Chockstone Forum

      Sponsored By
      ROCK
   HARDWARE

Chockstone Photography

Australian Landscape Prints

Chockstone Forum - General Discussion

General Climbing Discussion

Topic Date User

Getting Insurance for Climbing in the USA 26-May-2014 At 10:49:19 PM Ben_E

Message

On 26/05/2014 jclimber wrote:
>Yeah it was $1700 for insure4less trad climbing for a year.

Ouch.

Seems a lot at first, but following a dubious back-of-the-envelope calculation based on rubbery figures (how's that to inspire confidence?) I'm not so sure it's necessarily all that outrageous.

It's been guestimated that there are ~50 fractures (ranging from fractured skulls through to broken legs) per year in Yosemite, resulting from 25,000 to 50,000 climbing days (http://jrre.org/stayalive.pdf - old figures, I'm afraid). That would be an average of a fracture for every 500-1000 days spent climbing, which seems ballpark feasible (and excludes the less common but more serious and expensive accidents).

If you climb every second day during a year-long trip that gives you about a 1:4 chance of needing to hit the hospital at some point. Given likely US hospital fees without cover and potential SAR costs if you plan on doing anything big/remote, the $1,700 is sounding like a pretty good investment to me at that point, assuming insure4less have a reputation of paying up.

Off my soap box now - hope you have a blast, whatever option you chose. Where are you planning on climbing?