Artificial Chaos

Ready to Fall [Managing Risk]

June 22, 2022 Morgan and Holly Season 1 Episode 8
Artificial Chaos
Ready to Fall [Managing Risk]
Show Notes Transcript

Holly wants to quit computers and become a fell top assessor. Morgan would prefer to go into witness protection than climb a mountain. In this episode we talk about managing risk, planning for bad things, and cool technology like satellite messengers.

Show Notes



Example Problematic Locations on What3Words

https://what3words.com/beside.allies.spirit Bowfell, Lake District
https://what3words.com/beside.ally.spirit Kingston up on Hull, Hull

https://what3words.com/excavated.boasted.cabs Helvellyn, Lake District
https://what3words.com/excavated.boosted.cabs Lower Welson, Hereford

https://what3words.com/newsreel.exotic.procures Scafell Pike, Lake District
https://what3words.com/newsreel.exotic.procured Staploe, Bedford


Speaker 1:

In hopefully the least judgemental way possible because I don't want this to come off judgmentally, but if I ended up in a family that climbed mountains for fun, I would go into witness protection. I've just turned myself down in audacity because the problem that we have is whenever I do like a sound jack Yeah, it creeps back up. Yeah. And then when I speak to you and you annoy me, I get really indignant and loud.

Speaker 2:

Um, if you're between 18 and 12, and obviously it's negative, so minus 18, minus 12, um, you'll be fine.

Speaker 1:

Mm-hmm.<affirmative>. Yeah, I'm just about that. It's just, if you say something annoying, it's spikes. So I need to turn it

Speaker 2:

Just my words.

Speaker 1:

Uhhuh.

Speaker 2:

So I wanted to talk today about the three types of fun. So type one, fun and type two fun, right?

Speaker 1:

Sorry, Hang on, hang on. Wait, wait, wait. There are types that there are, there are categorized types of fun.

Speaker 2:

Of course there are categorizing.

Speaker 1:

Is is this, is this like your scale or is it like a scientific thing?

Speaker 2:

No, this is an actual thing. If you were to Google type one, Type two fund three types of fun, I wanna talk to you about that today. That's

Speaker 1:

Okay. I'm gonna Google it. I'm gonna Google it right now.

Speaker 2:

So,

Speaker 1:

So I don't believe you

Speaker 2:

Type one. Fun is, that is what you expect. It's an activity that whilst you are doing the activity, you are enjoying yourself. That's type one fun, right? And type two fun. It might be challenging, it might not be fun whilst you are doing it, but after the fact you feel that you enjoyed the process. You know, it's not, I don't enjoy doing this. It's, I enjoy having done this<laugh> type one and type two. Fun. That's what I wanna talk to you about today.

Speaker 1:

<laugh>, I've just googled this because I was skeptical and it's a real thing. Uh, Type one, fun is enjoyable while it's happening. Type two, fun is miserable while it's happening, but fun in retrospect. Type three. Fun is not fun at all.<laugh>, it's like a lenic book. It's ridiculous.

Speaker 2:

Oh my God. The Shakespeare references every

Speaker 1:

Episode. Le NICs a children's author. Don't even start. Not today.

Speaker 2:

My hobby is mountain climbing. I've gotten big into this this year. I'm really having a lot of fun with it. But the truth is two thirds of the way up mountain, if you ask me if I'm enjoying it, I couldn't, in all honesty say it that it's good, but I keep doing it. So there's something that<laugh>.

Speaker 1:

How do you feel about running as running type two? I'm just asking cuz you ran like a marathon or something that one time and I personally would put running in type three.

Speaker 2:

I've never actually ran a marathon. I've never ran a marathon as in 26.2 miles. I've only ever ran a variation on marathon. So for example, I've run an ultramarathon and I've done a, uh, a 40 mile race, but I've never done in 1 26 0.2 miles. I did once do a marathon, which is the worst thing I've ever experienced in my life, which was to run 2.6 miles, 10 times that that was the worst one of them all. But yeah, I've never actually ran a normal marathon. I've just,

Speaker 1:

You test me every day. Every, literally I, there's not like a, that's not like an overstatement or anything. Like every time I speak to you, you say something obnoxious,

Speaker 3:

<laugh>,

Speaker 2:

Uh, this is, this is the thing that we should talk about. Like, uh, being prepared for, for mountaineering, be it something small like climbing hell valley, orbe it, something bigger. Cuz I think there's a lot of interesting aspects to, to preparation. On one hand it's just like risk based decisions, but on the other, I think people, modern people almost have like an aversion to the idea of being prepared. And I find that hilarious.

Speaker 1:

Sorry, modern people. You just Yeah, modern humans.

Speaker 2:

The recent humans.

Speaker 1:

Recent humans. That's what you're going with.

Speaker 2:

Well, no, I went with modern people. But you, you made me

Speaker 1:

Change it. Modern people as opposed to like retro people like you.

Speaker 2:

No. Your ancestors.

Speaker 1:

Yeah. Well how do you know that it's just modern people then why would you use that qualifier?

Speaker 2:

Uh, I didn't say that it was just modern people. This could be all people for all time. I don't know. I haven't asked them all.

Speaker 1:

So, um, yeah, modern people have an aversion to preparedness, which means that we don't climb mountains like robots.

Speaker 2:

Robots don't climb well do we have climbing robots?

Speaker 1:

You know what would be a really good use for climbing robots?

Speaker 2:

Mrt,

Speaker 1:

Last time we had a discussion about mountains, you told me that if you go off track up Everest and you die, oh geez, they don't retrieve your body. And I just feel like mountain climbing robots would solve that problem, you know, because otherwise people could be climbing Everest, committing murder, leave bodies all over

Speaker 2:

The place. Problem with that is robots don't handle cold very well or more specifically, batteries don't handle cold very well. So you would need a robot that is capable of climbing the mountain. It's a very technically difficult climb. It's not the worst, don't get me wrong. But you would need a robot that is capable of doing that asc sc and you would need it battery to be capable of dealing with the cold. And one more thing though. Do you know what the death threat as a percentage on Everest is? And do you know what the death rate as a percentage on KA and Jenga or Care two is?

Speaker 1:

I do not.

Speaker 2:

Um, the death rate on Everest is one in eight. The death rate on Ka and Jenga is one in three.

Speaker 1:

That's horrendous.

Speaker 2:

Yeah.

Speaker 1:

Why do you like climbing mountains? Like can you not just like, like do home workouts or something?

Speaker 2:

I like climbing mountains because it's type two fun. Uh, and what I mean by that is the fact that it is physically challenging and in some instances you, you don't think you can do it. And the ability to overcome that adversity or the ability to overcome that challenge, I find strongly enjoyable.

Speaker 1:

You could have just said cuz it's hard.

Speaker 2:

It's, it's not because it's hard though. It's because it is hard but achievable, it's a challenge. It's not the fact that it's difficult. If I wanted something that was difficult, I would try and jump to the moon. Never gonna do it. It has to be D<laugh>. Sorry. Your face is amazing.

Speaker 1:

<laugh>.

Speaker 2:

You try and jump to the moon, you're not gonna do it, are you? It's very hard.

Speaker 1:

I'm sorry, were you dropped as a child? You can cut this whole section out of the episode and we can start again. But were you dropped as a child?

Speaker 2:

So can you give me an example of what you think might be like type one fun and type two fun? Like what kinds of things would you put into those categories?

Speaker 1:

Um, okay, fun while you're doing it. Is that like a reverse though, where it's like fun at the time but not fun afterwards?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I think drinking is a really good example of that way you're having fun at the time and then afterwards you're agreeing some decisions.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, maybe that's like type minus one.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, you wake up in a canal with a hangover.

Speaker 1:

Hmm. I've never woken up in a canal with a hangover.

Speaker 2:

So what's your example of type one? Fun then?

Speaker 1:

Um, oh I dunno. Like playing crash band Acute.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I think, I think most activities that we do day to day, like watching a movie for example, you're enjoying it whilst you're watching it, you know?

