Hockey coach sentenced to 2 years for multiple sexual assaults to minors

In a case whose perpetrator’s actions span three decades and has attracted a considerable amount of attention, former hockey coach Graham James was sentenced three days ago to two years in prison for sexual assault. James plead guilty to sexually assaulting two teenage boys hundreds of times while they were players on teams he coached.

James is a former Western Hockey League Coach of the Year and 1989 Hockey News Man of the Year. James had been previously convicted of a sexual assault in 1971 and was also sentenced to three-and-a-half years in 1997 for sexually assaulting two other boys, including former National Hockey League (NHL) player Sheldon Kennedy.

The sentencing for his most recent conviction has properly generated wide-spread criticism.

Provincial Court Judge Catherine Carlson accounted for the abuse of trust, the degrading and humiliating nature of the sexual assaults – repeated hundreds of times to victims under the age of 18 – and whose cumulative effect has been significant and devastating to victims Todd Holt and Theoren Fleury.

However, Carlson J. also pointed out that Mr. James expressed remorse, apologized to his victims and has experienced what she called ‘an extreme degree of humiliation’ – factors that warranted a reduction in his sentence from a possible maximum of 10 years to the two year sentence handed down.

A Globe and Mail editorial (click here to read) entitled ‘Judge didn’t grasp magnitude of James’s crimes’ accurately, in my view, captures the criticism: ‘There is something annihilationist about what he did. It was an obliterating violence he committed on their sense of personhood, repeated over and over and over and over. These crimes need a sentencing approach that recognizes the difference between one or two sexual assaults and the hundreds that Mr. Holt and Mr. Fleury endured. Not a single one of those assaults should receive a sentencing discount …. [H]is behaviour needs to be denounced to express society’s revulsion and pain at the victimization of the vulnerable, and at the abuse of trust. Provincial Court Judge Catherine Carlson spoke of that abuse, of degradation, of the total control exercised by Mr. James, but then gave him credit for an expression of remorse, an apology, the “extreme degree of humiliation” he experienced and his willingness to come back from Mexico without an extradition hearing. He deserved no such credit.’

A two year prison sentence for savage predation upon two vulnerable and trusting human beings is not enough.

The real risk in extreme sports

The Vancouver Sun published on February 1^st an op-ed piece about risk in extreme sports (click here for the article) that I wrote with Jeff Jackson, a professor in the Outdoor Adventure Program at Algonquin College in Pembroke, ON. Here are a few excerpts:

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It has been interesting to observe the amount of media coverage assigned to Sarah Burke’s crash while training on the superpipe in Park City, Utah, her hospitalization and subsequent death on Jan. 19. The accident was splashed on the front pages of newspapers and given considerable air time on the news or sports shows daily.

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Events such as this are an awful reminder that the risk so cavalierly discussed in the abstract is real and the consequences of it being realized can be fatal.

That Burke died is tragic, but not unimaginable.

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Spectators at home or on the slopes watch sports like downhill skiing or superpipe to see super fast speed or spectacular flips, twists and jumps. But we also can’t help but wonder and ask if the public and event organizers of extreme sports also secretly wish for crashes because it makes for great TV — just as long as the athlete walks away without severe injury.

But how can this qualification be made? Any sensible person should be aware that skiing at 150 km/h or hucking huge air on a six-metre superpipe must carry with it the risk that someone could get really wrecked.

So why do we act surprised? Maybe the collective, almost cathartic outpouring of grief in response to Burke’s death is a substitute for subconscious guilt at enabling this to happen.

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Extreme sport used to be the domain of the lunatic fringe. Those who participated had their own personal reasons for performing high-risk activities. Now, however, extreme sport has become mainstream and usurped by corporate interests giving rise to the X-Games and inclusion of high-risk sports in the Olympics. Some athletes are getting rich in the process. Snowboarding superstar Shaun White earns about $8 million a year in sponsorships.

