Michael C Wirth

[Been_Jammin]

He’s an absolute beast and a top end athlete, but he appears very careless when it comes to risk management on avy terrain based on the snowbrains article about him. Further, he skied comstock around the same time as Cody Townsend did and Cody had said there wasn’t a single chance he would’ve skied the day Michael did.

Again, amazing athlete. Hope he stays alive. I’d love to see what boundaries he pushes.

↑ The stories I've heard about this kid's relationship with risk kinda throw a shadow over a lot of his accomplishments for me.

Interesting quip from Cody Townsend. Cody is a legend and demonstrates the gold standard for planning and risk mitigation in his content. I wonder if he is feeling pressure from sponsors to assume more risk now that he is no longer the only serious contender to ski The Fifty.

[Jorts]

↑ The stories I've heard about this kid's relationship with risk kinda throw a shadow over a lot of his accomplishments for me.

Not familiar with the stories. But I finally watched his video of Comstock. His prep seems thorough. He's not blindly rolling the dice with reckless abandon. It looked like the stars aligned for him: sufficient cloud cover and cold in the back half of the day to keep the south aspect frozen on his egress; sun and visibility on his descent; and he previewed conditions by climbing the line directly. Wirth even acknowledged and attempted to mitigate the overhead risk from the cornice. In April with frigid conditions and a prior melt-freeze cycle (according to an account from a local Townsend talked to in his comstock video), Wirth's assessment of the risk from that cornice seemed appropriate.

I wonder if Wirth arrived at the top of the line that day before Townsend - presenting a window Townsend never saw? Clearly Wirth recognized that time was of the essence. Seemed like he spent all of 5 minutes at the top.

Props to him.

[Istoodupthere]

Personally I plan to go the opposite direction. The less life on this earth that I have remaining, the more willing I am to gamble slightly with the time that I have left here. I am still pretty conservative and don't plan on chancing too much in the next 20 years, but if I were to die at 93 yo on the descent after having just become the oldest man to summit Little Bear, that wouldn't be a terrible way to go.

Sean Nunn
Raytown MO

I can understand that point of view. Prepare yourself though for someone who spends their free time climbing mountains to call you stupid

[14er_memer]

Oh this kid lol.

Interesting case study in "effed around but hasn't found out". He's made a name for himself in Aspen and elsewhere and I think there's a reason he skis mostly solo. I know a few pro skiers who won't really do anything with him either. The day he skied the Comstock the high was 57° - warmest day yet of the year and the low the night before was 36°. Not the day to be spending time under a huge cornice that's for sure and absolutely not a predictable risk

https://snowbrains.com/always-connectin ... e-to-fame/

↑ This sounds like he wrote it himself, about himself. Give it a read and the advice etc is simply awful. He talks about "normalization of deviance" but has absolutely no goddamn clue about what it means. He offers the solution of "well you just need to relax, take care of your brain etc" which completely misses the mark. He has normalized extremely high level of risk for himself, seemingly without understanding how that works

He's an incredible athlete, but an accident waiting to happen in the mountains.

[JaredJohnson]

Personally I plan to go the opposite direction. The less life on this earth that I have remaining, the more willing I am to gamble slightly with the time that I have left here. I am still pretty conservative and don't plan on chancing too much in the next 20 years, but if I were to die at 93 yo on the descent after having just become the oldest man to summit Little Bear, that wouldn't be a terrible way to go.

Sean Nunn
Raytown MO

I can understand that point of view. Prepare yourself though for someone who spends their free time climbing mountains to call you stupid

Loosely related observation: if you spent no time in the mountains, your chances of dying in the mountains would be zero; if you spent 100% of your time in the mountains, your chances of dying in the mountains would be 100%. The more time you're in the mountains the more likely you are to die there, and if you're solo nobody will know if it's because you got careless or you had an inevitable heart attack. All of that is irrespective of your wise or unwise choices but just a function of probability since everybody's gotta die somewhere. I guess all this mainly to say it's not necessarily foolish or suicidal for someone to be okay with the prospect of meeting their end in the mountains.

[nunns]

Personally I plan to go the opposite direction. The less life on this earth that I have remaining, the more willing I am to gamble slightly with the time that I have left here. I am still pretty conservative and don't plan on chancing too much in the next 20 years, but if I were to die at 93 yo on the descent after having just become the oldest man to summit Little Bear, that wouldn't be a terrible way to go.

Sean Nunn
Raytown MO

I can understand that point of view. Prepare yourself though for someone who spends their free time climbing mountains to call you stupid

If I really die descending Little Bear at age 90+ I won't care what others say about me.