Speaker 1:

No, I don't put films in a type one fun. I put them in like type two maybe if they're a good film type three. Otherwise

Speaker 2:

I think actually that is a, a fair point because um, I tried, I tried to reach for like an activity that you would do regularly that you would enjoy. So for example, reading, I've been reading some books recently and I've been enjoying them. But actually the one that I'm reading right now is, um, the subject matter is really dark so I am enjoying it. But it's one of those books where I, I know like you close the book and you put it down, you're like, my god, that was depressing. It's called Into the Wild And it's a, a book about, this isn't the spoiler, it's in the first chapter, a book about a chap who goes into the Alaskan back country and he dies out there. And the story of how he dies is the story of the book. And it, it's really pretty horrendous. But it, it's one of those like I am reading it and I am enjoying it. But I guess, yeah, maybe that's a, an example of a type two book.

Speaker 1:

The more we talk about this, the more I'm thinking that maybe the scale is too simplistic.

Speaker 2:

I definitely think the scale is simplistic. There is some activities where you enjoy them somewhat whilst you're doing them and a lot afterwards. Maybe vice versa.

Speaker 1:

Mm-hmm<affirmative>, I'm gonna say like a trampoline park is type one, something like that.

Speaker 2:

And you always have fun at a trampoline park.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, pretty much. Yep.

Speaker 2:

Good. Type one fun. Trampoline park.

Speaker 1:

Good.

Speaker 2:

Just being in a trampoline park. Queuing, queuing to get into a trampoline park. You're already having fun.

Speaker 1:

Well that's exciting. Yeah, it's fun. And they give you those grippy socks and climate mountains. Climate mountains is what like a type two for you?

Speaker 2:

Climbing mountains is type two fun. And I think one of the things with climate mountains, it's, it depends which mountain. It depends which time of year. Like if you're having a summer walkout with the family, you know you're climbing Snowden or something like that in the middle of June, that's probably type one fun. You know, you're with friends or family, you're having a good time, the weather's good, those kinds of things. But if you are climbing in the depths of winter, you know I sent you recently didn't I, a photograph of Ben Nevi just a couple of weeks ago with some serious snow on the top. And I think most people in those situations might think, yeah, actually that is maybe not, not so fun cuz it, cuz it's challenging.

Speaker 1:

Some people are really like climbing s and like try and like force their friends to climb mountains too.

Speaker 2:

You have to check the recording but I'm pretty sure you said climbing s

Speaker 1:

I probably did. You can cut it out.

Speaker 2:

Sound like Benedict Kumba to trying to say the word penguin.

Speaker 1:

Paning.<laugh>. These lings.

Speaker 2:

So I do like climbing mountains. I like the activity of climbing mountains. I like preparing for climbing mountains. And I like the fact that when you go out there, if you're doing something serious, you don't necessarily know what your experience is gonna be during that. Right? Some days you're gonna go up and it's gonna be a summer's day walk and it's gonna be great and other days you're gonna go up and it's gonna be pretty horrendous. A really funny example of this, I climbed Ingber recently. Ingber is not a tall mountain, 723 meters. And when I climbed ingre on the way up that the weather was great, it was glorious, you know, spring weather nice and sunny. When I got to the summit it was the strongest wind I have ever experienced. But because of the side that I climb the mountain on, I was sheltered from the wind for most of the way up until the very summit, which is great of course cuz you, you can't really video wind can you<laugh> you know, you just like hold your phone up and like, oh my god, it's the windiest I've ever experienced it. Maybe just get some muffled uh, sound. So, so it's that side of things. It's the fact that that when you go out there, uh, it, it can be very challenging. You have to prepare quite well and um, sometimes you don't get the great weather that you are maybe hopping for and it's pretty tough.

Speaker 1:

I'm really not seeing the reasons right now that climbing mountains is type two fun or why this would be like a nice activity to do. Um, and the the point about it being the strongest wind you've ever experienced, just reinforced that. It's like my least favorite type of weather.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, it was, it was pretty bad. But that's the thing you're saying. I don't see why it's fun to do and it's not fun to do. It's fun to have done<laugh>. You get your little list of all of your monroes or whatever particular to-do list you work in your way through, you complete one, you touch the can or you touch the trig point and then you tick that one off and you're like boom.

Speaker 1:

What's the, what's the trig point?

Speaker 2:

Trig points are triangulation pillars there other than it's the thing at the top of the mountain that you touch, it's a mark on the mountain can be used for measuring distance and things like that. This, uh, introduces a thing that because you have obviously different people have different reasons for, for climbing mountains and some people who you could rudely describe as summit baggers, uh, literally just wanna get to the top and then that's it. They don't care about anything else. So they might literally climb them mountain or or climb the fellow what have you, touch the TG point and then that's it. They don't care about anything else, you know, that's it. That one's ticked off.

Speaker 1:

Okay. As opposed to,

Speaker 2:

There's lots of reasons that people might go out. It isn't necessarily just climbing the summit. It could be to explore their local area. It could be for the fitness, it could be because they're like spending time with friends and family and that's how they do that

Speaker 1:

In hopefully the least judgemental way possible because I don't want this to come off judgmentally, but if I ended up in a family that climbed mountains for fun, I would go into witness protection.

Speaker 2:

Sorry, you mean type two fun

Speaker 1:

<laugh>. Oh my<laugh> pretty sure that's the intro. So you're gonna become a fell top assessor.

Speaker 2:

It's the best job in the world. I recently found out about the fell top assessors. There's generally two, sometimes three of them. And what they do is they climb hell vain every day on a week on week off rotations. So hell vain is the third highest mountain in England and all they do is comment on the weather. So through the winter month they'll climb hell vain talk about how bad the weather is, you know, from an outdoor activity and, and hacking point of view. And that's somebody's job. I've climbed hell valon twice this year. I should be allowed that job that that's the dream become a fell topor climb. Hell valon a few times. Boom, take some photographs, snow on the top, no snow on the top. That could be a felt topor.

Speaker 1:

You know the death statistics that you mentioned for people you climb specific mountains. Yes. I'm wondering how those would be impacted and what, what the probability would be if that was your job, like how that would change.

Speaker 2:

It's it's gonna change because, um, this is a difficult thing to say without, without coming across as very, very rude. But sometimes people die on mountains because of accidents, avalanches this slip, a rock fall, something like that. And sometimes people die in mountains because they're ill prepared. And if it is your job to do that, I would expect that your individual likelihood of becoming a casualty is lower because of that. Not impossible accidents still happen but you know, if you are climbing hellel in every day and the weather is varying throughout the year, you, you're gonna have the equipment that you need even if it's bad weather in winter.

Speaker 1:

I suppose your personal risk model is impacted by the fact that you are frequently exposing yourself to that situation. Like how you have a, a trauma kit for your car and so on.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, sometimes it is literally preparation in terms of things like fitness, things that you have to do ahead of time over longer periods of time. Sometimes it is things like having the right equipment. There is snow out today I am taking crampons and sometimes it is a familiarity with your equipment, right? You could give somebody an ice a for example, but if they slip on a mountain, if they don't know how to self-arrest the fact that they're carrying the ice aacs could actually be worse than not carrying it cuz they could injure themselves on it.

Speaker 1:

What does self-arrest mean

Speaker 2:

In this context of using an i a whilst falling down a snow covered mountain to stop yourself. So if you imagine if you're on a slope up and you slip, but the slope is covered in snow, you're gonna slide down the, the mountain, right? You're gonna slide. And self-arrest is literally just that pedantically technical term for stopping yourself.

Speaker 1:

Okay. Have you ever got lost up a mountain?