There is a fear the adventure and extreme sport community is being adversely affected by “big business” whose representatives coerce extreme athletes into taking risks they’re not ready or equipped to take.

At issue is the perception athletes at the leading edge of risk are making decisions motivated by bling or profit rather than strictly based on a dispassionate and rational assessment of the situation.

Unspoken in the discussion is that a free-market economy is based upon risks and rewards. What some people find offensive is that this fundamental premise grounded in competition is now being applied to extreme sport and adventure. That rather than climbing a mountain for intrinsic reasons — ‘because it’s there’ — instead athletes are performing outrageous and high-risk stunts because that’s what it takes to win or a sponsor demands it. And there’s nothing wrong with that.

In a free society, we are able to make our own decisions, whether as a Wall Street broker trading in derivatives living in a Manhattan penthouse suite, a ski bum living out of a VW bus, or an extreme athlete operating at the edge of what’s humanly possible. So long as we go in with our eyes wide open, fully aware of what we’re getting ourselves into. It also means we live with the consequences of those decisions whether it’s fame or fortune or life and limb.

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Perspective and Probability in Heli-skiing

I was interviewed on Radio NL 610 AM late last week in regards to two avalanche fatalities in the final days of 2011. Part of my message was that while these deaths are distressful, some perspective is in order. For example, there were four shooting murders in the four days after Christmas in Surrey, BC, just three hours west of where I live. Further, there are approximately 400 drowning deaths a year in Canada. Some have argued (as did my interviewer in an earlier editorial) that the answer lies in the regulation, legislation and criminalization of the behaviour (ie. reckless skiing, boarding or sledding) which gives rise to these deaths. I believe that many people who pursue such activities balance the risks and make informed decisions but I also acknowledge that some go in blind with little real skill and are essentially playing Russian roulette. The bottom line for me is the right of recreationists to take risks and make mistakes – even if it costs them their lives. The ‘solution’ (assuming there is a problem) is not to legislate or criminalize but to educate and hope that good and safe decisions are made.

The second avalanche fatality involved a client with a commercially guided heli-ski operation. According to a piece in The Globe and Mail (click here to read the article), what I found interesting was Canadian Mountain Holidays Inc. lawyer Marty von Neudegg’s efforts to brand heli-skiing in the aftermath of an avalanche fatality as a “wilderness experience sport’ rather than “extreme sport” which almost makes it sound like he’s selling safe heli-skiing. He comes closer to the edge in acknowledging that risks exist but the inconvenient truth is that heli-skiing is inherently dangerous and that even the best guides cannot eliminate all risks. Says von Neudegg, ‘There are risks, for sure, but our guides … want to come home at the end of the day and they are not pushing the edge. We try to stay well inside the boundary, but obviously in this case, something went wrong.’

It is incredibly sad that Greg Sheardown died and my heartfelt sympathies go to his family. Clearly something went wrong though. But that doesn’t necessarily mean someone did something wrong. CMH has had 11 avalanche fatalities in 9 million group ski runs; those are pretty good odds. This may just be an unfortunate and tragic instance of the laws of probability catching up in the heli-skiing industry.

Ask not for whom the bell tolls

The words “Ask not for whom the bell tolls” should be ringing loudly at NHL headquarters following John Branch’s excellent expose (click here, here and here for the links) on Derek Boogaard, fighting in hockey, and brain injuries last week in the New York Times. I wrote an article in The Globe and Mail (click here to read it) earlier this year that suggested the NHL is vulnerable to a lawsuit on similar grounds to that which has been launched against the NFL.

The NFL’s concussion crisis was put into the spotlight starting in 2007 by Alan Schwarz of the New York Times. Schwarz has since written dozens of articles for the Times about brain injuries in football. As Ben McGrath of The New Yorker (click here for the piece) wrote last year, ‘Credit for the public’s increased awareness of these issues must go to the Times, and to its reporter Alan Schwarz, whom Dr. Joseph Maroon, the [NFL Pittsburgh] Steelers’ neurosurgeon and a long time medical adviser to the league, calls “the Socratic gadfly in this whole mix.”’ Schwarz’s reporting sparked and catalyzed change in the NFL’s approach to brain injuries. The league is now named in about a dozen concussion-related lawsuits.

