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General Climbing Discussion

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Travel insurance for climbing overseas 18-Apr-2016 At 3:58:36 PM PeterW

Message

On 18/04/2016 Jelmer wrote:
>- Insure4less Australia:
> rock climbing (sport, up to 25 ewbank is what i specified) is possible
>to add to the insurance plan. However, only as a supplement to a single
>trip plan which seems to have a 5 day minimum. In my case that's just the
>climbing portion of my trip so 5 days of coverage excluding the USA - $42
>for their most basic package. The four days of climbing were quoted as
>an ADDITIONAL $102. Ouch. Unlimited medical expenses though.
[snip]
>- Global Underwriters Diplomat International:
>The policy can be bought for part of a trip on a minimum of 5 days. Good
>for me as i'm only climbing for 4 days of my trip. Mountaineering is included
>by adding a 'hazardous sports' cover that also includes scuba diving and
>motorcycling. I went with this option and paid AUD 20 for 5 days of coverage
>(outside the USA) with a max of 1M USD medical expenses, $0 excess and
>$25k USD death and disability cover (the minimum). 4 bucks a day is a lot
>better than the 25 a day that Insure4less quoted me. On a longer trip i
>would halve the medical coverage and take a $250 excess to drop the daily
>rate a fair bit.

Something to watch out for with Insure4Less (and maybe others) is that the fine print in the policy says the basic insurance policy has to cover your entire trip from leaving Australia to returning there!

For a trip to Europe last year I didn't see this requirement, and since I had general travel insurance already I only applied for insurance for the week I would be fooling around on via feratta's in the Swiss alps. Fortunately nothing went wrong because it was only later that I discovered I wouldn't have been covered!

I've been reviewing this stuff again myself since I'll be climbing in Yosemite for a couple of days in June (and playing tourist for the rest of the trip). The conclusion I came to was to make sure I didn't do anything stupid for those two days as the cost of insurance was going to be prohibitive!