[Closed] Climbing fall.

****me.
More 'reasons for not doing that that any more.

About a cm of slack from complete disaster there. Belayer did bloody well - took in and took a jump to get the slack in. Leader had hooked his leg under the rope and was going face first into the deck.

Still trying to calculate the distance to the first runner that held - there must be a lot of foreshortening in the shot because it looks pretty high up. Was it a very thin single rope I wonder?

That was sickening ,thought he was a goner!!

4 posts and no mention of the lack of helmets 😯

Nice echo.

Blimey. Good work by the belayer. Doesn't get any closer than that.

I'll be attending the funeral of an ex housemate whose fall didn't go so well in Spain a few weeks ago. 😐

dd - condolences for your loss.

wow, it looks an innocuous climb but is a good reminder about protection and paying attention. the belay person moved back and that helped although I doubt it was a conscious action, more of a just getting out the way action, either way it helped.

as in cycling helemts are personal preference, as in cycling they are used more and more but haven't gotten ubiquitous as in cycling.

Yes, thought it was a bit indulgent at first but it draws you in. Nothing hits the ground like a body from height. That wire pic he posted looked scary. I was at the wall last night on something easier, my mind was starting to wander thinking about the harder thing I was trying next and had to give myself a talking to. There but for the grace, etc.

Condolences DD

Didn't enjoy watching that
Didn't enjoy their tone
Didn't enjoy memories of my close misses

I was thinking about getting back out on the crag this spring

**Puts rack and rope back in the loft**

I now don't enjoy my memories of close misses either. At the time though I took it all in my stride and always climbed a hard or bold route the day after a near miss to make sure I was still on it. My younger self was a bit of an idiot at times.

Sad stuff DD.

Quick reaction from belayer, looks half accidental half by design.
As ever, in hindsight, there's always more that can be done.
It frightens me some days at climbing walls, and when I used to be at crags even more.

As a macabre question of risk - I wonder how serious injuries and deaths in MTb compare with other sports these days?

Ironically, it's the 'inocuous' little routes like that which can be the most dangerous. Pulling a couple of pieces of gear is considerably less dangerous when you're 100 or 200 feet off the deck, on something harder and smoother.

I've had moments at places like Stanage where a quick mental calculation of the likelihood of a groundfall, even with gear clipped, is a bit disturbing.

Belayer did make a big difference there - he took a big chunk of slack in as the leader started to slither off, then jumped so he was dropping as the rope came tight, reducing the chances of him getting pulled up by the impact. Great catch, basically. A lot of belayers would have just frozen.

Sorry, bit of context...

I shared a house with him when I lived in Stroud - lost touch with them all when I moved down to Bristol. However, it was he that took me and another bloke to Gloucester climbing wall and later on our first outdoor seconding of his leads in the Wye Valley and Avon Gorge. I climbed for years afterwards at UCR in Bristol - so hearing of his demise last week brought back memories of getting into the sport in the first place.

Like I said, I'd completely lost touch with him. Then I get that random friend request on Fb that makes you think, "Uh oh, this is a request to deliver some bad news." And indeed it was. Rob had seconded the first pitch and was leading the second. Details after that are sketchy but he took a 150ish ft fall, hitting the rock face of Penya in Spain several times. AFAIK, he was alive when rescuers got to him but died later at the Fire Station.

It'll be strange going to the funeral - a lot of old faces I'll half recognise. And even though I'd not seen or spoken to him in getting on 20 years, I figure I ought to say goodbye to someone who got me into the sport in the first place.

The top piece of gear, a small wire, actually broke, apparently.

It reminded me of a Johnny Dawes video on I climb I can't recall. The second's job was to sprint down the hill below the crag if the leader came off.

I've written this on UKC... watching the video you can see an explosion of rock dust at as the wire snaps. This suggests something stressing the surface of the rock and in the picture of the broken wire in situ you can see a corresponding scar on the rock, right next to the strands of frayed wire. I'd be willing to bet that looking at the area of the break under a microscope would reveal gouges across the strands from where the wire was hauled across the rock violently, cutting into several strands and creating a stress riser. I'd also be willing to bet the krab has corresponding scrape marks.