The NHL has been painfully slow to implement real changes that would reduce the occurrence of brain injuries. Just like the hockey enforcer who is tapped on the shoulder by his coach or just knows he must answer the bell, the NHL has got to see that the writing is on the wall (on in this case, splashed on the pages of The New York Times), that the time is nigh for change and know that the bell tolls for thee.

Ice Hockey – bizarre assault lawsuit dismissed plus the role of consent in hazing rituals

Dante would be proud. Whilst it is comforting not to report on concussion or fighting, hockey has descended to a new and – in a sense – bizarre depth. A case was settled in Connecticut last month in which the mother of a seven year old son sued the mother of another player, claiming that she was assaulted, albeit after allegedly assaulting the defendant’s son. Plus the Royal Canadian Mounted Police have launched an investigation into a hazing incident which allegedly involves a teenage boy walking naked in a locker room with water bottles tied to his genitals.

To begin, Judge Theodore Tyma of Connecticut Superior Court dismissed the lawsuit filed by Madeline Fromageot (click here for the story) which alleged Joan Bennett assaulted her (the extent of the alleged assault was that Fromageot’s headband was knocked from her head during a confrontation) after Bennett came to the defence of her son whose head was being banged against a wall by the plaintiff. Fromageot was apparently exacting retribution for what she perceived as an unfair hit by Bennett’s 10 year old son against her son. In the spirit of an eye for an eye, Fromageot walked over to the players’ bench, grabbed the boy’s helmeted head and began banging it against the Plexiglass wall, yelling ‘don’t hit my son.’ It was after witnessing her son’s head bouncing off the wall that Bennett intervened when the alleged assault took place. Judge Tyma wryly stated that, ‘This case arises from two mothers dispensing with the time-honored notion of playground justice and taking matters between their sons into their own hands.’ The defendant’s lawyer called the decision a ‘vindication of common sense and our system of justice’ and summed it best: ‘The plaintiff’s case didn’t belong in the witness box, it belonged in the penalty box.’

Lastly, The RCMP are investigating an incident in which it is alleged a 15 year old hockey player with the Neepewa Natives of the Manitoba Junior Hockey League (MJHL) boy was forced to walk naked with water bottles tied to his scrotum as part of a hazing ritual. Five players were victimized during the rookie hazing. The MJHL has fined the team $5000, suspended head coach Bryant Perrier two games, assistant coach Brad Biggers five games, captain Danil Kalashnikov five games, assistant captains Richard Olson, Tyler Gaudry and Shane Harrington were suspended three games each and another 12 players were suspended one game each.

The legal system may once again be tested to determine where the line lies between the culture of a sport which permits behavior within and outwith the rules on the playing surface as well as behind the scenes. In a take on the Las Vegas expression, ‘What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas,’ hockey traditionalists believe that what happens on the ice, or by extension in the locker rooms, should stay there. Generally speaking, the courts have historically taken an similarly accommodating view to the extent that it approves not only intentional and inadvertent legal contact such as open ice hits or checks but illegal conduct such as fighting, boarding or blindside hits. Indeed, such infractions are contemplated in the rule books and are presumed to be understood and consented by all those who participate.

The custom of hazing or inducting a rookie player onto the team involves subjecting the player to demeaning or degrading acts – often involving alcohol – and upon completion of said humiliating acts the player will have passed the test and is accepted onto the team. The role of consent in these rituals in less clear.