Speaker 2:

I I guess it depends on what, what you mean by having gotten lost. I mean as recently as this weekend I came off the track, I climbed, uh, scarf fell this weekend, but I did it from an interesting route from the south and the track in that particular area is really, really difficult to see. It's not well trodden. So yeah, I came away from the track, but that's, you know, there's being lost. I think what people imagine is like wandering around in the wilderness for five hours on your own and then there's, oh I'm, I'm off the track and this is inconvenient 50 meters away from where I should be. No, I, I've personally never had a, a serious issue in that regard. A navigational issue where I've gotten lost and not known where I am. The thing with that kind of thing is most of the time it's very difficult to do that. For example, I'm carrying a gps, the reason that I'm carrying a GPS is to minimize that risk, right? Most of the time if I get lost, I look down at my gps, it tells me where I am. You can also configure'em to do things like, uh, you can tie your GPS into like a smartwatch and things like that and have your smartwatch give you feedback when you come off the track. So if you're more than 10 meters from the track, the smartwatch can tell you and that can cover you from everything from you lose the track to you just go the wrong way at a fork. So that, that's the thing about being prepared, right? It's like I carry a GPS because it minimizes the likelihood that I get lost, but it's not a perfect solution. They're running batteries, you can fall over, you can break them. Lord knows I fall over on mountains all the time about once every time I go out. You've not seen my most recent video have you where I'm walking down a track literally saying how well managed and how wide and easy this track is and I fall over<laugh>

Speaker 1:

Personal shortcomings aside,

Speaker 2:

I think we should call them personal toll comings of anything.<laugh>

Speaker 1:

Just got a bit too much leg haven't you?

Speaker 2:

<laugh> got a lot of leg

Speaker 1:

<laugh>. Okay, so you don't get lost very often because you carry gps. How reliable are those would you say, you know, besides the, the things that you mentioned where it could break or the batteries could die or something like that?

Speaker 2:

I think one of the, one of the interesting things is with equipment I, I heard somebody talking about earlier beginner backpackers, people who have just started going hiking tend to overestimate how much equipment they need with them and tend to take like where too much food, where too much water, where too much clothing. That's a common problem that new hikers and new backpackers have. Somebody said, oh, it's really easy to deal with that problem every time you go out. Look at what equipment you didn't use and stop taking that equipment. And I think the problem with that is there's a lot of stuff that I carry that I never use. For example, in the last five hikes that I've done, I've used my first air kit once I carry it with me every time. It's really unlikely that I'll use it, but I mean I think the audience is gonna work that one out, right? It's like it low frequency use but high importance. So when it comes to reliability of, of GPS and stuff like that, they're perfect when they work. I've never had an issue with things like not having enough signals. So GPS needs line of sight to the sky, right? And if you lose line of sight, which can happen in forests, in dense woodland and things like that, then you could have a problem there. I, I've never had it be such a problem that I haven't been able to to deal with that fact. Of course I'm not relying on the gps. The GPS is just a cheat card, right? I could walk on a bearing for example, or very often to be honest, if you're in the woods, you're probably on a track and if you go wrong, if you take the wrong turn at a split or something like that, you're probably not gone wrong very far. And when you emerge from the woodland you go, oh, I'm on the wrong side or I'm on the wrong track or whatever. So, so gps are a very reliable aside from where you might lose line of sight of the sky, the difficulty just comes from the fact that I think problems compound and your GPS is gonna work every time and then one day you'll fall over and the day that you fall over you're injured because you fell and also you broke your gps and now you've gotta deal with the fact that you've got an injury and you don't know exactly where you are. It, I think it's, it's those things that that is the problem. And sometimes like on the preparedness side of things, one of the things that comes up a lot is people think that going out in groups is safer. And I don't really strongly agree with that. So you know, people will say, oh what if you go out into the back country, you're going a hike, can you hurt yourself? Wouldn't it be better if you had friends with you? How much help can those friends give me in that instance, for example, if you follow from GPS and you get lost, great, now three of you are lost. That's not really helped the situation, the fact that there's more people there. I, I do get the idea in terms of you know, if you fall, you knock yourself unconscious, something like that, then yes, having somebody there immediately to help you, like I do get that it reduces the risk somewhat. I just don't buy this idea that going out in a group is inherently significantly safe and then going out on your own. Hi it's Holly in the edit here I'm jumping into say think, think I did a really bad job of making my point just there. And so to avoid confusion and 100 tweets all telling me that I'm wrong, I wanna give it another go and I'll give you some background on what I mean here. So for example, this weekend whilst I was out on a hike, I stopped to talk to somebody on the trial. I do this quite often at least to say hello or something like that. Whilst I was talking to them they said that they thought it was really brave that I was out solo hiking. And I hear this a lot, it's really not uncommon for people to tell me that I'm brave or they think that it's dangerous to solo hike. So in this episode I was struggling to make a point about group hikes being safer than solo hikes. And all I really mean is I don't think that solo hiking is so dangerous that I am brave for doing it. I honestly don't think that solo hiking, if you are well prepared, is that dangerous? I think I'm more at risk walking through the city than I am walking through the back country. Sorry for the interruption. Uh, back to the, your regularly scheduled program.

Speaker 1:

I think it depends on the situation. This, it's kind of a silly example but I was in the cadets when I was a teenager, ages and ages go like well over a decade ago now I'm talking about this example and they dropped a group of us out kind of in the middle of nowhere and gave us like a map and a compass and we had like a torch and like some water and like basic supplies and said like Mickey way back to camp. And it was just like, I think I'm pretty sure they call that orient hearing, orient hearing. Is it orientating<laugh>?

Speaker 2:

It is orient hearing but I like that you, you paused cuz my favorite thing is when when people say it wrong and they'll say like orientating and still I've done like

Speaker 1:

That that before. I've definitely done that before definitely. Anyway, is there<laugh>? There is a group of us, um, probably five of us and the person in charge of the person in charge of the compass made a mistake. I don't know what the mistake was because I was not the person in charge of the compass at the time and we went several miles in the wrong direction, which meant that we didn't get back when we were supposed to. And that person then tripped in the dark after his torch died and sprint his ankle. And if he had been out on his own, especially as a teenager, I suppose he would've been extra vulnerable and likely wouldn't have made it back at all because he didn't have a phone.

Speaker 2:

What I'm saying there is the problem is that that person was ill prepared. I do think it's interesting that you mention having an issue with the compass. Of course there is just operator error, a person who does not know how to use a compass. But I think one of the things that it's obvious when you say it, I think a lot of people just don't realize it north on the map is not where your compass is pointing. In some places that can be out quite significantly, you know, eight degrees out for example. And, and I think that that is one of those things that people don't realize that there's a problem that compounds and I think a lot of people don't realize that problem exists at all.

Speaker 1:

So, uh, that becomes a very large problem encompasses, to be honest, if you gave me one now, I'm not confident that I would just know how to use it. I would have to remind myself how they work and look at the scale and, and all of that and like brush up on it before I would be confident using one.

Speaker 2:

Another thing as well with the compass is, again, it's obvious when you say it, but people don't realize they are attracted to magnetic things, not only magnetic north. One of my favorite demonstrations of of this was the person had the compass on the table and they moved the compass on the table and it would just change, its reading entirely because the table has metal legs,<laugh>. And that would, that would adjust the reading on the compass. And like you said, that that adjustment doesn't have to be significant. You actually cause quite a significant change doing that. Uh, but it doesn't have to be significant if you are, if you are going over a significant distance.

Speaker 1:

I'm not sure if this is true, but I think I remember them telling us at the time that the human body has a very slight magnetic field as well, so that you should hold things a little bit further away from your body so that that doesn't interfere with the reading. I dunno if that's accurate.

Speaker 2:

I don't know if that's true, but I do know somewhere that that might come up and where I've seen people make that mistake before soldiers carrying rifles.

Speaker 1:

Mm, that makes sense.

