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- The Modern Mountain
- Quit The Koolaid
- Risks
- Learning Fast
- Planning Expeditions
- How To Find Partners
The Modern Mountain
Sat Feb 07 2026 16:00:00 GMT-0800 (Pacific Standard Time)
Bullet point summary:
More accessible information means more climbers are in the mountains progressing faster without mentorship.
The modern mountain must be viewed as having people as a large variable of hazard.
If you are new seek out mentors at all costs as you will learn things you can't get in books.
If you are experienced or sensible and don’t want to get hurt by other people being dumb, head to less popular areas and/or climb at times of the day when people aren’t on the route above you.
Gully routes are much more risky with these changes than ridgelines or buttresses where falling objects have a chance to bounce off route.
In light of a recent accident and a particularly warm winter on Mt Hood I’ve been contemplating the changing conditions of winter alpine climbing. With climbing making it into the mainstream media, more folk are getting outside and into the mountains. This is bringing a hazard that I haven’t personally seen to have been quite as much of a problem until now: people. Verily, the big name routes have been crowded for some time now with the hazards of inexperienced climbers dropping things or falling being common. However, I am now seeing unprepared and inexperienced climbers on routes that should be reserved for more experienced alpinists.
I climb the Devil’s Kitchen headwall route (WI2-3 800ft) on Mt Hood at least once a season and over the last five years I have seen a dramatic increase in the number of climbers on the route, bad technique, and dangerous behavior. Last time one particular party dropped their rope and a tool on us, placed incredibly bad protection saying “good enough for the alpine right”, and got lost on the upper section which is not very hard to navigate. A few days later a climber fell to their death soloing while their partner had a rope available to use and nearly took out another climber on the way down. This is by no means a hard route, but it is far and away beyond where you should be learning how to place good gear and climb on ice.
I believe these types of things will only increase in severity due to the changes in how people find themselves in the practice of alpinism. Before, climbing was not mainstream and information was sparse and learned slowly from mentorship. Now Alex Honnold’s free solos are livestreamed on Netflix and any idiot can click a button to buy some gear and hop on route. Don’t get me wrong, people have always done dumb stuff and taken risks. One could argue that it’s part of the point and freedom of climbing. The difference is that now there are more people that can kill you while they do dumb stuff and take risks while you do dumb stuff and take risks over more people that you can kill while doing dumb stuff and taking risks. The hazard is compounding at a rate that will only increase.
So how do you avoid this? Firstly, partners need to check each other’s ego and take the safer option if it’s available. There was no reason for the climber to have not been using the tag line that was in his partner’s backpack. If he had he would still be alive. Seek out more experienced mentors so that you can learn the subtleties of climbing that you’ll never get from an Instagram reel. Go hold a cardboard sign up that says you’re looking for someone to learn from at your local hot spot. Get on the social media groups. There’s no end of options and no excuse not to do things the right way these days.
Learning the right way means putting in the time to get it in your bones. You can’t just know it in your head. Your body has to know it without you needing to think about it. If you learn the right way you’ll know to chip down large chunks of ice before you let them fall so that they don’t break someone’s hand, and you’ll know where to swing your tools so that doesn’t happen in the first place. You’ll know not to settle for crappy placements and to do the work to get good gear for your anchors. You’ll realize that just because you climbed the easier route already does not mean that you are ready to climb the harder route.
Secondly, we have to realize that not everyone is going to pay any attention to this and will be too eager to climb, and this final section goes out to the more experienced climbers. The modern mountain must be viewed as a probabilistic field of hazards with people taking an ever higher spot as the most likely and dangerous hazard. We know that during the heat of the day a rock band may send down deadly blocks and to start early to avoid this. We know to move quickly underneath seracs and give a wide berth to cornices and crevasses. We must view the flow of people over time and over terrain as a similar danger, picking our way through a route by choosing the days and times and routes with less people and less overhead danger. A gully route at 8am on a Saturday is asking for trouble, but at 2am or on a Thursday it may be reasonable. Buttresses and ridges would be the safer option, and less popular peaks, sub peaks, and difficult to access aspects would also be smart choices as the years roll on.
As sad as it may be, you may not want to hop on quite a number of the classic routes these days. However, the good news is that for the intrepid explorer who can think outside the box there are quite a few routes and variations that would have very little hazard of having too many people. Look at the terrain that no one else is paying attention to. Drop the pretense that climbing is about getting to the summit. It’s about challenging yourself, being free, and having fun. These days Devil’s Kitchen Headwall doesn’t check any of those three boxes. Now I walk around the mountain and look for small routes on sub-formations. I go with no agenda and climb what looks to be good fun for me that day. I think there’s ways to do this as an intermediate climber. Charlie Sassara once gave me the advice, “only pushing.” By this he meant to keep your tools below you with no overhead swinging and pulling. If you follow this as a rule, you should be able to climb back down anything you climb up, and you shouldn’t be at risk of pulling a tool.