Recent incidents in Canada (note that Canada is not unique in this regard), for example, include St. Thomas University (Fredericton, New Brunswick) rookie volleyball player Andrew Bartlett, 21, who was found dead in November 2010 after attending a team party where rookie players were allegedly urged to drink voluminous amounts of alcohol and participate in degrading acts, the Carleton University (Ottawa, Ontario) women’s soccer team was suspended for two games in September 2009 after holding a rookie initiation that involved what the university called ‘serious alcohol abuse’ and inappropriate and irresponsible behavior, McGill University (Montreal, Quebec) cancelled its football season in October 2005 after a university investigation revealed that the hazing involved ‘nudity, degrading positions and behaviors, gagging, touching in inappropriate manners with a broomstick [the 18 year old complainant alleged he was sexually assaulted with a broomstick by an upperclassman as teammates cheered him on] as well as verbal and physical intimidation of rookies by a large portion of the team’ and, finally, the Windsor Spitfires hockey team was fined $35,000 and general manager / coach Moe Mantha suspended one year as manager and 40 games as coach for a hazing incident which involved a small number of players being told to stand naked in the washroom, with the heat turned up, at the back of the bus by other players following an exhibition game (one player, Akim Aliu, who refused to take part was afterwards hit during a practice by teammate Steve Downie with a blindside crosscheck to the mouth knocking out three teeth but that’s another story).

Such initiation rituals were historically regarded as team building exercises and, if they crossed the line of civility, as an unfortunate but essential byproduct of the hockey culture. Former professional player Ryan Johnston states that ‘Hazing is like fighting — part of the game. Part of the game that people who haven’t played it just wouldn’t understand’ (click here for story).

It is interesting that the legal system up until now has not really looked at such incidents. In any other setting, it would surely constitute assault. It would be a stretch to say that the victims consented by their own free will to these acts or that they were not coerced into participating.

Back to the Neepewa Natives. Only after relentless reporting by the Winnipeg Free Press and the national attention given to the story did the RCMP open up an investigation into the alleged incident. Surely there will come a time when incidents such as those listed above will be appreciated by the legal system that they are not part of the game but are symptomatic of a sport gone sideways in need of help to get it back on track and on its proper path.

Battle of the Beers

Sports Litigation Alert (Volume 8, Issue 19) just published a short piece I wrote entitled, ‘Battle of the Beers.’ It is reproduced below:

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In a country where ice hockey and cold beer go hand in glove, two of Canada’s biggest breweries have been battling it out over sponsorship rights as the official beer of the National Hockey League. On 3 June 2011, Newbould J. of the Ontario Superior Court of Justice held that the NHL and Labatt Brewing Company Limited reached a binding sponsorship agreement on 12 November 2010 which would have run from July 1, 2011 — June 30, 2014. As such, the NHL was consequently not free to enter into a similar but superior agreement with Molson Coors Canada Inc. on 8 February 2011. The NHL and Molson appealed and the court held in their favor on 12 July 2011.

In a ruling which has left Labatts all wet (and sudsy), the Court of Appeal for Ontario found that Newbould J. erred by making his finding in a manner not anchored to the pleadings, evidence, positions or submissions of any of the parties to the case. It was accordingly “procedurally unfair, or contrary to natural justice” for this conclusion to be reached [5]. Citing Rodaro v. Royal Bank of Canada (2002), 59 O.R. (3d) 74 (C.A.), the court held that a theory of liability which emerges for the first time in the reasons for judgment is never tested in the crucible of the adversarial process and thus raises concerns about the reliability of that theory [6].

It is noteworthy that Labatt did not plead that the parties had reached a binding sponsorship agreement on 12 November 2010 [12]. Labatt did not assert during the application hearing that a binding sponsorship agreement existed between the parties and expressly disavowed that it had reached a binding sponsorship agreement with the NHL [13]. The appeals court accepted the NHL’s submission that if it had known that the existence of a binding sponsorship agreement between the NHL and Labatt was at issue, it would have conducted its defence to Labatt’s application in a very different fashion [15].