Speaker 2:

You might see the effect of, oh, when I hold my compass away from me it gives me a different reading. But in actuality that rifles got a whole bunch of metal in it. So I don't know if that is true, but I have seen people file of that before. Mm-hmm. Especially in in per weather because you, you tend to hunch over and pull everything in and maybe you're just looking down at your compass cuz it's raining or what have you. But yeah, that is, that is an issue. So you could have someone who on one hand just does not know how to read a compass and how to take a bearing, how to march in a bearing. So operator error. You could have somebody who doesn't know things like north on the map is not north on your compass. And then you can also have faulty equipment. I have a faulty compass, it's of course not the compass that take hiking with me, but that is a thing that can happen. Your compass can just not be working. There's some argument there about having two of critical equipment. Don't necessarily know if having two compasses where one of them is broken would help you because how do you know which one is the, the working one? But you get the point of equipment can be faulty, even very basic things or seemingly basic things that encompasses

Speaker 1:

In the event then that your GPS broke somehow. Would you have a backup solution or would you have to go full analog and get a compass and a map out?

Speaker 2:

So I always carry a map compass with me and that would be my fallback as if my GPS fails for whatever reason, battery or uh, I don't have a line of sight to the sky. They would use the map e compass. So I always carry that with me. It never comes out of my bag. It's always prepared though. I, I tend to just carry a, an ordinate survey map of the area but it will be on the area that I am operating in. So yeah, that's always prepared. It sounds funny so like to go full analog and like to use a map as if it's like a great inconvenience. Generally speaking it's not because most of the time if you're doing like a common hike with an district or somewhere like that, you're probably on tracks. Most of the tracks are probably marked. It is just the basic thing. So it could be one small part of this route, uh, isn't well marked and you just need to work out are I going left or right here. And it can also be a very simple thing. So something that happened to me recently, a climb scar fell hike and the weather was, was very bad at the time at the summit I was in the clouds and at the summit of Scel Pike that like I said, there's this can, this structure on the summit that is circular, it's very big and circular and all the way up to the summit can, it's rocks, there's no track, it's just rocks the whole way up. I'm summit bagging, right? I'm like march into the top, I'm touching that can, I'm turning around ground. That one's ticked off scaffold packs like a, it's a really popular mountain, right? It's the biggest one in England, of course it's popular. And so get up to the summit and you have to like effectively cue to get to the can kind of thing to like touch it and be like that one's ticked. And in that space, which was maybe two, three minutes, I became disoriented. I don't mean disorientated in terms of like I go dizzy and I have to lie down, but I climbed the can touched the summer, took my photograph, that one's ticked off and then as I set off back down the mountain set off in the wrong direction because think about it, the weather is really close, we're talking about visibility of maybe 20 meters. The summer structure is circular and you are waiting for a few moments. So anytime that you distracted something like that you can easily lose your cardinal directions. And of course thankfully because I'm aware of the uh, the situation, I didn't go far wrong, but during that hike navigation was can to can, right? So on the way up to the summit, every 20 or so meters there, there is another can. So that is how navigation was being done. The difficulty is there's two or three major route up and they all have that. So you go, oh there's the next can and you set off and I was setting off west and not south. So it's very, very easy for that kind of thing to happen. I think another thing as well with people who are navigating, it's, it's again, some of this stuff, it's like so obvious when you say it, but when you are navigating to a point or you are giving somebody directions, the thing that you are using should be permanent and prominent. So it's just like turn left at the sheep isn't gonna work. Well

Speaker 1:

They don't do that where, where from they use pubs, you know, they'll be like, oh do you know when you get to the duke? Yeah you turn right there and then you follow that road for like a couple of miles and then you get to Soandso roundabout and then you turn left. Like that's how they, that's highly good directions don't use sheep

Speaker 2:

That yeah, that is, that is not a bad way of doing it though, right? Cuz permanent and prominent you, you're gonna know that, that you're there and it's very unlikely to move.

Speaker 1:

Okay. So I just, I feel like, like some of the things that we're saying, yeah they're, they're obvious once you say them to people who climb mountains or who go on hikes or who do these things. But that

Speaker 2:

Is the thing that is the thing, you're absolutely right that they're obvious when, when you say them. But you could see somebody who's new or inexperienced who wouldn't know those things and is maybe intelligent and and educated enough that once you point them out they go, oh that's obvious and would have no problem with it. But it's just maybe something that they wouldn't consider. So a really good example of this is talking to a friend about how I deal with foreseeable circumstances, right? Getting injured whilst out and having to contact emergency services or having to contact the mrt. And I asked them, if you get lost, how would you deal with that? And his answer was, he said, just call 9 9 9. Like I'm an idiot. And I'm like, what are you gonna say to them? Hello? I'm lost

Speaker 3:

<laugh>.

Speaker 2:

And I remember, I remember telling you about this before and, and you mentioned, you know, using a GPS app or using something like what three words that we can get onto in a second and absolutely that that's the correct approach but he just hadn't thought it through. And that is the problem where it's a completely foreseeable risk and they just haven't considered it. For one thing, you get on top of a mountain, it's your phone even gonna work, is it gonna be out of power or are you gonna have any signal? Mm-hmm

Speaker 1:

<affirmative>, I think you had this issue that time you fell in the hole while you were at the mountain. So your phone also wouldn't charge. So even though your battery was like you'd like taken an emergency charger, you couldn't use it at all. So now you carry a backup phone.

Speaker 2:

I carry a couple of devices with me. I had the second device with me. Uh, it was just for emergency use only and I knew that it was gonna be okay. We should talk about that idea of like, I know this is gonna be okay in a second cuz I do think that's an important thing to, to keep in mind, but yep, I, I fell on a mountain and I fell into water and what happened was my phone got wet so I could no longer charge it. So twins are good. Your habits are, are you, are you walking up a mountain? You know your summit back in your attention is on the can your attention's on the TG point, you're thinking nothing else. Oh are you out for a summer walk and you're listening to a podcast and you burning that battery down thinking that, well it's okay cuz I've got a battery charger in my bag and then the device gets wet and it will no longer charge if people haven't come across this before. I use an iPhone just by chance. I'm sure the devices are similar. If my phone gets wet, it detects moisture in the charging port, it will disable charging to not damage the device. You can override that. So that's what I'm talking about in terms of like, do you know if this is gonna be right? You can plug a charger in and tell the device. No, still try and charge if it is an actual emergency situation. So that's something that it could have done. Of course, uh, you can charge wirelessly and things like that. It's inefficient. But if the charging part is obstructed for some reason not broken, yeah, there's, there's options there. Um, but yeah, that was what the situation was. Phone was functioning perfectly, screen was functioning perfectly, it had some battery in it, it was somewhat low, it just got wet and it wouldn't charge. You might be sitting there thinking, oh I've got 30% battery, that's low but not a problem. But how far are you from signal, you know, if you are four hours out on a hike and you're burning your battery pretty quickly for example, it's cold, your battery will decrease faster when it's cold. That's when those things can be a problem.

Speaker 1:

Doesn't your battery die quicker as well when you can't get signal? Like they advise you put it into airplane mode if you you are in a signal Dead zone. Yeah, dead zone.

Speaker 2:

That, that's a great point. I'm sure those kinds of specifics will differ best on device. But yeah, it's my understanding that when your phone can communicate with a tower, it will adjust its radio power level so that it can talk to that tower and it doesn't need to overshoot the tower. So if you are very close to a source of signal very close to a tower, your phone will transmit less powerfully and therefore use less power. So if it can't see any towers, that radio's gonna be set to high. It's gonna be pushing out a lot of signal trying to make that connection for you. So yeah, you put your phone into airplane mode, uh, it does conserve power and that is why. And and I do find that to be the case when I go out and I know I'm not gonna get signal, I put my phone in airplane mode cuz it, it quite significantly adjusts the battery. It's not just the fact that the radio is turned off, it's the fact that when it has no signal, it's using more power than necessary.

Speaker 1:

Maybe an example and with a, a first time or a novice climber potentially, uh, that the climbing a new mountain that they, they haven't tackled before and they get somewhere near the summit, don't have any signal, Google maps or Apple maps or whatever it is that they're using suddenly isn't working because they don't have any signal what happens.

