Objective dangers are the risks you can identify besides the human factor. Of course your condition, training, equipment, the weather are factors which impact the overall level of danger on a route. Objective dangers are the things which are objectively putting you in a dangerous position when you're on the route: steepness, loose rocks, seracs, altitude, known avalanche trajectories, retreat possibilities, isolation... For instance, the normal ascent route on the Baruntse, although very high with its 7129m, is rated as "objectively safe".
If you're evolving on a steep slope, the slightest mistake or tumble is more likely to see you fall hundreds of meters below. On some faces, depending on the season, the altitude and the exposition, rock might be frozen in the morning, but warm up to the sun and become loose, therefore presenting an objcie danger of rock fall. If you don't know what a serac is, see picture above. These things all break free one day, you just shouldn't be under it the second they do. So if your route goes through a field of seracs, it is dangerous! Altitude deserves its own post, to follow later on. Avalanches tend to have a pattern in terms of where they happen. Most popular routes avoid crossing dangerous areas from an avalanche perspective. Experienced people learn to develop a sense for avalanche probability based on all sorts of factors (objective and situational), in winter and in summer. You want to be with one of them!
Had an interesting discussion last night with a colleague about danger in the mountains. Mountaineering is a highly dangerous activity. There is no mountaineering permit. Most people will try to get a level 1 diving licence before scuba-diving. But if you try scuba diving on your own as a beginner, your body will very quickly make you understand that you need technique and training. In the mountains, nothing stops you from hiring a pair of crampons, getting up the lift to the Aiguille du Midi, and venture alone on glaciers and mountains. When you realise that this is dangerous, it will already be too late: bad weather, night, exhaustion, lost, cold, too steep, return trail barred by a collapsed crevasse...
So besides the fun and self-fulfillment of alpinism, which also deserves its own post, besides the technique and the training, I see mountaineering as continous risk management. On our way back from an ice gully climb last summer, my guide saw 2 people fall off in a bergschrund, so we had to go and organise the rescue, quickly taken over by a specialised rescue squad. One of them was OK-ish, but the rescue doctor had to abseil 20 meters down the crevasse to install the second victim on a special stretcher, which we then had to pull up with brute force so it could be hooked to the helicopter and flown in to the nearest hospital. These guys went on a traverse over steep ice terrain, in light climbing shoes, a couple of meters above a major crevasse (the bergschrund is a crevasse forming between a glacier and a steeper section of a mountain). That day the weather was fine, there were lots of climbers and alpinists around, and little objective danger. But the behaviour of these guys made their situation extremely dangerous. So you're already a whole lot safer when you know what you're doing. Start learning from somebody who knows, ideally a professional high-mountain guide. Then progressively build-up and increase difficulty. Walk before you run, but most importantly scramble before you walk! Do you want to be the one being picked-up by a chopper in the middle of a steep wall? Below picture taken on the Aiguille du Peigne...
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