Risk management - adventure travel and beyond

As you likely know, I will be heading to Tanzania in January for 12 days to climb Mount Kilimanjaro. Although requiring no technical mountaineering skills (it is considered a walk-up mountain), the elevation (19,341 feet) itself makes the journey difficult. For comparison, the highest point in the continental US is Mount Whitney in California at 14,505 feet.

Many people erroneously believe that an adventure such as this is an inappropriate risk, especially considering I have two small children. I find this quite an ignorant perspective for three reasons:

1. So many people's "knowledge" about adventure travel or mountaineering is based on mainstream media. Accounts and coverage of mountaineering by most media is contained to disasters, see this link for a blog post from a reputable adventure blog on the topic.

2. Disasters such as the 1996 tragedy on Mount Everest chronicled by John Krakauer in his best selling book Into Thin Air are the result of a number of factors including poor decision making by people on the mountain. Rarely does a "freak accident" occur on a mountain that results in the loss of life. Typically there are circumstances driven by human weakness and poor decision making that drive tragedy in a physical environment where the margin of error is incredibly small.

3. If you objectively evaluate the risks of most adventure travel, the highest risk activity is being in a car in a foreign country. See this link for another blog post from an adventure traveler and physician who writes extensively on the topic.

If you are interested in the idea of risk management in high altitude mountaineering I would highly recommend the book No Shortcuts to the Top by Ed Viesturs. Viesturs is by most accounts the most accomplished American mountaineer in history. His longevity in the sport is unique, and a large part of the book is dedicated to his ideas why. He does not consider himself a risk taker, rather a risk manager. Many times he has made a difficult decision not to continue high on a mountain with a summit in sight. He attributes this careful calculation of risk and unwillingness to push the envelope as the primary reason he has experienced both the success and longevity he has in mountaineering.

So before you pass judgment the next time you read about a tragedy in a "high risk" activity such as mountain climbing, make sure to educate yourself about the root cause of the issue. You might find that the activity itself isn't to blame, but as with most failures, the human inability to properly assess and mitigate risk.