Climbers Dispute Sport’s Reputation for Being Dangerous

Splatter is one of many glib neologisms climbers have for falling. A few others are grounder, crater, screamer, bounce, pop, peel, winger, whipper, or frappe and do the fish dance.

Although gravity is an ever-present hazard, there’s some dispute about how dangerous rock climbing really is.

The National Safety Council ranks mountain sports as the third most dangerous recreational activity behind motorcycling and hang gliding. But Jed Williamson, editor of The American Alpine Club’s annual report “Climbing Accidents in North America,” contends that accidents among properly trained climbers are relatively rare.

Williamson said despite the increase in participants, serious accidents have held steady at about 200 per year. Fatalities average about 28, many of them occurring not on rocks, but on high mountains like Alaska’s McKinley where killer storms take their toll, he said.

“I haven’t come across a single fatality resulting from sport climbing and I’ve been compiling these statistics for 20 years,” Williamson said.

He criticizes the National Safety Council’s reporting criterion as misleading.

“If a first-time hiker stumbles off a scenic overlook, that’s counted as a mountain climbing accident,” he said. “Well, if I’m driving by the Indianapolis Speedway in my family car, decide to hop on the track and get killed, should that count as an automobile racing accident?”

The scenario Williamson paints is just the sort of ill-conceived spontaneity that Casey Abbott, an occasional rock climber from Ventura, witnessed in March along California 33.

Abbott had paused above the Rose Valley turnout to have a look at the 300-foot sandstone slab called the Sespe Wall, which he hoped to climb sometime soon.

“There were two guys getting ready to climb the wall. I noticed that they were in street clothes, wearing basketball shoes and they didn’t have a rope,” Abbott said. “It was getting pretty late in the afternoon to start a long climb like that, so right away I thought that these guys must be good or have done this before or something.”

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The two were brothers from Maricopa--David Billingsly, 28 and 21-year-old Robert, who the family called Bobby.

The pair ignored two well-established routes and began climbing over an unused, lichen-covered rock.

“The older brother, when he was about 30 feet up, asked me if he thought a fall from that distance could be fatal.”

Abbott told him of course it could.

“That’s when I realized that they weren’t climbers and that they were probably going to get into serious trouble.”

Meanwhile, Bobbie Billingsly had climbed far above his older brother, advancing more than 200 vertical feet in 30 minutes.

“His athleticism was unbelievable,” Abbott said. “I thought he was possessed.”

Abbott described what happened when Billingsly found a hold that was 18 inches out of reach.

“He jumped. He was more than 100 feet up and he just jumped up and grabbed it. I’m telling you my heart stopped. I turned to my girlfriend and, I wish I hadn’t said this, but I said to her, ‘I think we’re going to see somebody die today.’ ”

They did.

Less than 50 feet from the top, Billingsly veered onto a part of the rock where the holds are thin. Abbott said he appeared to be retreating when part of the rock he was holding broke. The fall lasted five seconds--long enough, according to deputies, for Billingsly to shout, “Look out. I’m coming down.”

He landed on his head.

That left David Billingsly paralyzed in fear 130 feet directly above his brother’s body. Abbott said although he tried to rescue the older brother, David Billingsly spent well over an hour clinging to rock before being assisted down.

Search and rescue volunteer Mike Jauregui, a 52-year-old optometrist from Ojai, climbed above Billingsly on one of the clearly discernible routes that the brothers had earlier ignored.

Jauregui set an anchor, then lowered a rope to the shivering man, who had inexplicably taken off his shirt and one shoe and thrown them down the mountain.

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Climbing rescues are a seasonal thing, Jauregui said. “Most of them are people who are drinking and doing the macho thing. They start climbing rocks, get 40 feet up, take one look down and freeze.” These are the sort of incidents that give climbing the undeserved reputation as a dangerous sport.

The biggest irony, he said, is that sport climbing is safe precisely because climbers fall so often. Since the goal is to climb at the limit of their ability, they always take the proper precautions to prepare for a slip-up, by using bolts and ropes to catch themselves.

Abbott is not persuaded. He said it took him days to get over witnessing Billingsly’s fall and he doubts he will return to climbing.

“I know those skills might be helpful in rescue situations so I’m not going to abandon them, but as far as doing it for fun, no, not any more.”