While hockey is a small fish in the big frozen pond of professional sport relative to their much larger counterparts in football, baseball and basketball, there is still significant money to be made (and lost). Kyle Norrington, marketing director of Budweiser and regional brands for Labatt in Canada, commented in an affidavit filed with the Ontario Superior Court of Justice on the relationship of hockey and beer: “The NHL and the access it provides to Labatt … is the single greatest opportunity to grow Labatt’s share in Canada. The nexus of sports / heritage / emotional / tradition in hockey has no other Canadian comparable.” In contrast to the $37.2 million over three years agreement that Labatt was pursuing, the Molson deal is worth a reported $375 million over seven years.

It is the combination of the trial judge’s analysis of the renewal option in the 2002 Labatt/NHL agreement and his conclusion that a binding agreement was reached at the 12 November 2010 meeting that created the procedural unfairness problem [18]. Quoting Cronk J.A. in Grass (Litigation Guardian of) v. Women’s College Hospital (2005), 75 O.R. (3d) 85 (C.A.), leave to appeal refused, [2005] S.C.C.A. No. 310, the appeals court held that, “at the end of the day, the issues between the parties are defined by and confined to those pleaded” [53]. Since this did not happen, the NHL and Molson were denied procedural fairness and the judgment of Newbould J. was set aside.

Revenge is a beverage best served cold. Earlier this year, Coors Light lost the bragging and sponsorship rights as the official beer of the National Football League to Anheuser-Busch for $1.2 billion over six years. The $375 million Molson Coors/NHL deal reportedly includes approximately $100 million for the rights, $100 million in guaranteed advertising buys and $100 million in activation costs for staging special promotions to capitalize on its rights.

On 6 October 2011, Labatt disclosed that it had received confirmation that the Ontario Superior Court of Justice had dismissed its suit against the NHL and Molson Coors thus ending this round of the battle of the beers. The court plans to release the reasons behind its decision at a later date and Labatt said it would review its legal options at that time.

Police recommend assault charges in lacrosse head stomping incident

The Canary reported in June 2011 that the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) were investigating an incident in which 15 year old Blake Rose was felled by two cross-checks (which if properly administered are permissible) but then had his head stomped on in the waning minutes of a lacrosse game between the Kamloops Rattlers and Kelowna Kodiaks. The RCMP has just recommended to the Crown that a charge of simple assault be laid (click here for Kamloops Daily News article).

At the time of the incident, RCMP spokesman Staff Sgt. Grant Learned correctly noted that the investigation will hinge on whether ‘the nature of that contact [the cross-check and stomp] was so outside the boundaries of acceptable contact that the nature of misconduct was egregious and bordering into that realm of criminality?’

The courts in BC are not unique in their inconsistent approach to adjudicating sports violence. At its core, the courts struggle with how to accommodate the role of violence in sport and the extent to which participants consent to injurious force which is prohibited by the rules but may be permitted within the culture of the game. For example, in the rugby case of R v. TNB (BCPC 0117) in 2009, Honourable Judge S.D. Frame ruled that players consent to violent contact within and certain violent conduct outwith the rules of the game. Cognizant of the playing culture of the game, Frame J. stated that the ‘amalgam of rules includes the legitimate strategy of intimidation of the opposite team by head-butting, eye gouging, elbowing, raking and punching’ and noted that ‘none of these infractions is permitted by the written rules but it is accepted by the unwritten code of conduct at this level of play in the game of rugby.’ The defendant was found not guilty on the grounds that the punch was randomly thrown and not intended to target and hit the injured plaintiff and, as such, fit within rugby’s unwritten but accepted code of conduct.

With respect to J. Frame’s judgment in R v. TNB, if the lacrosse head stomping allegations are proven true, it is hoped that the court will make a bright line distinction that such conduct is criminal – period – irrespective of any fantasies relating to the ‘unwritten code’ or playing culture of the game, and that the proper means of penalizing such behaviour is not by a referee but through the courts.