Speaker 2:

So one of the things is like if you're looking at getting into this kind of thing, are you looking, it doesn't necessarily have to be hiking or mountain climbing or anything like that. It could be any activity where you're at increased risk. You could, you know, be doing any kind of activity like that. It could be going kayaking or something. And each of these activities has different risks, but it's the kind of thing that you can think through. So whenever I hear a new hiker or a person who's going to try something significant so they're not, you know, going to the local fell but maybe traveling somewhere, um, I try and think through like the mistakes that a new hike could make. One of them surprisingly common is going to your local outdoor store, buying all of the equipment and then going out on the hike with that equipment. And there's so many ways that that can go wrong. Those boots aren't broken in. That's the the first thing. You don't necessarily know how well those boots even fit you. You might have tried them on in the store, but that's, that's not necessarily gonna be give you a good indicator of how much those boots are gonna be a problem for you. Especially if they're specialist boots like you know, uh, B3 or B2 boots. You're gonna have different problems with those. Uh, if you're doing something like wild camping, are you going out with a tent that you've never put up before?<laugh>? Are you going out with a tent that you don't know if it's complete? You might get up onto the fell and realize that you're missing a pole or something. So there's those kinds of problems. But I think the major things that people will be thinking of certainly on the technology side of things would be, I think a lot of people just don't think about the idea of not having mobile phone signal. We're just so used to it in town cities. Even if you're in a smaller village out of the way a little bit, you might have intermittent signal, you might not have great signal, but the idea of just not having signal for the entire duration that you're out having 12 hours with no signal, I think is just something that a lot of people don't realize how significant that can be. And it of course it just escalates, right? So are you going to climb hell valley in an lake district? You might not have signal for some of the day but you'll probably have some at some point. Or are you going up to Scotland and climbing a Monroe or something like that? Maybe have less signal. Are you going to the rough bounds in the northwest of Scotland? You might go all day without any signal. And I think it's just that thing that you very easily could come up with an alternative solution if you thought of that problem, put the tent up in your garden. Oh yep, checked. I know how it goes up. I've got everything I need for it easy. It's just whether people preparing that way or not. Um, but yeah, if you are, if you are climbing something local to you, if you're going up hell valley or if you're going up Bingbo or something like that, um, yeah, check that you have got everything with you that you need and that everything works and that your boots fit you<laugh>.

Speaker 1:

Oh yeah. I think a common one is like people buy like hiking boots, um, for something that will give them ankle support and then like they try them on with normal socks or like ankle socks or something really thin, not walking socks that are nice and thick and will probably add a half size to your shoe size and then you get blisters and you have to start halfway through.

Speaker 2:

There's also, um, when I talk about the boot fit, you might try a a boot on that's quite tight to your feet, that feels okay when you're on level ground, but when you're descending a mountain and your feet are sitting further forwards in those boots, they might push on the talk app and that can be, uh, quite painful. You might get, uh, problems with your tours. Taking it again to, to a more extreme though, I recently read Inter Thin Air, which is a book about Everest and something that stood out to me was one of the climbers in the into thin air book had new boots and he had not tried his crampons on with those boots and they didn't fit. So you know, you buy your boots, you try them on, you wear them in, they feel great, but if you don't actually put your crampons on them, maybe you'll get there. You realize that they don't fit very well. Uh, either they're the wrong kind of boots, you know, you've got C2 crampons and B one boots or something like that, or they're just not compatible because different manufacturers and that's hilarious because climbing, climbing Everest and having crampons that don't fit your boots is just like, you know,

Speaker 1:

I will bear that in mind if I ever have to buy crampons<laugh>.

Speaker 2:

So like as, as a non hiker, as as somebody who purely engages in type one fun and doesn't think that climbing mountains is uh, a good idea, you know, you can foresee some problems, right? So you can foresee going out and getting injured and being maybe just a little bit off the track. Nobody's passing you anything like that. I hike this weekend, I went uh, four hours on that hike before I passed somebody on the track. It happens. And that I wasn't particularly, you know, out in the wilderness that was just the leg district, but it happens. So you get injured, your mobile phone doesn't have any signal. How would you think to deal with that? So ahead of time, if your worrying about the problem of not having any signal, you're not on a mountain and your phone's dead, but like how would you think to deal with that?

Speaker 1:

I would brush up on how to use a com and make sure I had a map with me. Um, I'm not sure that I would take, so because I'm not a climber, I'm not even like a, a hobbyist mountaineer or anything like that. I probably wouldn't have like backup tech to bridge that gap between like my phone not having signal. But I think it depends what you need it for. Like if you need to ring emergency services because you are up a mountain and you are injured or or somebody needs first aid or you're lost or something and you do it regularly, then it might make sense to have something like a satellite phone.

Speaker 2:

Oh yeah, absolutely. The point of like if you don't do it regularly or if you're just like an occasional hiker is fair enough cuz some of this equipment is super expensive. It might even be the fact that you're a really keen climber, you might go out every week, but some of the equipment is really expensive. So I could say, well the solution is obvious it's a SAT phone but they're expensive. So I would acknowledge somebody saying that this's just outside of their means, they wanna enjoy the hobby, they don't have the disposable income. That's fair enough. But yeah, there's other ways that you can deal with it. So if you're worried about your food being low and battery to take a battery pack with you, So you mentioned things like having a map encompass with you, it's just like in the middle of the day it might be nice and sunny but as it moves into the evening it might get colder. So making sure that you can deal with that. One of the big things with being injured on a mountain is not necessarily the injury, especially when it's something really common like turning an ankle or something like it happens all the time on hikes. It might be the fact that actually you can call emergency services and they say great, we're sending someone out, they'll be with you in the next two hours and then you're sitting on a mountain side in the rain for two hours and you end up with a twisted ankle and hypothermia. But those things who again really easy to deal with, it's like do you have warm kit? Do you have whack Kitt?

Speaker 1:

Mm-hmm<affirmative>. So that's where you'd wear I guess, um, a sweat wicking base layer, um, thermals or something that, that don't<laugh> what? That don't hold moisture. I don't,

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I don't, I don't think we need to to get into a long discussion on terms of like the layering systems that you should use. You you are absolutely right though. I think you could just summarize that as um, cotton kills. Uh, if you're wearing materials that are gonna hold sweat, you're gonna get cold. If you're wearing cotton, oh man, I climbed hell val via arid edge a couple of weeks ago, like one of my favorite hikes and I looked over the statistics and it's like something like one person a year dies on starting edge. It's quite a difficult route. It can be this guy out there is like wearing a t-shirt and jeans with like kicks just regular trainers and that's fine cuz in the weather that we've had recently, you absolutely can climb hell val dressed like that. But the thing that made me laugh was it seemed to be that was the only equipment that he had with him. He had jeans and a t-shirt and it's like it, you could get like a light rain shower and you're suddenly gonna like be in a problem scenario and getting dragged off a mountain because you're completely ill prepared for that situation. But yeah, certain materials caught for example, it's bad material to wear up a mountain cuz when it gets wet, that doesn't have to be rent, it could just be your own sweat. It's gonna hold onto that and, and that could lead to you getting cold if you ever stop moving.

Speaker 1:

Yeah. But then you can also carry things like little pack of max, right? Those little plastic like hoodie things, you know the ones that fold away really small, they'll fit in like a little backpack or in your pocket or something and if it looks like it's gonna rain and that's like a really good thing to, to have hold of, you don't necessarily need to go in like a big fluffy down parker outdoor jacket. It could be summary and then suddenly rain.

Speaker 2:

You're absolutely right. The equipment that you need is gonna vary best on the environment that you're in and of course it's gonna vary best on the weather and if rain is unlikely, but maybe you'll have a shower than just a light rain jacket would be fine for that. But, and you are right, you can get like really lightweight stuff. You can get some emergency stuff as well, which is just like, um, you know, an emergency blanket's gonna wear like 500 gram, something like that. You can leave it in your backpack and never touch it. It's not gonna cost you very much grab it from like any outdoor store and then if you do get caught out if suddenly it's colder than you expected or it's rain or you get injured or something like that. Yeah that stuff's uh, really easy. And I'm not, I'm not saying that people need to take snow shoes, crampons and ISACs an emergency blanket and two satellite look at beacons with them just to climb gar fell or something like that. It absolutely does escalate with the frequency that you go out. Also just where you are going, you know, if you're going somewhere more extreme than you, you should probably have more equipment. I just think it's a really bad idea to climb a mountain ra a t-shirt. Can I tell you something funny though? I've been reading about roots of Mont Blancs and Mont B Blanc is the highest. Can you say that in Europe,

Speaker 1:

Right? You say that again?

