3 safety tips before your first mountaineering extravaganza (tip: you’ll need a GPS tracker)
Something that has become increasingly common over the last few years is extreme sports. A few decades ago people may have “wanted to do something different” by signing up for a marathon. Now, the likes of mountaineering tend to be at the top of the list.
As the title may have already given away, today’s guide is all about how you can safely prepare for your first mountaineering trip. Suffice to say, it’s not simply a case of turning up and hoping that everything goes to plan. There’s a degree of planning involved and through the course of this guide we will take a look at the three safety avenues you should tackle to keep you in one piece.
How will you communicate with others?
As you may have noticed from the title of this article, we paid specific attention to the use of a GPS tracker. The main benefit of these devices is that they tend to always track your location and can relay it back to those who might be waiting at home for you, should the unthinkable occur and you succumb to an emergency situation. While mobile phones might lose signal, GPS trackers rely on satellites which can make them a little more reliable.
Of course, you should also take a mobile phone as well. That two-way communication can be absolutely invaluable and while you will lose signal at times, there will also be areas around the mountain where your phone does function completely fine.
The importance of planning safely
Everyone knows the potential dangers associated with mountaineering, but a lot of people new to the sport won’t take safety seriously until they actually reach the mountain. This is their first mistake.
In short, you should be planning from the outset on how to tackle your new hobby. You should be researching exactly which mountains are suitable for beginners, and selecting them accordingly. As well as this, find out if there are other climbers who frequent to these mountains as suffice to say, the more people there, the safer things can become if you do run into difficulties.
Additionally, make sure you keep an eye on the weather. We don’t need to highlight how difficult mountaineering can become if the weather takes a turn for the worse.
Take your first aid seriously
The final point we are going to make relates to first aid. Even though you may have only just started with your hobby, you should be making sure that you are adequately trained in case the worst happens. Courses are now much more affordable, and rarely take longer than a day, so they are accessible than ever before.
As well as this, we can’t reiterate enough the importance of a first aid kit. Even if this just contains the bare essentials, this can be a godsend if you do run into trouble and there is no outside assistance that you know of.