UKH

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/mar/27/heather-morning-being-male-an...

Interesting reading (if not *totally* surprising 🙄)

I *was* surprised at the over sixty males being the most reckless. Always thought it would be younger men. Perhaps there's some stubbornness at play in the older demographic?

I saw a post on Facebook this morning (either Scottish mountain areas or UK ground conditions) of someone's trip up central gully on Ben Lui. Described something like "great conditions, lots of snow higher up". Accompanied by several photos including one of the main face. Clearly failed to mention the obvious large, full depth avalanche on the left hand side of the gully. Ignorance is bliss.

(The comments were full of people talking about the avalanche). 

She didn't say most reckless, she said most likely to get into difficulties. There is a subtle difference.

I guess younger men have fewer dodgy ankles / knees / hips / backs *and* their eyes work better.

It's definitely wasted on the young...

I think this is more down to people over 60 being more prone to having heart attacks and other unrelated medical conditions while out in the hills, rather than them being reckless.

Not so much stubbornness as (a) reliance on experience gain when younger/fitter/more-resilient and (b) less physical resources to fall back on when things go bad. In my 30s, if caught out by a blizzard I'd just put on an extra layer, tighten the fell shoes and run out just a bit quicker. Now in my 60s I might have extra layers, but the 'run out a bit quicker' just isn't going to happen!

I had to leave that group, I just couldn't cope with the unconsciously incompetent using it as a mouthpiece to sound off and slag people off.

10 deaths out of 114 is a meaningless statistic without knowing the ratio of men to women heading up the mountains. 

I am in my late 70s, and I very definitely feel the cold a lot more than I used to when I was younger. Also my eyesight is worse and I have noticed that I am more prone to catching a foot and tripping more easily than I used to. The result is that I have slowed down a lot, and am having to take a lot more care, particularly when descending, so a day out in the hills now takes longer that it used to, with a increasing risk of being overtake by darkness, which brings it's own problems even with a head torch. It's not nice growing older when this impacts on the life style I used to take for granted, but at least I am still relatively fit and active, and can still enjoy the outdoors. It just means being sensible and lowering my sights so that it is still enjoyable and fun.

Carry on Trangia keeping the flames burning as long as you can, and rally against meaningless vested interests articles with your comrades on UKC.

True, but it is probably closer to 2:1 than 10:1. 

Is there any published statistics for that? I would've thought it's a good bit more than 2:1. But in any case it's a poor conclusion from Heather Morning when there are considerably more men in the hills than women. You've also got to consider the statistics re some of the riskier forms of winter mountaineering in the event of things going wrong. Winter climbing has a strong male dominance in it's participation levels, as does solo walking.

Exactly, half arsed reporting to grab a headline. 

Wow, I'm not sure how helpful her approach to men is, making broad generalisations about a certain gender backed up with some statistics totally lacking context, and being unclear exactly what she is implying about the older men who are apparently most likely to get into difficulties (which doesn't seem to match up with what she says about younger people inappropriately relying on a phone or inexperienced people not understanding how different conditions can be at the top of a mountain). 

There are statistics showing men take greater risks than women on average, but she's not presented them properly, and instead made some vague unhelpful generalisations. 

I feel like how I'd imagine a woman out in the mountains might have done 30 years ago being told by a bloke that mountains are big scary places and women tend to prefer more civilised places like the cafe. 

If her aim was to convince more men to give her their business / be safer by booking onto her navigation courses then she really needs to think about phrasing. I'd be really put off booking onto any of her courses if I was one of those target men who have never learned about navigation properly.

I'm probably being a bit over-sensitive, but still, that's how I feel having just read the article. 

I think she's just attempting to describe the accident statistics, but ignoring participation levels and drawing too many conclusions as to their explanation.

Yeah probably. I might actually agree with her on some points, but the poor explanation, broad conclusions, and misuse of statistics has just put a big bee in my bonnet! 

I cannot find exactly what you would like: i.e. participation days in Scotland split by gender. 

Some data for England:  https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/... p. 15   Participation splits 63:37 for "hill-trekking/backpacking" and 62:38 for "climbing/mountaineering". 

For Scotland: https://sportscotland.org.uk/documents/participation/walkingandhillwalking....  Participation split 2:1 in hillwalking. 

I cannot track the source for the "Only 20% of participants in mountain sports are female"  referred to here: https://www.ukclimbing.com/news/2020/02/womens_network_aims_to_improve_fema...

The trouble with the above reports is that (a) none of them describe their methodology (the first one points to an appendix which doesn't exist) and none of them have any error bars, so there really no way of assessing the significance of the numbers therein. These are not 'statistics' (in the scientific sense), they're just some numbers which might be meaningful or might not. No way to tell.

As for the original article, I just took that as an opinion piece. No more, no less.

The inability to demonstrate sound thinking in one field always makes me question the analytical skills in other fields.

Dunno, if I hired a guide I'd expect them to be pretty sound on their analysis of weather and snow conditions but wouldn't necessarily expect them to know much about statistical analysis...