Slowly, over time, you take more risk without knowing it. Your skills get better and you become more versed in navigating dangerous mountain terrain. Your confidence builds. When you succeed time and time again in do-or-die situations, it’s like repeatedly getting heads after 20 coin flips; you think you’ll just get heads again. And when you’ve traveled around the world, spent thousands of dollars to get there and are only 300 very dangerous feet from the top, you push on. Yes, risk is part of the allure, but a small part.

You’d think that cutting-edge alpinists were a bunch of adrenaline junkies, but they’re not. Jess, David and Hansjörg were not. Alpinists are highly analytical, supremely aware and often tightly controlled. This is what it takes to see your 30th birthday. In a musing on death and tragedy, the British climber Andy Kirkpatrick pondered, “Maybe it’s not a weak man who pulls out the needle and walks away.” In rare instances, climbers see their shadows and do walk away.

When will the deaths stop? Our collective wonders. I ask it, too, but I know better. They won’t. High-end climbing is going to get more risky, not less. The routes are becoming more technically demanding, in more remote areas, and the method of “light and fast”— minimal gear, no fixed ropes, doing the route in a single push — is now regarded as the best style. These trends, and others, have made the sport of alpine climbing very, very dangerous.

In the aftermath, blame is common. The deceased are blamed for taking so much risk. They’re called selfish. Selfish for leaving behind sons and daughters, wives and girlfriends, husbands and boyfriends, devastated mothers and fathers to pick up the pieces. Selfish, the claim goes, for not understanding that others are invested in their lives and that if they are gone, they take a piece of another with them. Some have said that if these climbers truly knew the impact of their deaths, they would pack it up.

Yes, agreed, but the climbers who died on Howse Peak and the dozens of others I know have been anything but selfish. They were or are devoted husbands , wives, selfless friends and loving fathers and mothers. And confident, determined and overly ambitious. Yes, they can be accused of that.

We need only to look to the loved ones left behind for guidance. David Lama’s parents, Claudia and Rinzi Lama, released a statement after their son’s death: “David dedicated his life to the mountains and his passion for climbing, and alpinism shaped and accompanied our family. He always followed his own path and lived his dream. We will accept what now happened as a part of that.”

Allison Roskelley, Jess’s wife, wrote, “Your dream was engrained in your soul, and that is something I never imagined taking away from you.” She added, “I knew your No. 1 priority was to come back home to your family, and although the universe had a different plan for you, I know you would have done anything in your power to do so.”