Hello and welcome to my climbing safety site. I'm Mike Yukish, and I climb recreationally. This site is my meager contribution to the climbing community, in return for all that I have taken.

Climbing is a risky pursuit, no doubt about it. Much trust is placed in our gear, our partners, and our own ability to 'do the right thing' everytime we tie in and start moving up. Climbing does not always have to be physically or technically difficult, but it is in general inherently unforgiving of mistakes. And anyone who is going to have a long career in climbing is going to make mistakes. If they are lucky and the gods are smiling on them, a hard lesson earned cheap will result. If they are not lucky that day...you get a hard lessoned earned hard. That's why we (should) have insurance.

That is the purpose of this website, to serve as a repository for your hard-earned lessons that we can all learn from from. Spine-tingling, there-I-was, I'll never-do-that-again features that inform, entertain, and educate...and it comes from you, the folks on the walls, crags, and boulders.  Read  it, discuss it, and submit your own.

How to Contribute: Send me a file or an email with the story, or a pointer to the story at another URL site. Have a picture to go with it? Send it too. Humor is valued, of course. The story should offer some sort of 'lesson learned' for the rest of us. This is not a site specifically for trip reports, although if a TR contains lessons learned, bring it on. I'll spell-check and grammar check it too, if you allow. No profanity, sorry. Use the #%$&-ing keys if you must. I will not accept stories from anonymous authors, but I will post them as anonymous or whatever other CB handle you want to use, at your request.

My goal is to model this site after APPROACH magazine, a safety-related magazine for Naval Aviation. I highly recommend you give the APPROACH magazines a perusal, they are downloadable as a (big) PDF file. You'll get a feel for how sharing your own faux pas' and other can add to a community's body of knowledge, and you might gain a wee bit more respect for the folks who land planes on ships.

Here's some info on Operational Risk Management, swiped again from the Navy. Something to think about.

Here's some helpful hints from John Dill of Yosemite fame, on how to stay alive while climbing. It is a PDF file.

Here's some excellent info from Brutus of Wyde, with regards to lead climbing of the trad nature.
 
 

Legal small print follows:
Management reseves the right to do whatever he wants, whenever he wants to, as often as he likes.

Here's the list, growing slow but sure:
 

1. Lying on the ground, writhing in agony as I desperately fought death...
2. I used to tie in to Top Ropes with a single locking biner...
3. Being inherently lazy, when top roping I try to do more than one climb off the same set up...
4. I'm not interested in starting or participating in a debate on helmets...
5. This guy managed to rig his ATC/biner from his gear loop...
6. We were using what I regard as pretty standard toprope setup...
7. Next time we need to climb faster...
8. The Braille Book is not to be underestimated...
9. What made this fall scary was that I had absolutely no idea I was so close to groundfall range...
10. When I was able to stand again, I turned downslope to see Bill flying down the chute...
11. People often quip that "it's not the fall that hurts you, it's the landing."  In my case, it was neither...
12. I'd like to commend the NPS rangers, the EMTs, and all the climbers who participated in my carry-out...
13. I will never forget the look of sheer terror on his face...
14. I lay on the ground stunned and scared for a few seconds...
15. Apparently I had ruptured an artery behind my knee when I fell...