Speaker 2:

Mont Blanc

Speaker 1:

As a, as a French person, you say it again.

Speaker 2:

Absolutely not.

Speaker 3:

So sorry.

Speaker 2:

That's a, that's a problem actually. If you speak more than wrong language and you need to say a word that is uh, from another language, especially if they're quite far apart. Like if you speak English and Japanese and you need to, to say a Japanese word, but you are speaking English. Should you say that word? Like it's, cuz it's one of those, it's like, uh, you, you gotta either be incorrect or an. That's the only option.<laugh>. I think that's something that comes up surprisingly often. So yeah, if I'm speaking English, I'm gonna bring some English, right? Um, but as looking at climbing Mont Blanc and one of the funny things about that, this person was describing how fantastic goal is or it's highest mountain in western Europe's highest mountain in France. It's a challenging route, often has a lot of snow up there. That's gonna be some technical aspects to it. Dealing with ropes and things like that. Not, not to a significant degree, but certainly more than you would get within the uk. And he explained that when you're just about to get to the summit and you're just about to crash the top and you, you're feeling amazing that type two fund's kicking in and you've had a horrendous time, but it feels great, you're gonna walk up to the summit and somebody's gonna walk past you wearing jeans and a t-shirt cuz there's a ski lift

Speaker 1:

<laugh> that feels like cheating.

Speaker 2:

So you basically, you basically said like, enjoy the climb and if you get to the top, just get back down again. That's just like, don't spend any time with the summit cuz you'd be, you'd be really frustrated that there's a lift up to the top cuz walk past people in shots and stuff and you've just spent six hours doing in a sentence.

Speaker 1:

Does the fact that other people are taking a type one fun approach, really like detriment the fact that it's type two fun for you though? Does it make it type three fun if someone else is doing type one activities in the same place?

Speaker 2:

There's a lot of thoughts here and it definitely depends on people. A lot of mountaineers will say it's not the elevation, it's the technical difficulty. So there's a lot of mountaineers out there who are not interested in Everest, they're interested in ktu or they're interested in ka and jango because they're harder climbs. They're not interested in Everest because it's the tallest, for example. So there are some people out there who will hold those lines on it. There's some people out there who will hold a line on climbing the proper wear. So summiting Everest is not as good as summiting Everest without assistance of oxygen or a solo ascent or a north face ascent or something like that. So there are people out there that say getting dragged to the top of a mountain by a guide is not the same as a solo oxygen, less ascent. And I, I can see what those people are saying. Generally speaking though, no. If I climb Mont Blanc and somebody's gone up there on the lift, that that is not gonna bother me at the time. It might don't look at my face if I like, you know, I'm sweating, I drop my bag, I've just worked hard for six hours and somebody walks past me wearing trend is in shots. I was probably gonna frustrate me at the time. But that doesn't, the fact that that is possible, the fact that that mountain has a lift, it doesn't mean that I'm, I'm gonna change my approach to that. And in the same way that I'm never gonna do a solar ascent of Everest, it's never gonna happen. That doesn't mean that I'm not gonna enjoy myself climbing mountains. It doesn't mean that I'm not gonna hit 5,000 meters or 6,000 meters or something like that. You can enjoy the journey without necessarily having to just aim for the biggest or the best or the technically hardest. Just go out and have fun, have some type too fun.

Speaker 1:

You sound like a linked influencer.

Speaker 2:

I'll have to, I'll get a job as some out and guide and then

Speaker 1:

Amount and guide I guess shepa, are they called sheers? Am I referencing the right thing?

Speaker 2:

A shepa is a specific kind of person. The thing that you are thinking of is a shepa. Yeah. Um, so a shepa is a, there's a lot, there's a lot of nuance here that I'm, I'm like trying to avoid. So, so what you are thinking of is the, the people who will assist you up, uh, mountain like Everest, right? So if you are climbing Everest and you want, uh, somebody to, uh, help carry equipment and somebody to help with the track and things like that, uh, those people are very likely to be sheer, sheer in, in common. Balance is used for like a high altitude mountain, uh, assistant for mountains such as Everest. But it's actually at the sheer Are are a people? Uh

Speaker 1:

Oh

Speaker 2:

It is. Oh, okay. So I don't, I don't wanna insult somebody just by saying, Oh, it's a high altitude porter. I think that would be derogatory unnecessarily.

Speaker 1:

Yeah. Okay. That makes sense. I'll have to have a Google and educate myself.

Speaker 2:

One of the reasons that they're so good with things like a sense of Everest is that they, uh, live at high altitude.

Speaker 1:

Oh, that's really cool. Yeah. Okay. So I guess there would be less prone to like altitude sickness and things like that. Yeah,

Speaker 2:

So less, less prone to it and also just more experienced with it, you know, because they're likely to have, have grown up, uh, at, at altitude. Not necessarily the altitudes of Everest, but it, it's the, the difference can, can count for a lot as well. When it comes to altitude,

Speaker 1:

Do you have a favorite kind of assistive mountaineering technology that it doesn't have to necessarily assist you in climbing the mountain, but it could be like life saving technology or coms or something like that? Just anything in mountain air?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I mean there, there's a few things like, um, big advocate for the use of radios and I'm big advocate for the use of satellite communicators and SLBs. Um, so I guess we should just talk about all of those things and also why some of them have got bad names. Again, it's gonna come down to what are you doing if you are going as a team, having radios with you so that you can communicate between the party of the party and altogether is a really useful thing. Those kinds of things are often just overlooked. Also, things like satellite communicators. So we've talked a couple of times about how your mobile phones probably not gonna work. There's loads of, loads of situations where you're out in the back country or maybe even not that far into the back country, just like the lake district and your phone's not gonna work and satellite communicators exist. So we mentioned GPS for navigation reasons, GPS is gonna tell you where you are, but satellite communicators are a cost effective. They are still expensive, but in comparison to something like a SAT phone or other satellite devices, they're relatively cheap and it's gonna allow you, uh, two things. It's gonna allow you to send text messages so you can send messages back home, tell your friends and family that you're okay, you can do check-ins, that kind of thing. If you are not maybe doing a day hike but you're out for a few days, you're doing a track or maybe just a wild camp you're out for for 48 hours, something like that. It's a good way of telling people back home that you surf. You can hook those up so that they can track your position as well. So maybe every 30 minutes it'll tell somebody where you're up to. So if they know the route that you're taking and you're doing 30 minute check-ins and then something goes wrong and you disappear off that they know where you were going, the timings that you're expected at and where you last were, and also satellite communication devices have an SOS button on them. So if something goes wrong, if you are the person who's out there and says, I'll just call 9, 9 9, you're not getting on the phone to emergency services and saying, I don't know where I am. You press that SOS button and they know where you are because it sends your location to them and there's different providers of these devices, but typically speaking, if you press that SOS button and the emergency response center does not hear a further communication from you, they will dispatch your rescue team to you. So if all you do is hit the SOS button, they don't hear anymore from you. There's someone coming out to help. So yeah, if you get yourself in a bad way, satellite communicator can, can really help out.

Speaker 1:

Sounds like an expensive pocket dial though.

