I want to welcome back our friend Rob Scanlon who is going to talk about getting too close to the edge.

What is getting too close to the edge, Dr. Rob Scanlon?

So, you know, falling in general is, it's just what we do as hikers.

We fall all the time, trip we stumble we slip happens everybody

no maybe you never me no but my friends chime in on that one.

Most of these, you know, most of their, you know, none of that gets reported. And so, so, but a falling happens a lot and you know, we're not, you know, we're not,

talking about these types of falls, but there are, you know, kind of vertical falls that are generally non-fatal but potentially traumatic and then there are the fatal ones are highly potential for fatal.

So 20 feet seems to be the cutoff below which you, can lead to either minor injury or decent orthopedic injury, you know,

wrist, ankles, knees, hips, what have you, shoulders, but you know, not generally a threat to people's lives.

They may have to get rescued out because they may have injured the wrong,

you know, the joint or whatever, you know, if you have to mess up your shoulder,

you can get out on your own two feet but but not you

know knees or ankles or have your broken you know broken whatever on your legs.

The the the so over 20 feet raises the potential for major trauma and that is actually the deciding factor of when, you know, when rescuers do come and rescue those folks, if they've fallen for more than 20 feet, they are automatically diverted to a trauma center because of all the internal damage, not only the orthopedic stuff, but the internal damage that may have also occurred.

And so I'll give you a couple of statistics,

not for shock factor or whatever,

but someone who falls 60 feet, an average size person will be going

at 42 miles an hour upon impact. If they fall 90 feet the average person will reach 75

miles per hour upon impact. Wow. Yeah.

So it is not the fall that is the risk for death.

It is the sudden deceleration.

And that's when, yes, again, the orthopedic stuff happens, bones break, all that stuff.

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