The response they want is for you to stop minimizing those odds by comparing them to things that are nowhere near as dangerous. Compare it with something else that has 1 in 20 chance of death or severe physical trauma.
He’s sure to get the 50,000 cronkites!
I remember the double amputee trying to climb Everest.
Has a blind person made it yet?The whole thing is pretty bizarre-why do you have to “prove” yourself by climbing this mountain?
Why not spend a year working to help poor people? Or volunteer in a homeless shelter?
So how far is too far? What dreams are just too stupid to pursue?
If a kid has a dream to be a war journalist, would it be okay for the parents to take him on a little tour of Afghanistan? Should the budding BASE jumper be encouraged to go for the hardest and deadliest jumps? What if the kid wants to hitchhike across America?
EGO. EGO. EGO.
Everest has ‘name recognition’. To climb Everest is to prove to the world that YOU are superior, special, awesome. Climbing other, more dangerous mountains doesn’t count, YOU have to climb Everest. Huzzah, aren’t YOU a superior being.
Yes, no, maybe.
I made the comparison because the exact same arguments are being made to prevent kids from climbing these peaks. I simply don’t want “them” making decisions about what is right or wrong for parents, especially when the history here points to uninformed people making the overly restrictive decisions. Anything that would prevent Trish from taking 6-year old Alex out in the mountains would be a travesty. She’s a great mom and Alex is a great kid, but I know there are folks who think she’s recklessly endangering her life.
Yes, high-altitude mountaineering is orders of magnitude more dangerous than most other mountain climbing. But if it’s presumably OK for a 18 year old young adult, why not a 17 year old with lots of preparation and motivation? I don’t know the answer, but bright lines forbidding adventures is IMO a general bad idea.
But the exact same arguments don’t hold much water when talking about climbing 4000 foot hills in New Hampshire, while they do when talking about 8000m Himalaya peaks. In New Hampshire, the risks are objectively pretty low, there are things that you can do to manage them, and if you get into trouble help is available. Arguing that it’s terribly dangerous is just false. On the other hand, climbing over 8000m is objectively extremely risky, the dangers can’t be managed and succumbing to them is more or less random, and there’s virtually no help available if you get into trouble. Arguing that it’s terribly dangerous is undeniably true.
I really can’t fathom your position. The two situations aren’t remotely comparable, and yet you continue to insist on comparing them “because the exact same arguments are made against them.” WTF? So if I argue that your kids shouldn’t be allowed to snowmobile (responsibly, on safe trails in supervised conditions) because it’s too dangerous and you disagree (as you probably should), then if I also argue that your kids shouldn’t be allowed to do back-country high mark snowmobiling in known avalanche zones because it’s too dangerous, instead of telling me that they’re two completely different scenarios and the risks in the one case aren’t anything like the risks in the other, you’ll passionately argue that kids should be allowed to ride into avalanche zones so long as their parents are there to videotape it?
If you want to people unknowledgeable about mountaineering to understand that your kid isn’t at unreasonable risk, then you should be pointing out the differences in risk. You shouldn’t be arguing that 1 in 50 chance of death isn’t enough risk that we can tell parents they’re wrong in allowing it.
This is simply not true. In 100+ MPH winds no one is coming to rescue you; you are completely on your own for possibly days at a time. The risks are comparatively low but they are real, and they are far greater than most people imagine. It’s not the same as Everest, but it can and does kill experienced mountaineers on a regular basis. Minimizing the danger is just as bad as over-emphasizing it.
I’m not passionately arguing that the kid should be allowed to attempt this. If I were to talk to the parents I’d strongly advise them that it’s a stupid idea and they are foolish to allow their child to go. But I would have said the same to the blind guy and the guy with two artificial legs, or my friend who is there now if she had asked my opinion. I think high altitude mountaineering (and free solo rock climbing) are incredibly foolish endeavors and I don’t see the point in either of them. Others do, and as much as it pains me to admit it, I’d rather people were allowed to do patently foolish things than to restrict what they do with their lives. Certainly, once you talk about children the impulse is to prevent them from being put in unnecessary harm. I don’t have a good answer to that, but I feel these type of restrictions are a bad idea.
Yes, my argument is essentially a slippery slope argument, but I’ve seen it in action here in NH. There are new rules and regulations in place about charging people for rescues if they are reckless, with no definition of what reckless behavior consists of. I don’t like the direction things are headed and this case touches on some of those issues.
I’ve made my case a few times, and I don’t think I can add more to the discussion. I understand I’m in the minority (of one?) here, so I’ll watch from the sidelines for a while.
Is it really possible for a 13-year-old to develop such a high interest (and, allegedly, experience level) as this without considerable encouragement and facilitating by parents? Coming from parents to children, is that clearly distinguishable from “pushing”? Maybe it is for people who know them well–I don’t know that it is for we removed observers.
For comparison:
These are the mountains Telemark keeps referring to (~4,000 feet) (no “Death Zone”)
These are the Himalaya (25,000+ feet) (Death Zone)
It’s like comparing apples and . . . angry sharks.
Again, in the middle of winter, with 150 MPH winds and temps of -40 they are different. The people who climb Everest say so, this is where they go to train. They filmed parts of the IMAX Everest movie on Mt Washington because it was the only place they could get the cameras that duplicated the conditions they saw on Everest during the rescue.
Still photos of the Presidentials on a clear day aren’t very relevant to the discussion, I’m not sure why you keep bringing this up.
