2007 Accidents in North American Mountaineering
I read ANAM every year since it comes free with my membership in the AAC. I thought this was a rather uninspired edition. It seems like they’re covering fewer areas and fewer accidents each year. Plus, they seem more reliant on the climbers’ own accounts, which are bound to be skewed and are occasionally incomprehensible. For free, I’ll keep reading it, but it’s not the resource it used to be.
Or maybe I’m just getting jaded. To some extent, they’re the same accidents every year. I guess I’d like to see the AAC seek out the accidents that teach real lessons and cover those in more depth while summarizing the frequency and causes of the more obvious accidents. Instead, we get as much depth as the victim was willing to provide which is sometimes a ridiculously long version of “my belayer lowered me off the end of the rope” and sometimes a two line summary of what was obviously a complex and interesting situation.