Condolences DD, I've lost 2 friends to climbing/mountaineering accidents. The suddenness makes it harder to believe and come to terms with somehow.

It reminded me of a Johnny Dawes video on I climb I can't recall. The second's job was to sprint down the hill below the crag if the leader came off.

End of the Affair at Curbar (E8 6c). Belayer basically has to jump off a ledge to prevent a ground fall. I can attest that it works (just) from the perspective of being that belayer......

That brings back some vivid memories of a very similar incident when I was belaying my BiL when he fell off Tower Face at Stanage and stripped all the gear. Unfortunately in that incident there was nothing to hold him and he went head first into a rock at the bottom. He was incredibly lucky, and got away with a 6-inch gash across the top of his scalp and something like 80 stitches. Never seen so much blood in my life. I still wonder today how he survived it, you'd think going headfirst into a rock from 30ft would be instant death.

I've written this on UKC..

You should have just mentioned it should be a bolted route on UKC and sat back whilst the old duffers foam at the mouth and rant about 'tradition' 😆

Marko

old duffers foam at the mouth and rant about 'tradition'

Never did understand this. They'd go apoplectic at the mere suggestion of bolting some minor gritstone outcrop on some godforsaken moor yet be perfectly comfortable clipping bolts at beauty spots like Malham Cove. 😕

Tradition innit?

Tradition innit?

A stupid tradition IMO. Imagine if Coed Y Brenin insisted that everyone ride a mid-90s MTB on their trails?

[quote=matt_outandabout ]Quick reaction from belayer, looks half accidental half by design.

I'm thinking that doing the right thing by accident probably takes a lot of practice.

For those who haven't watched the whole thing, it's in slow motion at about 7:00 which makes it easier to see where he came onto the rope.

not only would some go apoplectic some of us would up there hammering your hangers flat. If you can't do it on grit without those little metal men then leave it for someone who can. Yep i'm and oldgit.

mt +1 (the sentiment that is)

Mind you, those bolts in the north wales slate quarries are sparingly fine.

Climbed on Shining Cliff a couple of times in part of a campaign to climb on every crag both of the Peak Limestone - Derwent Valley & Peak Grit - South Guides (Names could be slightly wrong)

Never has so much muddy and mossy grit and tottering piles of unconsolidated limestone been climbed on. Shining Cliff wasn't the worst crag (I think that was either the one off the bottom incline on the high peak trail or one of the 'crags' in Lathkill Dale (The first had routes that with frequent repeats might degenerate into rock climbs the second had routes that with frequent repeats would be scree slopes).

Never been in favour of bolting grit but retro bolting some of the trad limestone lines that started as aid routes with insitu pegs which now have all the integrity of a corroded coke can (The crux on Lyme Crime on High Tor springs to mind) makes sense to me.

mt & yak, +1 also.

Climbing trad is almost a different sport from climbing bolted routes, part of the fun and the challenge is the gear placement.

The physical climbing may be the same but the consideration of options for protection, the selection and placement of the gear all adds to the experience IMO.

(another oldgit climber 😉 )

Wombat - assuming your username is from the Roaches classic roof climb then?

Climbing trad is almost a different sport from climbing bolted routes, part of the fun and the challenge is the gear placement.

Totally agree. I always accepted the anti-bolt status quo on grit but started questioning it after going to Joshua Tree, where some routes whilst mostly trad would have the odd bolt on them to turn them from being a potential death route, to something feasible for mere mortals/non-nutters. It got me thinking that there are huge numbers of routes on grit which never get climbed and are hence deteriorating because they're not worth the risk of decking. Seems to me that one or two strategic bolts on routes like these would bring them back into play and reduce the traffic on the safer classics which are being slowly eroded by thousands of cam and nut placements.

@yak - actually my username is Wombat because my name is Tom and Dante Gabriel Rossetti had a pet wombat called Tom, it's quite obvious really 😉

Top and Tom?