Speaker 2:

The SOS button is covered typically, so if you've got it in your pocket or something like that, it, it's unlikely that you're going to on a well man 10 device hit that button. The battery in those things lasts days and days and dads and dads there can be really low power depending on how you're using them, how they're configuring which device you've got, but they can last weeks. Another thing is, again, it requires line of sight to the sky. So if you've got something tiny like a Garmin in reach mini or something like that and you've got it stuffed at the bottom of your rock sac thinking it's sending messages back to your family, telling them that you're all okay giving them up updates on Yelp progress along the track, it's probably not if it to the bottom of your rock sac, it needs to see the sky. Yeah, I think they're, they're great pieces of ca, they are expensive to buy the device. You're talking hundreds and you're gonna need a subscription to send messages that can be tens of pounds a month. And also depending on the jurisdiction that you're in, you might need a rescue membership as well. It doesn't need to, don't, you know, don't, people don't think that you've gotta get to the top of the summit and stand on your tippy toes and hold the device up. But I'm not talking about that, just talking about that these devices may not work well with, you know, significant tree cover and stuff like that.

Speaker 1:

What are rescue memberships

Speaker 2:

When bad things happen? There's a couple of ways of dealing with that, right? And this could be you're on a mountain, you call 9 9 9 and even if you don't know exactly where you are, you could explain to the operator where you set off from, what your intended route was, what your intended destination was, the last test that you knew that you were, how far you think you traveled. And you can give them a lot of information that could help them, especially with relatively easy summits like I set off from patterdale, my intention was to climb hell Valon, they're gonna know roughly where you are and they're gonna be able to come and help you. So when when I say, Oh, just call 9 9 9 like that's gonna help, don't, don't buy too much into that. You can talk them through or it might be a situation where you need a mountain rescue team to come out and that could be that you phone emergency services or you hit the SOS button on your device on your emergency device and what happens next depends a lot based on where in the world you are. And this is the problem that you get when you talk about like a global rescue, right? So gonna have a real different experience if you are two thirds of the way up Garel Pike or if you are up and mountain in France or if you are to the Himalayas, it's, it's all gonna differ but there are teams out there that will will come and help you In the uk most of the mountain rescue teams are volunteers or charities and elsewhere in the world you can get a membership. So there's companies that are dedicated to doing those kinds of rescues and I guess I say those kinds of rescues as if just pulling somebody off a mountain is always the same. Cuz again it's gonna differ depending on are you open a pine mountain or are you in a hostile environment? The level of rescue that you require is gonna differ there. But yeah, those companies out there that you can get a membership with that you can press that button on that device and they will dispatch your rescue team to, to come and help you out to come and drag you off a man.

Speaker 1:

Not to be flippant, but why can't they just like send a helicopter out?

Speaker 2:

They often will. That is often how they would deal with that. I watched a video this weekend of somebody who got cut off by the sea and they were effectively clinging to a cliff side in England and this is the thing with how, how it can go from zero to really messed up really quickly. They're walking along the beach and then they get cut off and then suddenly coast guard helicopter is pulling them off the cliff and it's fantastic the fact that, you know, a lot of these people do, this is a voluntary service, it is flippant to say like, well why don't they just send a helicopter? But very often that is exactly what they're going to do. The difficulty with that is, and again it depends with extremes. So if you're like in the leg district or something like that, the weather could uh, call off a helicopter, the ground could as well. You might just be in a really difficult place to get a helicopter to you. So they might send a ground based MRT to uh, help you get to somewhere the helicopter can get to or to take you all the way down when you're at extreme altitudes like Everest aircraft can't always get that high. Now people will think of like, but passenger jets fly at 50,000 feet. They aren't landing our passenger jet on Everest, are they? They're sending something smaller helicopters and smaller plans and yet those have operational ceilings that a maximum altitude that they can operate at. But yeah, like storms, wind, snow, love, visibility, that's all gonna mess with the idea of just sending a helicopter out. But yeah, truth is in most instances that's probably gonna solve the problem, isn't it?

Speaker 1:

<laugh>, I think we should explain what reco is cuz I don't think we did that Reco. Yes, and I think that's a good way to finish the episode.

Speaker 2:

I mentioned briefly that there is ways that SAR and mrt, so search and rescue teams and mountain rescue teams can find you if you don't know where you are. And I mentioned the most basic example would be talking to emergency services on the phone and telling them where you started your journey, where you were intending on going, where you remember last being. So at what point did you become lost, how long you've been traveling for tho those kinds of things like that information, they can piece it together to uh, to work out where you are likely to be and then do a search in that area in the same way that course guards can take into account things like the currents, they have mechanisms for tracking where a person is likely to be based on the current currents and they also take into account things like is it a person in the water or a small board and things like that. And that adjusts the measurements that they're tech and how they do it, those kinds of things. And the simple things you can do from a preparation point of view. For example, if you are parking your car and then going on a hike, one of the things that you could do is leave your route in your vehicle because the search and rescue team's likely to come across your vehicle and if your route is available, a sensible thing, it's not something I've done previously but that was recommended to me recently and I I thought that sounds like a good idea. Think your route printed out out and then they'll be able to see that mentioned reco specifically. And what this is is a, a passive system that you'll often see either built into rax or built into clothing and things like that and the presence of reco can be detected with a record detector. So this came about is my understanding from things like alpine and ski risks, uh, avalanche risks, those kinds of things. And the idea is that the search and rescue team, either in their helicopter or on their um, ground teams can carry record detectors that are directional finders for that material. So you don't need to worry about having batteries in a transponder. Something like that is literally in your clothes or in your, in your backpack. Ideally both. And the idea being that if they know roughly where they're thinking they can pass over with helicopters and they can send the teams into that area and they'll be able to find you best on effectively material fitted into your clothing.

Speaker 1:

It's really cool. Very cool.

Speaker 2:

Is there anything we've missed

Speaker 1:

What three words because you are being antagonistic.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, actually let's, let's quickly wedge what three words in the top then? Yeah, I, I have quite a traditional approach to the problem of getting lost and for me I would say that people are going out on serious hikes. You're doing uh, units of miles, you should take a map with you, you should learn how to read that map and you should learn how to give a grid reference so that if you have to call emergency services you can tell emergency services where you are. That is a low cost method of dealing with that problem yet it's gonna be better if you have gps yet it's gonna be better if you have an slb. A lot of people might think of alternative solutions. So one real comment on is what three words? This is an application that will tell you your location and it does that by giving you three words. These are just three common English words that are a representation of your location on the planet. I think this is a good idea. I've seen many MRT complain that there are some problems with the approach. So one thing could be accents, mispronunciations and things like the message being passed. So you might say the three words to the person on the other end of the phone at emergency services and when they pass that on to the next person it can get lost in that, you know, and there might be four or five people between you and the actual responder on the ground trying to find you. And some of these problems are things like people not recognizing words and mispronouncing them or it could just be laurels. I actually prepared a good example of this where you have to be careful how you say it otherwise it might get misconstrued. So what three words beside Ally's spirit. Those three words are bothel in the lake district. So one of the mountains in the lake district but beside ally spirit is uh, in Kingston upon hu which is the other side of the country. That subtle difference. There is a plural next door word that begins with an S. So beside allies spirit or beside ally spirit, you could imagine those two words getting squashed. So allies and ally where the next word begins with nest getting squashed. Don't get me wrong, I'm not thinking that you'll call emergency services and say I was trying to climb bfe, I'm in the lake district, this is my what, three words and then suddenly they're gonna go this guy's in hu and send the MIT off to hu. All I'm saying is that in those instances you are providing your location using what? Three words and if when they're put it into their app, it is not the correct location, they don't know where you are, that information hasn't helped them and there's the potential, um, through plurals and misspelled words and things like that for that to happen. A lot boosted instead of boosted. Procured instead of procured. It can happen surprisingly easily sometimes when you get a word wrong you put in the wrong three words and you're gonna get somewhere in America or somewhere in Karachi or something like that. And obviously those are gonna be spotted to be incorrect, but some of them could confuse them and and lead to delays.

