But in 2016, at the age of 54, he had a heart attack while attempting to summit Lunag Ri, the tallest unclimbed mountain in Nepal. It hit, sudden and painful, as he was moving up a mixed-ice route behind the lead climber. This heart attack had Anker reassessing his work and life.

Avalanches, cracking ice flows and deadly crevices are just some of the obstacles faced by climbers. The chief impediment, however, is extreme altitude sickness. The “death zone” is above 8,000 metres. The lack of oxygen can disorientate the most experienced climbers, and many perish at this point.

What difficulties to climbers face in trying to reach the summit? Climbers are now in the Death Zone, the most grueling stage of the climb because it is so hard to breath at this elevation. Deep snow, steep drop-offs and harsh weather make it even more difficult.

In terms of objective hazards, the dangers mountaineers face include falling rocks, falling ice, snow-avalanches, the climber falling, falls from ice slopes, falls down snow slopes, falls into crevasses, and the dangers from altitude and weather.

Free-soloing (climbing over 40 feet above the ground without a harness) is one of the most dangerous sports resulting in many deaths. Injuries can also be caused by rock climbing in a dangerous manner so we’re going to look at what these serious injuries are and how they can be avoided.

The dangers abound from the hazards that are already present in nature like avalanches, bad weather, and rockfall, plus there are the hazards that come from the climber. Equipment can fail, and falls from fatigue, poor technique and other subjective hazards are among the dangers you’d face up on the mountain.

Rappelling is always dangerous and sometimes scary, especially when you trust your life to the anchors and the rope. Your rappel anchors can fail. You fail to tie a stopper knot in the ends of the ropes. Your rope-connecting knot can come untied.

How dangerous is Rock Climbing really? On average, we see about 30 deaths per year, though it does fluctuate. Extrapolating 30 deaths per 5,000,000 North American Climbers to the estimated global total of climbers, we could see around 150 climbing-related deaths per year.

Climbing: 1 death per 12,000 participants per year. Driving: 1 death per 9,000 participants per year. Using my own experience as an estimate: I climb about 50 days per year, at about 6 hours per day on average.

More than 100 climbing accidents occur in Yosemite each year, and 51 climbers died from traumatic injuries in the park between 1970 and 1990, according to the park service.

approximately 3000 feet

People have died from lightning strikes on Half Dome, and if there’s any worse place to be during a thunderstorm than on a high, completely exposed surface like Half Dome, it’s probably hanging onto iron cables while you climb back down the side of that exposed surface.

So far the hardest climb in the world is 5.15d. When Alex Honnold chose an El Capitan route to free solo, he picked one of the easiest big wall free climbing routes on El Capitan, Free Rider (5.12d).