I hope you are kidding? The OMM was extreme mountain weather.. but so what it should be expected and contingencies in place to deal with it. It's a MM on the high fells in October... bad weather is a given.
Its not about mountains heeding rules.. or taming mountains.. its not really about the mountains at all. Such statements like yours, wheezes are just cliches. Obviously everyone would prefer an informal unwritten rule book where we all just sign a disclaimer and run. Thats just not going to happen.
Of course mountains heed no rules.. but coroners and courts do and the threat of legal action isn't just a pie in the sky threat. We had two occassions in north wales when finishers were recorded with a pen and paper.. not secured down or protected and dueto bad weather they were lost/damaged and unreadable. Afterwards the RO put on the website a request for people to submit there time and position to him... basically he had no idea who had finished. This was an evening race, the chance of being lost was admittedly low, but it was potentially a serious situation. So I do think the safety of the sport can be improved and wanting to do so in no way threatens the sport like people are making out on here.
There will be more deaths in fell running. It will come under my scrutiny. There are now new pressures. I'm all for the sport growing but some people are turning up to races beyond them.
I'm actually moving to the idea that rather than have ER we should also have NER (No exp. required).... so identify races suitable for novices in the calendar. At the moment the abbreviation list is so poorly used it is useless.. you see what are effectively trail races with ER or NS listed.. over use of these warnings actually makes them useless.
My worry is all branches of the sport have different rules, BOFRA, FRA, WFRA, SHR, these new rat races.. now UK Sky running... all have different equipment lists, marshalling duties.. its a pain for runners, RO's and marshalls but more importantly I actually think it exposes RO's and the organisations to risk because if a death happened they could say 'why didn't you do what the FRA/SHR states'..
