______
*This week’s blog features the one and only Daniel Reass(!). Dan has over a decade of rock climbing experience and has worked as a climbing coach, trainer, and guide throughout his career. He currently lives and works in Yosemite Valley as a member of the Yosemite Search and Rescue team. He spends most of his free time climbing big walls and lounging at the river beach.
______
It is no secret that risk is inherent to adventure sports. When we are climbing, skiing, mountain biking and trail running, the risk of bodily harm or death is a reality we must contend with. We may not always be putting our life on the line, but what we do cannot be considered “safe”.
Because miscalculations of risk carry extremely high consequences, it is crucial for us to have a simple and systematic tool that we can use to assess risks as they arise.
I first learned of the Stoplight risk assessment tool from Daniel while he was coaching climbing at the YMCA. He was looking for a way to teach risk mitigation to middle and high schoolers during their outdoor climbing classes.The Stoplight helped his students answer important questions of risk like: what degree of risk am I about to take? What might the consequences of my actions bring? What are my options for managing or mitigating this risk?
Although Daniel’s class used the Stoplight in the context of sport climbing, this risk assessment tool has much broader applications. It is possible to use the Stoplight any time you are uncertain, scared, or curious about where the path ahead will take you.
So let’s take a closer look at the Stoplight risk assessment tool. Daniel will teach us how to use the Stoplight to calculate risk in real-time (and will show us some real-life examples of its application along the way!). Thanks, Dan!
The Stoplight: A Risk Assessment Tool for Rock Climbing & More
Daniel Reass
“Safety is no accident” -Danford Jooste, CEO NO-SAR
Participation in extreme sports requires an ability to predict and assess risk. Margins of safety must be determined by a combination of factors such as objective data, vague or secondhand information, personal skill level, risk tolerance, and subjective judgement. The availability of this information (and to a large extent, its validity) can vary widely from one circumstance to the next. This can make real-time assessment of risk both tricky and daunting.
When I was coaching outdoor climbing for the YMCA, it became clear almost immediately that I needed a tool to give to students to help them to analyze risks on their own. Officially, we were never allowed to assure students that rock climbing is “safe” because, well, it’s not.When you look at a climb more closely, though, it becomes clear that some parts of the climb are “safer” than other parts (and in turn, some parts “riskier” than others). The ability to determine where each segment of the climb is on the risk spectrum is therefore a critical safety tool in a high-risk sport like climbing.
The Stoplight assessment tool provided a simple way for my climbing students to analyze the real-time risks of rock climbing as they learned how to climb in an outdoor environment.
_________
Here’s how to use the Stoplight:
1. Assess the climb from the ground.
Take a look at the climb you are about to do. Rather than viewing the climb as a whole and assigning one overall safety grade, use the Stoplight to break the climb into smaller sections. Each zone will be assigned a color: Green, Yellow, or Red.
Green means GO! In sections assigned as Green, you observe that a catastrophic outcome is highly unlikely. The probability of a system/equipment failure is low, and a fall while climbing is unlikely to result in serious injury.
Example: You are climbing above a steep wall that is high off the ground. The protection below you is a modern bolt and your climbing partner is a competent belayer.
Yellow means CAUTION! Here you may start facing some combination of minor or serious risks. In practice, the Yellow phase is usually transitory. This means that you may be quickly approaching a Red scenario (or Green).
Example: Your last piece of protection is a “spooky” distance below you. If you go much further without another piece of protection, you could easily put yourself into Red.
Red means RISK! When using this tool with my students, I consider any risk with injury potential greater than a sprained ankle to be in the Red zone. A fall in a Red zone is likely to have severe to catastrophic outcomes.
Example: You are climbing through a section where a fall will result in hitting the ground or a ledge below you.
Remember that visual information (aka the stuff you can see from the ground) may also be supplemented by other pieces of data (such as beta from a guidebook) to determine whether a segment of the climb is assigned a Green, Yellow, or Red value.
Some specific measures to consider when assigning zones for climbing include: nature of the fall (e.g., distance, objects you might hit, fall factor, pendulum potential, belayer skill, climber/belayer weight difference), and nature of the protection (e.g., rock quality, equipment age and quality, redundancy). For other sports, consider what additional/different measures might be!
2. Come up with a plan.
For Yellow and Red zones, specify what about them is risky (bad rock, old bolts, runouts, high likelihood of falling, etc.). Take time to visualize potential falls and fall zones, and consider what you can do to mitigate risk to the best of your ability in these hazardous zones.
3. Share your observations & plans with your partner.
Once you have identified hazard zones and come up with a plan for each, share this information with your climbing partner. This ensures they will know when and how to act (and potentially, react) as you approach Yellow and Red zones.
4. Climb on!
With the initial Stoplight assessment complete, you are ready to begin climbing! When I work with climbing students, I remind them of the Red zone rule: if you want to climb in a Yellow or Red zone, you must be aware of specific risks, in control of your body and emotions, and have a plan.
5. Continue to assess risk as you climb.
Before entering a Red zone, it is best to pause before getting too committed. Check to see if you feel in control, and if not, downclimb and/or jump off. If you are feeling good and confident, proceed with caution! Climbing in the Red zone requires mental and emotional control and a clear knowledge of the risk you are taking.
_______
Although I have used the Stoplight most often in the context of climbing, this tool can be used for other adventure and extreme sports. There are also similar tools that exist across different professions (for example, Search and Rescue frequently uses the GAR [Green, Amber, Red] tool to analyze risk for technical rescues or particularly hazardous ones).
Once you become skilled in using the Stoplight, you should be able to reasonably assess risk both before you commit to something and in real-time as it plays out. Ultimately, the amount of time spent in Yellow and Red zones should come down to risk tolerance (which is itself an interesting topic that we won’t explore here). The Stoplight helps inform us of potential hazards, create a plan, and mitigate risk to the best of our ability.
Yours truly,
Carly (& Dan!)
