In Mattski's original post, he uses the words: belayer, snow, ice, and he refers to rock-fall and avalanche.

On his profile page, he's posted a couple of snapshots of himself on a summit, wearing crampons and ice-tools. Also a picture of him backpacking, with a piton hammer tied to his pack.

So you gotta guess that he's talking alpine-style mountaineering. That is, high-level rock climbing and ice climbing. Not hiking. He knows about the dangers, and has some experience with them.

And you gotta guess that he's active in the sport, not simply reading books.

So it's hard to understand where his questions came from. He's just too naive! Therefore, I guess either he's trolling us (which doesn't make sense) or else he was stoned when he posted that crap.

Maybe Matt can clear this up. OK Matt? What do you say?

He's a troll, and a spectacular troll at that. It's really impressive to watch thread after thread of people take his carefully crafted bait. And it's usually the same people who get snagged on his juicy worms.

"Is mountaineering dangerous?"

FWIW, I predicate my troll assumption on the fact that he can't be THAT stupid. I think. Right? Cause he's a fucking moron otherwise. He'll be dead soon, don't worry. The mountains tend to accelerate natural selection. Call it passive eugenics.

Pick up a copy of "Accidents in North American Mountaineering 2010", published by the The American Alpine Club. (www.americanalpineclub.org). It contains a description of every event (hundreds) in the US and Canada. A lot of people were foolish, unprepared, etc. But many just had a bad combination of events.