The value of your life

Italian original: "Il valore della vostra vita" – 12 October 2024

ANARCHY – Written on 10 October 2017 and never published

Aaaah, you missed me, admit it 👂 I didn't hear you... come on, say it. Life is unpredictable and puts us in front of hard decisions, where being consistent and honest can mean broken legs and broken teeth. But this isn't a blog about personal matters: this is DOTTOR FIX, born for climbing lovers, but also and above all for lovers of everything that revolves around climbing. From sleepless nights spent replaying the crux sequence of the pitch you're working on, to the last botched manoeuvre at the anchor that by a whisker didn't send you to the next world.

Climbing is an anarchic discipline. It's practised illegally, in places equipped to no technical specification whatsoever, and without any coordination or permit. Compare it with a footballer, a cyclist or a swimmer and you'll agree that rock climbing still has no legal framework of any kind. Courses, technical clinics and group outings have one, within their chain of responsibility, but outside those contexts it's complete and utter anarchy. In 90% of cases we climb on private walls and on state-owned walls without any permit or official resolution from the competent offices. In the vast majority of cases there's no agreement between public bodies and private owners that could release owners or municipalities from legal liability in the event of an accident. We are thousands of anarchic practitioners occupying public and private spaces, for now without any permission. Maybe one day a committee or a body will be born that signs agreements with private owners and municipalities, trains bolters and certifies certain sites. In the event of an accident, the parties called to account, besides those involved in the accident, are the landowner or the mayor. Once that's done, it will coordinate management and practice rules with parks, associations and alpine clubs.

In this anarchic context many people claim rights and powers, but in reality the law simply provides for equipping by mountain guides with the landowner's consent. In particular cases the CAI (Italian Alpine Club) has been authorised to adopt a crag, taking on all the responsibility for its equipment. For now it's better that the rest, let's call it the undergrowth, stays undergrowth.

Climbing is a dangerous sport, and the very fact of doing it knowingly and willingly implies that the climber accepts some degree of risk. On the other hand, that acceptance of risk does not in itself rule out any liability on the climber's part.

The degree of awareness, and therefore of acceptance of risk, varies with experience and technical ability. In the event of an accident or injury within a roped party in which one of the climbers is called on to pay damages, the courts will treat cases of reliance differently from cases without reliance. In the latter it will be rarer and harder to prove a partner's direct civil liability; in the former, it will be easier and more likely to attribute liability to the experienced companion.