Mt. Whitney Portal Store & Hostel Forums General Mt. Whitney Portal Store Message Board Consequences of throwing anything off the summit

Yes, the "Mythbusters" determined a penny dropped from the Empire State Building can't kill (it could bruise though). Here's something I found on the web:

I was involved in the "jokes" about golf balls in the earlier thread, and that's all I assumed it was -- I never assumed any responsible person would do that.

The book Sport Science, by Peter Brancazio, contains these approximate
terminal velocities:
raindrop = 15 mi/hr
baseball = 95 mi/hr
golf ball = 90 mi/hr
ping pong ball = 20 mi/hr

I assume the above is at sea level and I'm not sure whether there is a significant difference at 14k feet (I would guess these numbers would be marginally higher). I've been hit in the back by a golf ball that bounced once from about 150 yards and it hurt quite a bit (the ball was probably going only 25 mph). However, my layman's guess is that a 90 mph golf ball hitting a human would not likely kill, but could if it was an "unlucky" spot. At minimum, the impact could knock off someone's balance and could easily cause severe injuries including broken bones. Consider that baseballs have killed people and although they are more massive, they have a bigger surface to compensate somewhat. A golf ball is, relatively speaking, more like a bullet (a 30 calib. bullet supposedly has a terminal velocity of only 200 mph, which isn't the same as the speed coming out of the gun).

Dave R

CAN WE PLEASE LET THIS DIE!

I think the point is to have this topic be "alive" to prevent an accident that could make someone "die".

Hmmm. What would be the consequences of throwing Nextdrink off the summit?

Actually, to be fair, I think Nextdrink was referring to the penny digression and not the topic of the danger of throwing something off the summit.

Unfortunately, only a very small percentage of people who summit Mt. Whitney will read this thread. Aside from a helmet is there anything that climbers do to protect themselves?

Not that we need more signage up there, but what about a little one that says: "Climbers Below. Please do NOT throw items over the edge!" I think I've seen things like this in other areas.

Just a small thought.

-L

Golf balls belong 1) on a golf course 2) on a shelf (if you collect them) or on practice grounds with nets. Anyone hitting balls elsewhere e.g. in wilderness areas where you CANNOT retrieve them, is not respecting LNT policy (as stated earlier). Also, I've been playing golf intermittantly for over 10 years and STILL manage to slice and shank the ball. Every once in a blue moon, I send out the ball only 20 ft ! I also once hit the ball on the driving range marker causing it to ricochet in the opposite direction.

Climbers are concentrating pretty hard sometimes when placing pro and any distraction from flying objects could mean great injury. I plan to climb the East Face/East Butt this year and certainly don't want anything unnatural coming my way!

Kurt, I appreciate your post as a good reminder for all of us.

Bob K. - you're probably right. After I read Nextdrink's comment again I think it was the penny digression (although he is welcome to respond otherwise). I did not know that proved to be an urban myth. That's nice to know.

Back on topic, to answer your question a climber's main defense against rockfall is a helmet.

I'll concur with the above and thank Kurt for bringing it to the attention of the public. While we know that a small percentage of the people on the summit of Whitney read this board at least we keep getting educated about things by reading each others threads and postings and it might help in some small way from preventing incidents.

Although I'm not sure people would pay much attention to such signage, I'd be in favor of it. And I wouldn't limit it to the Whitney Summit. People climb on all the pinnacles from Muir to Whitney. Some of the approaches involve being in the gullies between them, which is already a hazardous undertaking.

The last thing I want to see is another sign. How about just having the FS include it in their "wag bag" speech? BTW, has anyone ever thrown one of those off the summit? Oops, I feel another thread drift comming on...

The FS should make all prospective Whitney hikers watch The Marine Biologist episode of Seinfeld. I won't give away the plot, just in case anyone out there is slowly working his/her way through reruns. Suffice it to say that we learn that hitting golf balls in natural places can have bad consequences. ( golf balls should only be used in the most unnatural of locations, namely golf courses. And no, I don't have anything against golf.)

It looks like this topic is getting a lot of discussion on the net. For example, so far 80 messages on the first link and 274 on the second.
http://www.supertopo.com/climbing/thread.html?topic_id=432518&tn=0
http://www.nwhikers.net/forums/viewtopic.php?t=7961637&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=0

But AlanK.............It was a hole in one!

Good point! It's be tough to do that off of Whitney!

Yup... among the rock climbing and mountaineering communities it is getting a lot of attention hence why I wanted to bring it up here.

I wasn't so much trying to focus solely on the golf ball thing but more on the larger issue of throwing anything off the summit. Like was pointed out above most of us know we shouldn't do that but sometimes people do things for the strangest reasons. Whitney attracts a lot of novices and many of them haven't learned to be mountain savvy and they can do things without realizing the consequences. People have thrown a rock off of summits just to simply time it to see how long it takes before they hear the sound of it hitting below. One person does it then another tries to throw a second rock farther to try to beat his time, then another, and another. You can see where that can go.

When I was a teenager, my younger sister once hit a golf ball in my direction (I wasn't paying attention) and managed to get it off the ground for the first time. Hit me in the right lens of my glasses. Fortunately, no serious injury...but you can see my point.

When I was on La Malinche (Mexico) last year we watched a couple guys start kicking down rocks not far from the summit. They looked like they knew what they were doing. The resulting landslide was fairly impressive.

http://www.rickkent.net/ViewerPlus/viewphoto.aspx?ID=60423

We wondered if perhaps that was a common activity down there. We were also glad we hadn't come up that way.

-Rick

I have been quilty of throwing snowballs from summits. I guess I'd better not do that this winter!

It's good that you did and it's good that you mentioned the golf ball encounter. I suspect that when that golf ball went zipping past you, you may have been wondering if there might be more coming, which is a distraction that a climber doesn't need.

what a view!

I told the people I was guiding what had just happened since they were below me and didn't see it. I also yelled up to the summit that we were there. Nobody responded. Since the top part of the route is 3rd class we began moving pretty quickly and were on the summit a short while later. We didn't see anyone with a golf club or even acknowledge what had happened. I think whoever it was decided to high tail it off the summit before we got there.

The most important thing is nobody got hurt... and hopefully nobody ever will from something being thrown off the summit.