feet below. He was saved by the quick action of another companion, grabbing him by his collar. I count experiences like these as part of our nine lives, and by now I have burned through more than half of my own. Today, as one of the club’s safety officers, I read incident reports and I harken back to days like those and the lessons I have learned along the way. Frequently, these are minor incidents and are largely inconsequential. However, there are often incidents and near misses that could have been catastrophic in result, often with lessons for how we might do things differently in the future. In the incident report form, we ask the reporting parties to reflect on what occurred and why. Often, the comments are something along the lines of, “There’s nothing we could have done about it. It was bad luck.” Well, was it? At The Mountaineers, we have not yet built the type of safety culture that treats close calls like these as actionable lessons to learn from. Every incident is an opportunity to reflect, a
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mountaineer | spring 2021
chance to think through what, if anything, we might have done differently. In the ski and avalanche culture, we call these free lessons. I’m challenging us to adopt that mindset. As an example, take the climbing classes we run in Leavenworth. Is it bad luck when one of our students slips on a thick mat of dry pine needles and tumbles down a rock slab, or might there have been things we could have done to prevent what occurred or mitigate their consequences? Seasoned climbers know instinctively that dry pine needles on hard slabby surfaces slide. We intuitively tip toe through, choosing islands of exposed rock to step upon. We avoid stepping squarely on thick mats of needles on slabby slopes. One action we could take is sharing simple awareness with the groups we are managing - something along the lines of, “Hey, these pine needles are slick. Be careful as you head down this gulley.” That should be enough to get the attention of our group and put them on guard. We can model the desired behavior. “Watch how I’m stepping only on the exposed rock, not the pine needles, and I will use handholds so I can maintain three points of contact as I descend this step.” As an instructor, I am applying kinesthetics to show what to do in an experiential manner that others can observe and apply. Lastly, I can position myself below a crux or location of concern to spot
