[Waterman]

http://hcn.org death in the alpine Interesting article sure to be provocative.

[Token Civilian]

https://www.hcn.org/issues/50.8/recreation-death-in-the-alpine Better link

[awilsondc]

Good read. This social media thing ain't goin' away folks. Is there a Washington version of Capitol Peak? aka dangerous peak (or any location really) that is make popular via social media leading to unprepared people venturing out and not taking the risks seriously enough, leading to bad outcomes? Palouse Falls maybe... Not quite Capitol Peak, but there seems to be an uptick of injury and death there lately.

[Yana]

I don't think this is a new phenomenon. Unprepared (and sometimes simply unlucky) people have been getting themselves injured, lost, and killed in the wilderness for a long time. The difference with social media is that it does increase the numbers of people going certain places because the information is more readily available. However, I don't agree with how the article attempts to attribute the decisions those people made to social media. Maybe people decide to go to a certain place in the first place because they saw it on Instagram, but once there - routefinding errors, trying ill advised shortcuts, and loose rock have long been common causes of accidents, and they're certainly not limited to the inexperienced. The article almost makes it seem like simply being convinced to go somewhere because they see lots of others doing it is the cause of these increased deaths, whereas the truth is social media simply adds more people to the equation (thus magnifying an already existing problem).

[Ski]

^ that looks about the same as it did when I was up there 24 years ago.

[RumiDude]

[markweth]

[Ski]

[rbuzby]

This may be too general, but today I think we have more people than ever that are ignorant, but are convinced they are knowledgeable. Or at least, convinced that they don't need expertise, or to listen to experts. Like in the article, "if someone from Kansas can do it, I can do it". Apparently not thinking that maybe the guy from Kansas was an experienced alpinist. There is a de-valuing of knowledge and expertise in general today. The internet contributes to it. You can find your own facts, and people who agree with you. And get your own info on how to climb a mountain, you don't need any special expertise experience or skill. You've been on a few hikes, you can climb that mountain just like those other people did.

[Kim Brown]

The most disturbing thing in the article is the last sentence. To me, that is the crux, and what we must not become.

[Yana]

[Kim Brown]

[Windstorm]

I hope the SAR teams are doing ok. Dealing with that many fatalities so close together would be rough.

[rbuzby]

3 people who died on that mountain died while trying to descend the North Face, because they "heard" there was a route down that way. Imagine climbing a peak with a scary knife edge on the main (easiest) route, and concluding that you are going to descend an alternate route via the North face, which most of us know is usually the gnarliest face (for peaks in the Northern Hemisphere). Those 3 got some wrong info from somewhere, and apparently did not seek out accurate info. Is that because social media showed them other people climbing the peak, and they concluded they didn't need to do any research? I wonder. The Pitkin County Sheriff’s Office released a statement clarifying that there is no alternate hiking route down the north face of Capitol Peak. “If there was a safe shortcut, it would be the standard route,” it said.

[RumiDude]

From the article: "That can affect people’s assessments of how dangerous things are: What once seemed extreme becomes normal if you look at enough Instagram photos showing other people doing it. Jerry Isaak, a professor at the State University of New York, Plattsburgh, first began studying how the prevalence of social media affects decision-making in remote, high-risk environments a few years ago." This is what I was referencing in my earlier post. Repeated viewing of similar things affects how we judge things as far as relative danger, ease of accomplishing, etc. Seeing so many videos and photos of people doing things makes them appear to be less dangerous and easier to do. It works the same way with the things we fear. Watching news over and over about home invasion, carjacking, etc. has many people deathly afraid of visiting large cities. Rumi