Risk, free markets and free will

It is interesting to note that in the last couple of days, National Football League Pittsburgh Steelers 2010 NFL Defensive Player of the Year and All-Pro safety Troy Polamalu sustained a concussion in a game with the Jacksonville Jaguars, Jay Beagle of the National Hockey League Washington Capitals was knocked out cold (colloquialism for being rendered unconscious) from a punch at the fists of Arron Asham of the Pittsburgh Penguins, a 27 year old man died 300 m from the finish line at the Scotiabank Toronto Waterfront Marathon, and 2005 IndyCar champion Dan Wheldon died in a crash at the Las Vegas Motor Speedway.

The point here isn’t to chronicle the injuries and deaths in sport but to rhetorically ask – in connecting the dots between these sports which each possess varying degrees of inherent risk and its athletes who consent to those risks ordinarily inherent in the sport – despite the different outcomes from brain injuries to fatalities, is acknowledgement and assumption of those risks enough or should more be done?

Or are these athletes participating on their own free will, motivated by vanity and insecurity (apologies to Simple Minds), and benefiting from what the market will bear? Or are they being exploited by commercial forces that regard them as collateral damage in their pursuit of the bottom line?

Just asking.

Off Duty

Solicitors Journal (Vol 155 no 38) just published a piece (click here for the full article) Kris and I wrote “Off duty.’ Here are a few excerpts:

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The High Court threw a lifeline of common sense to private homeowners in Grimes v Hawkins [2011] EWHC 2004 (QB), reasserting the Court of Appeal’s approach in Poppleton v Trustees of the Portsmouth Youth Activities Committee [2008] EWCA Civ 646 that adults who choose to engage in physical activities which obviously give rise to a degree of unavoidable risk may find that they have no means of recompense if the risk materialises so that they are injured.

The 18-year-old claimant in question was an invited guest to a midnight house party hosted by Ms Katie Hawkins at her parents’ home while they were away for the evening. As well as extensive gardens, the house also contained a heated swimming pool housed in a separate building. Midway into the party, amid the general party atmosphere, Ms Grimes dived into the pool, tragically striking the bottom of the pool with her head, rendering her tetraplegic. She subsequently brought a claim against Ms Hawkins’ father alleging a breach of duty in both common law negligence and under section 2(1) of the Occupiers Liability Act 1957 for allowing her to dive into the pool.

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As Mrs Justice Thirlwall DBE acknowledged in her ruling, the difficulty claimants in this area have is that diving into shallow or unknown water is a pursuit which is inherently and obviously dangerous if performed incorrectly (Evans v Kosmar [2007] EWCA Civ 1003). In this instance, the pool was well-maintained, with no hidden dangers and experts acknowledged that it was possible to dive safely within it. Indeed, the claimant herself was an accomplished swimmer with a number of qualifications and, on the night in question, she had surveyed the pool by swimming for approximately 30 minutes. The fact that she consciously dived diagonally towards the deep end only served to emphasise the superfluous nature of any warnings or depth markings, had they been present on the pool house walls.

It is not enough though to argue that we should ensure the primacy of free will for consenting autonomous adults to challenge their own limits. See for instance Tomlinson v Congleton Borough Council [2002] UKHL 47 where Lord Hoffman said: “If people want to climb mountains, go hang gliding or swim or dive in ponds or lakes, that is their affair.” The corollary must also follow that participants will not be protected from the consequences of their own actions, no matter how tragic these outcomes might be. As such, Mr Hawkins did not owe a duty to put the pool out of bounds or to prevent the claimant from diving in.

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While the outcome for Ms Grimes is tragic, the case reaffirms the protection given to defendants and landowners who might currently be drowning in a sea of negligence or occupiers’ liability claims. Some might call it common sense, others an open and obvious risk, but in the delicate balance between allowing individual autonomy and paternalistically protecting claimants from themselves, liability will generally fall on the party that assumed the responsibility for the activity. Sometimes, though, allowing such freedoms has its own cost.

