The Wilderness Medical Society reports that snowboarders account for fully a quarter of all outdoor-related emergency room visits. Hikers come in at No. 3.
Nearly 26 percent of the injures were from snowboarding followed by sledding (11 percent); hiking (6 percent); mountain biking, personal watercraft, water skiing or tubing (4 percent); fishing (3 percent) and swimming (2 percent).
From his experience on ski patrols, “it makes perfect sense to me that snowboard injuries rank high,” said Dr. Paul Auerbach, of Stanford School of Medicine.
Odd, why mountain biking but no road biking?
Dr. Auerbach has an outdoor-health blog. If you’re feeling energetic, check out his environmental treatise (his style is tad dry but I don’t really care much about prose tendencies when I need my compound fracture reduced). Or if you’re the practical sort: Laceration repair.
WEBMD also cites the above study and lists several dead-obvious ways to avoid injuries (such as, if you go fast, wear a helmet).
In my personal experience, mountain biking is MUCH more injury-prone than road biking. I know “unplanned dismounts” (but hopefully not injuries!) were expected on any given mountain bike ride, and certainly aren’t on a road ride. Also, they may not consider road biking as an “outdoor” activity, in that it takes place on paved roads, not in the wilderness.
One thing that’s always a red flag for me in these studies is context – hiking may very well be 6% of the outdoor-related ER visits, but surely the percentage of outdoor-related ER visits is not a large percentage of ALL ER visits.
When phrased as these are, it tends to indicate that activities are much more dangerous than they actually are (nevermind the perils of being a couch potato!). And the article is not precise enough in its wording. Unless you carefully read on, from the first paragraph, you would think that snowboarding accounts for a quarter of all ER visits, not a quarter of all outdoor-sport-related ones.
And yes, I’m a statistics-in-media grump 🙂
Injuries with road bikes usually happen on the road, and are probably classed with other vehicle accidents. Since vehicle accidents already have plenty of stats, they may have wanted to focus on an uncounted area.
Here is the report:
http://www.wms.org/Outdoor%20Recreational%20Injuries.pdf
Leg and foot injuries are the major cause of wilderness evacuations, but might be because you can’t walk out. Not that I would want to walk several miles with a broken arm, but I could.
The advice to carry a first aid kit is only partly useful. It is more important to get first aid training. With skills, you can improvise with available materials. With no skills and a kit, good luck. I took Wilderness First Aid Basics from and it was fantastic (my trainer was Gary Bracken).
Adam: I noted the same point about “25 percent of what?” when I was looking that story in the Merc’s editorial system last night.
Walter: thanks for tracking down that link; I poked around at the WMS site for a few minutes but didn’t find it. As for legs and arms: the extremity factor makes them closer to injury-producing things like rocks and trees, so their odds of being involved in an accident would presumably be higher, too. Plus when you’re doing something dangerous, it’s almost always putting your feet or your hands somewhere inadvisable.
I’m pretty good at finding things on the Internet. I’ve been working in web search for a decade.
Also check out a 2007 WMI/NOLS study on illnesses and evacuations on expeditions.
A few highlights: wilderness medicine is defined as care of patients more than one hour from definitive care, 55% of injuries were “athletic” (strains and sprains), and 44% of injuries happened while “hiking with pack”.
NOLS is doing a further study comparing expeditions with 25 pound packs against their typical 50 pound loads. Maybe that 44% is really “hiking with way too heavy pack”.
Other NOLS papers are here:
Even though most of my outdoor recreation involves hiking or backpacking, I’ve never sustained an injury doing those things that has required hospital treatment. (Mostly just sore muscles and joints, or a few scrapes.)
However, the one time I decided to try snowboarding (after years of injury-free skiing) I broke my wrist and ended up in the ER! I’m just glad it was my wrist and not the other common snowboarding fracture – the tailbone.
Hey Tom,
Driving home today I can see a plume of smoke in the Santa Cruz Mtns. It looks like another fire has started. This time it looks to be north of highway 17. Any information on it?
Randy: I just found out out what all the buzz in the newsroom this afternoon was about: A new fire burning! I posted a quickie update but I’ve got other news to deal with.