I've experienced that sometimes while climbing down ladders, your character will sometimes instead run off the edge instead of climbing down. Resulting in death if you are high up.
I tested this out on deer stands/hunting towers. It happens there as well, but since it's closer to the ground I survived, however I noticed something odd happening.
As I click "Climb Down" instead of simply climbing down, my character runs off the edge and falls down. If this is at a high height you die, but if it's a survivable height. You fall to the ground, once on the ground you teleport back on the ladder and now you can climb down normally.
It seems this only happens when you are about a meter or so away from the ladder, has happened once when I was right at it as well