Route “Risk Factors”

[LURE]

Says the guy who treats this forum like a Breitbart comment section...
(I'm conservative leaning by the way, just playin')

It's half the fun

[BillMiddlebrook]

I can’t please everyone but the goal here is to help people who head to the 14ers. At a minimum, I think risk factors provide the user with a bit more information that might otherwise be buried in the route description text.

Yes, I can put some text on the site to explain that our Risk Factor scale is for the CO 14ers and not meant to apply to all mountain or rock climbing routes.

Edit: Kinda like ski lines, my personal definition of “Extreme” might be a bit different than most but I understand why the ski area uses that designation.

[Eli Boardman]

+1. Eli, you seem like a decent guy but oftentimes you come across as elitist.
After all, the concept of unavoidable "Extreme Risk" on the routes you climb would be laughable...to Alex Honnold and Tommy Caldwell.
Most of us recognize you are a more experienced climber than most of the rest of us. It's not necessary to constantly remind us.

Sean Nunn

My apologies if it came across like that--I consider myself a very average Colorado hiker/scrambler type, and I have personally never climbed a route with "extreme danger," and I probably never will. However, I have read enough about other people's mountaineering endeavors, both in and outside of Colorado, to recognize that my climbs are basically nothing on the grand scale of mountaineering. My reference to "most of us will never do extreme routes" includes myself of course.

if you're new to hiking 14ers and have little knowledge about the nuances of class 4 versus class 5.7, then an extreme rating helps to clarify for you that perhaps you should try Capitol and Ellingwood Arete after you've gained the skill set, knowledge and expertise to understand the differences between them. in this sense, the ratings are useful for your average user of the site.

Ok, looking at it from that perspective it does make more sense. My original post is of course somewhat of a polemic, but I maintain that it would make more sense to just list some "suggested introductory 14ers" than to categorize everything under adjectives that are at best highly subjective.

[pcrotty41]

Hi Bill--thanks for updating the risk factors information....I do however also prefer the old visual bar scale graph of the "exposure meter" 1-5 scale and would like this feature added back in addition to the new information provided..just my two cents.

[polar]

I can’t please everyone but the goal here is to help people who head to the 14ers.

It is impossible to please everyone. No matter what you do, someone will have an opinion about it. Here's my opinion: people come to 14ers.com to look up information on how to climb Colorado 14ers, not on how to climb Annapurna. People who are capable of climbing the south face of Annapurna probably don't even visit this site, and if they do they certainly will not be deterred by an "extreme" risk rating on any of the CO 14ers. So I don't think it's really necessary to explain to people that the risk factor ratings only apply to the Colorado 14ers, because these are the only routes listed on 14ers.com.

[nsaladin]

I can’t please everyone but the goal here is to help people who head to the 14ers.

It is impossible to please everyone. No matter what you do, someone will have an opinion about it. Here's my opinion: people come to 14ers.com to look up information on how to climb Colorado 14ers, not on how to climb Annapurna. People who are capable of climbing the south face of Annapurna probably don't even visit this site, and if they do they certainly will not be deterred by an "extreme" risk rating on any of the CO 14ers. So I don't think it's really necessary to explain to people that the risk factor ratings only apply to the Colorado 14ers, because these are the only routes listed on 14ers.com.

Why you gotta hit us with cold hard logic?

[12ersRule]

I'm very happy with the new changes, thank you Bill!

Generally, you only hear from the malcontents, not the greater majority that are helped by such a change. This is why even though they're vastly outnumbered, you always hear conservatives bitching about everything. I would say I probably have 10 conservative friends on Facebook, but 90% of all the political s**t I hear there is from them. They live to complain about things.

[SkaredShtles]

[LURE]

Generally, you only hear from the malcontents, not the greater majority that are helped by such a change. This is why even though they're vastly outnumbered, you always hear conservatives bitching about everything. I would say I probably have 10 conservative friends on Facebook, but 90% of all the political s**t I hear there is from them. They live to complain about things.

You see the irony here don't you?

For what it's worth, I could say the same about my facebook friends, but in the converse. Notwithstanding how stupid and derivative such an example is, I'm still not gonna go bitching like a little girl about my facebook friends on a forum where no one was even bitching about the actual topic at hand to begin with.

Did you not enjoy your snow day Wednesday? Or are you just having a bad friday?

[12ersRule]

Generally, you only hear from the malcontents, not the greater majority that are helped by such a change. This is why even though they're vastly outnumbered, you always hear conservatives bitching about everything. I would say I probably have 10 conservative friends on Facebook, but 90% of all the political s**t I hear there is from them. They live to complain about things.

You see the irony here don't you?

For what it's worth, I could say the same about my facebook friends, but in the converse. Notwithstanding how stupid and derivative such an example is, I'm still not gonna go bitching like a little girl about my facebook friends on a forum where no one was even bitching about the actual topic at hand to begin with.

Did you not enjoy your snow day Wednesday? Or are you just having a bad friday?

I'm having a fabulous day, Lure, thank you for your concern.

I was making an observation, not complaining.

Hope your day improves.

[huffy13]

This is an amazing new feature, Bill. I've always wondered what factor made certain routes to fall into a certain classification, this definitely clues me in better. Great planning tool.

[Dan_Suitor]

I like the changes. Thanks for your continued efforts on this site Bill.

Is there any way the risk factors can be put into a list where people can get a general idea of how the different peak’s difficulties compare? There used to be a “Peaks Ranked By Difficulty” (something like that) where members ranked what they thought was the most to least difficult peaks. I’d assume this was removed since it was subjective. I’m curious of how the peaks all compare using their Class, Risk Factors, and Distance. Weighted values could be given to each giving one a rough idea of how each peak’s difficulties compare using a more scientific approach rather than people’s opinions.

Optionally, is there any way these factors, along with Difficulty and Class (standard routes only), could be added to the Export Peaks to File option? This way I could import it into Excel, apply the weighted values, and sort it myself.

Thanks
Dan