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Outside Magazine July 2002

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Risk (Cont.)

THE CRUX OF THE PROBLEM IS THIS: foreknowledge. Successful risk management requires not just the best gear and guiding smarts but a clientele that has been briefed to the point of information overload. You can never be certain about an outcome—but you can be fully prepared.

"You have to understand the risks in order to make the best safety decisions," says Daryl Miller, 58, head of mountaineering operations at Denali National Park. In 1995, Miller and his rangers began bombarding mountaineers with facts about the risks they faced on Mount McKinley; gradually a risk management system was put in place. Permit applicants now receive a brochure laying out the dangers in eight languages. Once in Talkeetna, the stepping-off point for all McKinley expeditions, climbers attend a mandatory preclimb PowerPoint briefing. Rangers fresh off the hill give them route conditions, weather and avalanche forecasts, and glacier information—and they hammer home the point that there is no right of rescue.

The results have been dramatic. On a mountain notorious for attracting hairball climbers and atrocious weather, accidents have declined every year since 1995. McKinley hasn't had a climbing fatality since 1998.

Nobody likes to give the death talk. It takes guts to harsh the pretrip high, to tell a roomful of people who've signed $5,000 checks that, if something goes wrong, they could die a slow, painful death in the middle of nowhere. But as Miller has found out, it's the most honest advice a guide can give a client. "One of the things I tell all climbers is that people who fail to recognize and respect the elements will lose their life," he says. "The wilderness is unforgiving. It doesn't care about your résumé."

Lawsuits like Sunday v. Stratton Corp. and Ro v. San Juan Mountain Guides may work in a similar way to actually deepen the outdoor experience in America. By making us acknowledge the risks we can expect to encounter, they force us to reckon with the basic question of outdoor adventure: What are we willing to risk and what do we hope to gain?

"The real art of risk management is knowing how to have that candid exchange without freaking out both sides," says risk consultant Preston Cline. "The point is to protect the clients by not lying to them. And if you tell them it's safe, you're lying to them."

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