CWA Blog Archive-REPORT Reduce Incidents By Understanding Why Climbers Make Mistakes

REPORT Reduce Incidents By Understanding Why Climbers Make Mistakes

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This article reports on a CWA-sponsored research project addressing a long-vexing question: why do climbers make mistakes that result in injury? Understanding this would significantly help gyms' risk management and reduce incident rates. The CWA partnered with Jon Heshka, a professor in the Adventure Studies Department and Law School at Thompson Rivers University in British Columbia, to study climber behavior and what gyms can do to build good awareness and culture around risk. The methodology was substantial. Nearly 700 climbers completed surveys at eight gyms across the southwestern US and western Canada, and Heshka personally visited each gym, spending three days observing climbers' behaviors and practices to understand how mistakes happen. The article notes that, surprisingly, the only prior studies on this topic were European and rather dated. It cites striking earlier findings for context: a 2004 German Alpine Club study reported that one-third of belayers used their belay device poorly or incorrectly and nearly half of climbers didn't do a belay check or check their partner's tie-in. A 2011 Swiss Alpine Club and UIAA report found that one in three climbers produce belaying or climbing errors that would cause serious injury in a fall, and that there's roughly one ground fall for every 20,000 gym visits. These sobering statistics establish that dangerous errors are common and that the topic had long gone under-researched, especially in North America. The throughline is that reducing incidents requires understanding the human behavior behind them, and the CWA commissioned rigorous, North America-specific research to fill a gap left by dated European studies. By combining nearly 700 surveys with direct observation across eight gyms, the project aimed to reveal why climbers make dangerous mistakes so gyms can build better risk awareness and culture. For operators, the report signals that meaningful risk reduction comes from evidence about actual climber behavior, and that errors serious enough to cause injury are far more common than many might assume, making behavioral understanding central to effective risk management.

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This reports on CWA-sponsored research by Professor Jon Heshka into why climbers make injury-causing mistakes, combining nearly 700 surveys with direct observation across eight gyms. Filling a gap left by dated European studies, which found dangerous belay and tie-in errors alarmingly common, it aims to help gyms build better risk awareness and culture.