Sean Nunn
Raytown MO

[Jorts]

The day he skied the Comstock the high was 57° - warmest day yet of the year and the low the night before was 36°. Not the day to be spending time under a huge cornice that's for sure and absolutely not a predictable risk

Thought he skied it the same day that Townsend was perched up there and decided to turnaround? When it was brutally cold.

If it was a soft/no freeze day... I retract my prior statement... climbing that couloir would have been kind of reckless.

[nunns]

Personally I plan to go the opposite direction. The less life on this earth that I have remaining, the more willing I am to gamble slightly with the time that I have left here. I am still pretty conservative and don't plan on chancing too much in the next 20 years, but if I were to die at 93 yo on the descent after having just become the oldest man to summit Little Bear, that wouldn't be a terrible way to go.

Sean Nunn
Raytown MO

I can understand that point of view. Prepare yourself though for someone who spends their free time climbing mountains to call you stupid

Loosely related observation: if you spent no time in the mountains, your chances of dying in the mountains would be zero; if you spent 100% of your time in the mountains, your chances of dying in the mountains would be 100%. The more time you're in the mountains the more likely you are to die there, and if you're solo nobody will know if it's because you got careless or you had an inevitable heart attack. All of that is irrespective of your wise or unwise choices but just a function of probability since everybody's gotta die somewhere. I guess all this mainly to say it's not necessarily foolish or suicidal for someone to be okay with the prospect of meeting their end in the mountains.

True that. I would almost prefer to die in nature (with family around), albeit perhaps not in a tragic fall. Either that or quietly in my sleep.

Sean Nunn
Raytown MO

[Rollie Free]

Personally I plan to go the opposite direction. The less life on this earth that I have remaining, the more willing I am to gamble slightly with the time that I have left here. I am still pretty conservative and don't plan on chancing too much in the next 20 years, but if I were to die at 93 yo on the descent after having just become the oldest man to summit Little Bear, that wouldn't be a terrible way to go.

Sean Nunn
Raytown MO

I can understand that point of view. Prepare yourself though for someone who spends their free time climbing mountains to call you stupid

Loosely related observation: if you spent no time in the mountains, your chances of dying in the mountains would be zero; if you spent 100% of your time in the mountains, your chances of dying in the mountains would be 100%. The more time you're in the mountains the more likely you are to die there, and if you're solo nobody will know if it's because you got careless or you had an inevitable heart attack. All of that is irrespective of your wise or unwise choices but just a function of probability since everybody's gotta die somewhere. I guess all this mainly to say it's not necessarily foolish or suicidal for someone to be okay with the prospect of meeting their end in the mountains.

One could justify risky behavior like this (not endorsing it but..)
On a good weekend day in the summer, how many people are going to climb or hike on one of the 14ers? If you would take that number and compare it to a town of similar size then would the death rate be comparable? In any population death is imminent. Given that, how much MORE risky is climbing a 14er that just being somewhere on earth. It may not be as bad as you'd think.

[14er_memer]

The day he skied the Comstock the high was 57° - warmest day yet of the year and the low the night before was 36°. Not the day to be spending time under a huge cornice that's for sure and absolutely not a predictable risk

Thought he skied it the same day that Townsend was perched up there and decided to turnaround? When it was brutally cold.

If it was a soft/no freeze day... I retract my prior statement... climbing that couloir would have been kind of reckless.

Even on the freezing cold day, the route Greg Hill put up still doesn't go up the couloir because of how long you'd be exposed to the cornice.

But yeah no, different day altogether. He did apparently set a nice skintrack on a cornice and under several well known slide paths while doing seven steps however.

[Been_Jammin]

The day he skied the Comstock the high was 57° - warmest day yet of the year and the low the night before was 36°. Not the day to be spending time under a huge cornice that's for sure and absolutely not a predictable risk

Thought he skied it the same day that Townsend was perched up there and decided to turnaround? When it was brutally cold.

If it was a soft/no freeze day... I retract my prior statement... climbing that couloir would have been kind of reckless.

Even on the freezing cold day, the route Greg Hill put up still doesn't go up the couloir because of how long you'd be exposed to the cornice.

But yeah no, different day altogether. He did apparently set a nice skintrack on a cornice and under several well known slide paths while doing seven steps however.

Ha. Cody Townsend posted his Seven Steps video today. Interesting how two top ski mountaineers have completely different risk tolerances.

[kkriley19]

It’s a wonderful thing that we don’t rely on the s**t talkers from 14ers to push what is possible in the mountains. Sit back and watch a bunch of gumbies ruin another thread from their cozy little arm chairs. I don’t think I’ve ever posted on a thread before but I have to point out the douchbaggery is top notch on 14ers. Cheers to the opinions of highly jealous people that glorify hike up mountains and then trash other peoples actual athletic accomplishments. Attaboy and girls!