Perhaps these are better illustrations of the weather up there:
Because you’ve insisted on demonstrating over and over again in this thread that you have no comprehension of the staggering scale of differences between the two ranges. Everyone knows the weather is bad in the Presidentials. It’s of little relevance. Bad weather isn’t usually what kills people in the Himalayas. It’s altitude, crevasses, altitude, lack of rescue, and altitude. Those are literally non-factors in New England, and yet you continue charging on with your comparisons.
For crying out loud, you can drive to the top of that mountain. There’s oxygen there. Okay, so it gets cold and windy. So does the city I live in, and every couple years someone dies from hypothermia. Granted, we don’t get winds that high, but the absolute temperature gets lower.
I suppose that since it’s unreasonable to argue that cross-country skiing in Saskatchewan is too dangerous for children, that we should let 13-year-olds make unsupported ski expeditions to the South Pole. Because if you intentionally go out in the worst blizzard of the season, the conditions might be similar to Antarctica, so someone could come here to train (they wouldn’t, they’d go to Iqaluit or something, but whatever). And if you let your kid go skiing in the worst blizzard of the season, you should be charged with child endangerment, because the objective dangers of skiing in blizzards are extremely high.
Or perhaps I’m just not appreciating the dangers of the Presidential Range. Can you give us some fatality statistics? Number of deaths per season, vs number of people who set out to summit these peaks, perhaps? Something that will allow us to say, no, there’s no good distinction between climbing Mt. Washington and climbing Everest, your chance of dying may be lower but they’re comparable in a meaningful way?
Forget it, I give up. I’m not trying to equate the two. I’ve been in the Himalayas and the Whites in winter, I know what they are like. There’s no direct comparison.
But we’re talking about where to draw lines. If you assume climbing Everest is child abuse then somewhere along the way you’ll find people who say climbing Washington in winter is child abuse. People here in New England are saying this now. It was meant to illustrate that reasonable people can disagree on what is acceptable and what is not. Once you start drawing lines it’s logical to examine the issue in light of other, less extreme scenarios. That’s the only point of bringing up the Whites.
And no, everyone does not know the extreme bad weather in the Presidential Range. They assume because the mountains are only 6000’ high, and the fact that there’s a road and a train in summer means they are tame. Winter is a different world up there. I’ll stop bringing up the Whites now, it appears to have sidetracked the conversation.
That two things are both points on some continuum doesn’t mean there’s no way to draw a line between them. You’re making a classic slippery-slope fallacy here, and what’s driving people batty is that you can’t see that.
I see it. I pointed it out in an earlier post. I admit that it makes me uncomfortable to make the argument. But, it’s not by default a fallacy. The state of NH is making important decisions about charging for rescues right now based on this argument. I thought it would be a good point of discussion for this topic since it involves the real world impact of these types of decisions.
And why shouldn’t they charge for rescues? But that’s an entirely different issue.
What’s being asked in this thread is it morally permissible to allow/encourage children to pursue an objectively very dangerous activity, and if it rises to a legal standard of child endangerment or something similar.
What you appear to be arguing is this:
- New Hampshire mountaineering is not so dangerous that parents shouldn’t be allowed to allow/encourage their children to engage in it.
- Some people think New Hampshire mountaineering is too dangerous to allow/encourage children to engage in it.
- In order to disagree with people making the argument in (2), I must also disagree with people who think climbing Everest is too dangerous to allow/encourage children to engage in it.
If you want to discuss the issue of how much backcountry risk is allowable, and how society ought to respond to people engaging in those risks, that’s fine, and I’m sure reasonable people will disagree on where lines should be drawn. But point 3 above is just completely baffling because it appears to require that you believe either that mountaineering in NH is comparable in danger to climbing 8000m peaks, which is ludicrous, or that if it’s debatable whether 1 in 10000 (number pulled out of my butt) chance of death is too much that it must also be debatable whether 1 in 50 chance of death is too much.
I submit that 1 in 50 chance of death is absolutely, beyond question too much risk to undertake for anyone but an informed, consenting adult. A 1 in many thousands chance of death, that we can debate. There’s no non-arbitrary place to draw a line, so if we have to draw a bright line its exact location will be debatable. But 1 in 50 is unquestionably over it. Agreeing that 1 in 50 is over the line doesn’t require that you not argue for a bar relatively higher than someone who thinks any risk is too much.
Then I’m not presenting myself very well, since that is not my argument.
My point is not that NH mountaineering is dangerous or not. Right now we allow people to decide what risks they are willing to take for themselves and their children. I have no real problem with the fact that society has deemed certain things to be too risky for children. They become child endangerment when we as a society decide they do. There are many things that I agree are too risky for kids, things that are much less risky than climbing Everest. I think letting kids ride in cars without seat belts to rises to that level. Call me a hypocrite, I can’t argue with you.
But for some reason this one sticks in my craw because I guess it hits so close to home. It’s an emotional reaction, not a logical one. I freely admit that, I’m not trying to persuade anyone by logic here. I see friends who are raising wonderful, adventurous, strong-willed children in ways that most of society would probably deem too dangerous. I know Trish has gotten some vicious criticism from people who’ve never met her or her daughters and that stings.
I have no idea about this particular 13-year old or his parents. I can only go by what I have read. They could all be wackos, they could be raising great kids in a very unconventional manner. I wish them the best and that everyone returns home safely.