Risk and Responsibility

Gripped climbing magazine just published an article (http://gripped.com/2011/10/sections/articles/risk-and-responsibility/) I wrote entitled, “Risk and Responsibility.” It is reproduced below:

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I’m troubled by the idea that the climbing community is slowly, albeit inexorably, creeping towards emasculating risk from climbing. There’s a connection – I think – with the attitude of entitlement that many of our youth today possess. At school, it manifests itself in the way they believe they should receive grades they perhaps don’t deserve. On the rock, this is evident in how some climbers think they should have free access to every cliff or that challenging climbs should not be dangerous.

For example, it’s become increasingly normal for climbers to be guided up long routes like Mt. Everest. There is nothing wrong with being guided (I work in a university program that trains guides), but the attitude of deferring decisions to a guide has increasingly extended to blaming others when things go sideways. Modern climbers get sandbagged on old school 5.9s and complain about the grades or add bolts to existing lines because they think the routes are too scary and someone could get hurt.

It’s more than the style-versus-safety debate. The current mindset almost disavows risk. And when someone does get injured, instead of looking inwards and understanding how it could have happened, we look to the courts for restitution.

Climbing has fallen on hard times:

• A bolt breaks in Australia resulting in the death of a climber and a lawsuit is pending.
• A commercially-guided expedition doesn’t summit and the operator is sued for breach of contract.
• A climber is injured during a fall and sues the climbing gym.
• A guide is sued after the alpine ice he’s leading dinner plates causing him to fall and pull out the belay anchor resulting in the death of his client.
• Belayers and the manufacturers of the belay devices are sued for not catching a fall.
• A climber dies during a descent in the Tetons and the National Park Service is sued for a failed search and rescue response.

The list goes on.

The courts have ironically become the last line of defence in bringing personal responsibility back to climbing. In the majority of the cases cited above, the lawsuits were unsuccessful but that doesn’t change the fact that those climbers believed there were entitled to compensation when shit happened.

It seems we’re forgetting that injury and death are the natural consequences of playing in the uncontrollable environment of the vertical arena. We climb superficially aware that we can get hurt but act surprised when someone actually is injured. The fact is there is a statistical likelihood that you will get hurt while climbing. While risks can be managed and minimized, they cannot be eliminated.

There’s been an almost a subconscious extending of the safety net, security and predictability found in climbing gyms to the mountains and crags. This is a dangerous drift. It’s like pounding the square peg of adventure and the mountains into the round hole of automatic belay devices and climbing gyms. It just doesn’t fit nor does it make sense.

The climbing instruction Bible is aptly entitled Freedom of the Hills. Implicit in its title is that climbers have the right to take risks, which may unfortunately include decisions that result in their deaths. Climbers accept – or should accept – that climbing is inherently dangerous and that they can get hurt in any number of ways: falling, falling rock, bad rock, bad pro placement, bad bolt placement, etc.

Depending on the route or the circumstances (indoors or out, rock or ice, sport or trad, etc.) climbing may not be as harmful as playing Russian roulette but it is inherently dangerous. For example, the chief attraction to sport climbing is arguably the strength, skill and artistry required to ascend a route. Exposure to risk is secondary to the aesthetic and physical challenge of climbing. The biggest fear on a sport route isn’t getting hurt but fear of failure and not ticking the line. But you can still get hurt clipping bolts. This is very different when compared to what an alpinist is exposed to on a north face where the potential for rock or ice fall and shitty rock always exists and failure takes on an entirely different – and potentially lethal – meaning.

If you want to stay safe, you should not venture outdoors. Stay inside, removed from all risk, and watch your soul get eaten away by tedium. You may not get physically hurt but you will also not experience the independence, self-reliance, beauty, and wisdom that climbing can offer.

Risk is integral to climbing. Some forms of climbing are, of course, more hazardous to your health and each type has its own rewards and tolerances for risk. We should not, however, confuse what is appropriate for gym climbing in terms of risk and safety, with what is acceptable for other forms of climbing. ‘Cuz it clearly isn’t but, as the above cases indicate, some people sure appear to be thinking along those lines.