The Risk of Dying While Doing What We Love

Multiple hours of slogging directly uphill in the fog, constantly checking topomaps to see how much elevation I’ve gained (usually about 10m) and stopping about every 10 steps for snow berries (and to catch my breath).

I reach a scree area, which is exciting because it means I must be close to the top however it’s also getting more difficult to traverse. This is where I wish the fog was gone so I could see a better route which I’m sure there was because my route was terrible.

I finally reach the ridge line and climb along to get the turn point. Finally!! Who knew the XC Track sound could be so rewarding. I begin to head along the ridge line towards the next turnpoint. Where I’m heading there’s still cloud sitting on the ridge. The wind feels good right here and there’s a good gap in the cloud.

Should I just take off now and not worry about the last turnpoint? Don’t really feel like a dodgy walk along the ridge line in low vis conditions. Maybe I can even get the Buchanan turnpoint in flight! I set up to take off, soon I’m up and away.

Too easy. I try to get close to the ridge to get the turnpoint but there’s so much cloud sitting over Buchanan Peak I can’t seem to get it and don’t want to fly closer. I wasted time on a barely there thermal and then after a bit of glide I’ve landed in the station again.

Now time to pack up and walk out. But as I plan what I could do for the rest of the race I start to realise the easiest turnpoint for me to get next is the one on Buchanan Peak which I missed!

Once I’ve packed I head straight up the hill from where I landed. Hopefully I can fly off again! My heart sinks more and more as I get higher and feel the wind becoming stronger and the cloud coming in. The foggy soup is back. All this slog for what? To not be able to fly? Can I even walk down? Of course I can, but I can’t go the way I came up as it’s far too steep. How am I going to get down? Maybe the ridge line, so I follow it down. Seems like other people have walked here or maybe an angry tahr. It’s good but is taking me away from the direction I want to go.

I can see on topomaps there’s a 4WD track lower I can try to link up with. I’m below the cloud layer and can even see now! I’m relieved. I now turn my attention to my next aim, getting out of the station before the 9:30pm cut off.

It’s a challenge. I walk/run down the rest of the mountain and keep walking fast once I get to the bottom. Don’t worry about the blisters or the heavy gear. I walk and walk. Finally I make it out of the station to past the bridge. Now I can get picked up for the night! Amazing!! Hot chips and a nice shower. All I have to do the next day is walk back from there to Wanaka. What a dawdle. I wish I had a paramotor.

Day 3: I start walking early at 7:30am. Not sure how long the walk from the Matukituki Bridge to Wanaka will take. It’s pretty interesting the different things you pick up in the landscape when you’re going slower and are not in a car. I make much better progress than anticipated and get to Wanaka before mid day. Guess I can get the Mt Iron and Mt Barker turnpoints in town before I finish then. Yay.

More walking. The road walking wasn’t great but was much more tolerable than anticipated. Anything but elevation was nice. It’s quite cold too, not good flying weather with stronger winds.

Finally I make it to the end and there’s other finishers there cheering! I don’t know whether to be buzzing or relieved. What a crazy few days! Hopefully next year I’ll get to fly over Alta and Buchanan Peaks instead.

Left; Jess with Tom at the finish line

Photo; James Gibson ©

an american sailplane pilot has attempted to quantify the risks attendant in high-risk sports including gliding, hang gliding and paragliding. the difficulty here is the dearth of reliable data and the lack of a common denominator to aid comparisons. Clemens Ceipek suggests that the most useful common datapoint is the risk of dying per hour of participating in a particular activity.

For many recreational occupations there is no available US data and several European sources were used. Ceipek benchmarked certain activities against travelling on commercial airlines – one of the safest things you can do outside the home. He says the chance of dying within your next 1,000 hours of airline flying is 0.01%. Driving, cycling, skiing and marathon running aren’t nearly as safe, but they are still quite safe.

By this method of comparison, flying sailplanes is one of the more dangerous activities. In Germany and France the sport has a fatality rate of 1 in 50,000 participation hours; the risk of dying within the next 1,000 hours of participation is thus 2% – twice as risky as riding motorcycles and about 200 times as dangerous as commercial flying.

Flying powered aircraft is a bit safer than gliding; hang gliding and paragliding are slightly more dangerous. Climbing in the Teton range in Wyoming, USA, is much more dangerous, and BASE jumping is shown to be 480,000 times more dangerous than commercial aviation!

Another way to look at these risks is to compare them to the normal risk of dying of any cause at different life stages. An 18-year-old has a much lower risk of dying within their next 1,000 life-hours than a 90-year-old. The odds that an 18-year-old American male will die within their next 1,000 life-hours is about 0.01% – the same odds as airline flying; a 90-year-old male has a 1.9% chance. The slope of the curve remains fairly flat until the age of 50 and really steepens at around 75.

Superimposing the above activities onto the death-probability-within-1000 hours chart reveals that commercial flying, driving, skiing, cycling and marathon running are all on the relatively flat part of the curve (see graphic). As you move along the curve the risk level increases much more steeply.

Scuba diving is about as dangerous as being 80; motorcycling corresponds to the normal risk of being 85. GA, gliding, hang gliding and paragliding, and downhill mountain biking, come next, each about as risky as the normal lives of people aged 88 to 95. Further up the slope, skydiving is about as dangerous as the normal life of a 107-year-old, and climbing in the Tetons is about as dangerous as being 119.

Ceipek believes we should be aware of these risk levels and take precautions to reduce them. Most fatal accidents in sports result, at least in part, from human error and thus could be avoided. Risk-mitigation strategies exist for all activities; deploying them deliberately and consistently can help you stay alive.

This research is the first serious attempt to measure the relative risks of the sports we engage in. According to Ceipek’s data our chosen pursuits of hang gliding and paragliding are, respectively, 250 times (based on UK data) and 286 times (German data) more dangerous, per hour of participation, than airline flying; both are around twice as safe as skydiving. He offers no data for paramotoring; on recent form UK paramotoring might be closer to skydiving than gliding.

You can pick many holes in Ceipek’s methodology and his uneven sources (his participation-hours data will be very weak in many cases), but his research has added a little statistical weight to a hitherto vague field of study. One day we’ll have reliable global data to make much more accurate assessments; right now his research is the best we’ve got.

The bottom line is awareness, and taking actions and precautions in the light of that awareness. The article is at https:// chessintheair.com/the-risk-of-dying- doing-what-we-love. It’s worth studying. -BHPA SkyWings