Speaker 1:

I have a question and it's gonna sound silly because I'm not a mountaineer, but why couldn't we build this app using like coordinates instead like longitude long? Is it longitude or longitude? Latitude? I, I, I don't, I don't know the word is but I know what I mean. Okay, why couldn't we build that app using those

Speaker 2:

That already exists? So there is apps that will give you a grid reference and there is apps that will give you your GPS coordinates, your GPS coordinates is gonna be numbers, right? And I would say the likelihood of stating a number over the phone and somebody making a mistake with that, especially if you're careful with the pronunciation, it's gonna be less than somebody misstating a word or getting confused over a plural or something like that. I would say that that is uh, likely the case. But yeah, there's apps that will give you a grid reference. There's apps that will give you your GPS coordinates. There's apps that will give you a, those do already exist. It can see what the intention was with what three words and it's this balance of effectiveness and simplicity, isn't it just saying three words in principle seems like a, a simple thing to do and it isn't any three words, right? You're not gonna get like medical terms and astrological terms and things like that. Within what three words? It is a reduced dictionary. So I do think they could do more and no doubt they are looking to improve that so that there is less potential for failure within that model. That is effectively one of the things that, that I do think is what's wrong with the grid reference. I get it, I get it. The counterpoint could be not everybody knows how to take a grid reference and um, learn how to read a map and also just use an app that gives you on then it's not, you know, there's no difference. What do you think about it? What's your opinion?

Speaker 1:

It seems like positive intent and like it could provide some value. I think like anything in its infancy or in very early stages, there's probably some issues with execution that need to be worked out. But I think fundamentally I see what they were going for. I'm just not sure why we couldn't use coordinates or something instead, but I suppose it makes it more attractive to lay people that's more user friendly. Yeah,

Speaker 2:

I think the simplicity angle is something that is a big, a big benefit of that. And of course I would, I would defer to the experts, you know, I would defer to what do the MRT teams think about this And if and if they were saying, you know, it's great and we're all using it, then that's fair enough, you know, they're on the ground, they're doing that work. I have seen MRT complain about it though and I have seen them give statistics around how frequently it, it actually just didn't help them. But I guess that would be the same as people who go out hiking and don't take a map with them. I could sit here and say just take a grid reference, but if you dunno how to read a map or you don't have a map with you, then, then yeah I would, I would concede at that point.

Speaker 1:

I think there are some issues with these kinds of apps where there are problems that you can't predict and don't necessarily foresee and they don't come to light until you have a massive user base testing it in life for you. Yeah,

Speaker 2:

Everything's harder with scale and things like accents and all of those kinds of things are definitely gonna get worse than more people who are using it and in the more locations that it's being using. Yeah, I I get it. I think, I think the idea of it just being simple is definitely a draw point for it. I just think there's some, some issues like I say I put some in the show notes around in particular plurals or words that could easily be misinterpreted, boosted versus busted.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I think that's a a big one in terms of accent actually. And it<laugh> it's something that like if you are northern and you move to the south, it, it can be really uncomfortable. I was in um, a French class and I was at uni and my tutor was asking each of us how you would get around an island and you'd have to say it in English and then translate it to French and some people said like in a car on foot, um, by a train, something like that. And I said on a boat and she was like, A boat, A boat. What's a boat? And I was like a boat and she was like, Oh, a boat. I've never been so mortified in my life. I was the only person there who wasn't from like south of Birmingham I wanna say. So the Shire accent sticks out quite a lot and I think like saying like bolstered versus boasted is like, well the, the other example you've got here is procures versus procured If you're on a bad line or you lose the end of the word, like that's it.

Speaker 2:

And if anyone happens to be a member of an MRT and you think it's great, please let us know.

Speaker 1:

Yeah and maybe like learn your phonetic alphabet just in case

Speaker 2:

Th this is the thing I thought about that and if, if we're gonna break down to phonetically saying over the phone what the words are, just say the numbers of the grid reference or of the their coordinates. That's the thing that I struggle with.

Speaker 1:

Yeah. Assuming that you've got one though, like if all you've got is what three words or you, you haven't got an app on your phone that could give you that and you've suddenly really poor signal or you've got signal but no internet for example, so you're having to rely on that then I guess spelling out the word is still a good alternative if a bit inconvenient and lengthy

Speaker 2:

If you have the foresight to install what three words just install an app that will give you your grid reference in, in your coordinates. I don't, I don't see that. Um, also so many people don't know the phonetic alphabet, you know so many people

Speaker 1:

26 words.

Speaker 2:

Yeah but it's just like you get people saying yeah um,

Speaker 1:

<laugh>

Speaker 2:

Tara Dile

Speaker 1:

Norm night. Yeah night is a horrible one cuz you mean like the, the night in shining armor or nighttime I spent like a brief period of time in a call center and I was on a grad scheme so I had to learn my fanatic alphabet because sometimes you are speaking to people with hearing problems or who are a bit elderly or something, um, or who just need to spell out their post code because the line's bad. You kind of gotta try and work with what what you've got in this situation and make these things accessible for as many people as possible. And I think what three words, even if it's floored execution has raised awareness, which is good.

Speaker 2:

I would concede that point that how long would it take me to teach you how to take a good reference of your current location versus how long would it take me to teach you how to use what three words I would consider at that point

Speaker 1:

<laugh>, maybe you could build an app that makes grid references easier.

Speaker 2:

Did they exist? Yeah, that that is the thing. Yeah you can, you can download that.

Speaker 1:

Okay, well maybe if they get better at marketing then they'll solve this problem for

Speaker 2:

Us. I have an app that just lets me really easily text some, somebody in my coordinates not thinking from a like a emergency situation point of view, but just like how with satellite communicators and satellite locators they can give somebody an update of how far through your route you are. So somebody, a family member or something like that knows where you're going and how long you are likely to be. You can just give them an update on how far around you are. You can do that with a satellite communicator or I do it with my phone most of the time if I've got signal I can just effectively want and click to send a message that says I'm okay and this is where I am and the person who receives the text message doesn't need an app or anything to see that it'll just pop up. This particular one uses Google map so they get a link, they press the link, it shows'em on Google Maps where I am.

Speaker 1:

You can get Apple watches that have things like fall detection built in, which are really, really useful for if you have like elderly or disabled or vulnerable family members or children, things like that. And they can also auto alert emergency services to send somebody out if they detect that the wearer has had a fall. And also if you power off an iPhone now it tells you that they're still discoverable using find my iPhone. I'm wondering if that would work if you didn't have any signal and like if that would be a viable alternative if you wearing an Apple watch or something if potentially that could alert emergency services if you had a fall when you were up a mountain or if you, if your battery died, if it could still like find that device and therefore the person carrying it.

Speaker 2:

The signal thing depends. So uh, for example on a mobile phone, if you don't have network coverage, 9 9 9 will still work if there is another network that you have signal for. So emergency calls will go through on another network. So, so it just depends. I could foresee that working where you don't have signal but there is network coverage return in the network. Travel insurance is such a great one as well because it's like get travel insurance that's appropriate for where you're going and what you're doing. It's gonna be a difference between travel insurance for sitting in a result and travel insurance for climbing a mountain insurance very often has fair sense of limitations. I've seen travel insurance policies that have a maximum elevation. This is a insurance company where they offer mountaineering or alpine insurance as a separate product. You get a lower premium if you're not doing those things. And yeah, one insurance policy is looking at recently for example had a maximum elevation of 5,000 meters.

Speaker 1:

I suppose you need different yeah travel insurance depending on the sort of holiday you're going on because a lot of them don't cover things like extreme sports or water sports. So if you wanna go scuba diving or if you wanna go like white water rafting or jet skis, yeah that's another one. Or if you're on like a power boat or something instead that's gonna be more risky and more expensive.

Speaker 2:

I think that's a great example as well because I think if you're gonna climb above 5,000 meters, most people would think okay, I probably need mountaineering insurance. I think that's a sensible leap to make, but your traveling insurance might have a clause that excludes extreme sports as they put it. But that might mean things like jet skis and you might look at that and go, well I'm not doing extreme sports, but actually you might be because you know, there's the common use of the word and then the specific within the policy.

Speaker 1:

I just feel like you could have type two fun in a safer environment that doesn't require specialist rescue squads if something goes wrong.