Damn, my knowledge of famous historical pets is poor 🙂

Edit - Right then, just read the essay,
'Rossetti's Wombat: A Pre-Raphaelite Obsession in Victorian England '.

Every day's a school day.

A stupid tradition IMO. Imagine if Coed Y Brenin insisted that everyone ride a mid-90s MTB on their trails?

Poor analogy. A better biking analogy would be sanitising natural trails to make them safer or more accessible. Bet there are plenty of mountain bikers who would start foaming at the mouth over that one!

I felt a bit emotional when I realised the two climbers are brothers because my younger brother and I also used to climb, mountaineer and mountain bike together.

Very sorry to hear this. I climb (Badly) and have cycled with my kid brother always and it would be devastating to me if we didn't anymore.

So sorry for your loss DD.

There used to be a kind of Godwin's Law on ukc where you could turn any debate into a bolting discussion within about 20 posts. Well done STW 😉

Anyways yes, sobering video and always worth remembering this is Serious Stuff. Having said that I DID get my leading gear out of the loft [b]benman[/b] and had a whale of a time last year and will do this. The rope was knackered though.

Not looked at ukc for over 10 years. Just looked and all the big hitters back then are still at it. 🙂

Classic prisoner's dilemma - you're in the sea and the sharks are milling. You're not sure of their species. There's a desert island to your left filled with UKC big hitters and another to your right filled with STW big hitters.

Swim left, right or take your chances with the sharks?

Good grief. 4th option - mumsnet?

Not looked at ukc for over 10 years. Just looked and all the big hitters back then are still at it.

Nah, all the real big hitters (whatever that actually means) got banned. UKC has a much heavier hand with the banhammer than STW.

Used to be on UKC a lot but basically gave up climbing about four or five years ago and UKC a couple of years after that. Climbed solidly for over thirty years as my shots on the "what did you do in a past life" thread showed.

Often the most dangerous routes are those well below your standard where you don't concentrate as much or don't put much/any gear in and the rock is less than vertical and has lots of ledges and protrusions. A 20 metre fall through air on an overhanging crag is fine, a 5 metre fall on something easy angled hurts. Have done both, don't fancy repeating the latter: dislocated elbow, broken wrist and chipped vertebrae, my only accident in thirty years.

Used to be on UKC, this place takes itself far less seriously (for the most part). 🙂

Swim left, right or take your chances with the sharks?

Is that a UKB reference?

That clip reminds me of having to run down hill when a mate popped off and stripped his gear. His neck was longer than his experience with little wires really warranted. I heard the scrapping of his Galibiers as he went, and as I was expecting something from his whinging, looked up and started moving. Good job I did as his top bits popped and he ended up face down about 3 feet from the ground. He didn't get back on as it seemed a bad idea as he was getting married the next morning. That crappy little slabby crag up the Pass from the Mot. Craig cwm Beudy Mawr?

Ah, must be the big hitters I knew in real life that are still there.

Whitestone +1 . My one serious fall was on an easy route on a wet day. Hold snapped and I fell 50ft, clipped a ledge, flipped the wrong way and hit the face with my head, but luckily a bit off the ground. Helmet broke (early adopter) Lost vision for a while and concussed. Lucky to get away with that tbh. Being the young idiot version of me, I declared me fit to lead by pitch 3, then went to the pub, before falling into the river near the Vaynol. Not my finest moment.

A better biking analogy would be sanitising natural trails to make them safer or more accessible.

Not really. The analogy to that would be chipping extra holds, which we can all agree is deeply wrong. Making something slightly safer doesn't detract from the route. This whole thing about having to risk death or serious injury to climb a route is a stupid macho thing borne of tradition. It should be possible find a compromise. I'm not talking about bolting 3 star test pieces or classics, more the esoteric mid-grade E2-E5s that are not technically difficult but never get climbed.

The analogy would be putting padding on trees or rocks so the consequence of getting it wrong isn't death. So it has it's place - dh. Full bore, but you get to live. Sport climbing - same.

The belayer could have a ground belay/anchor, stopping him being pulled off the ground. Not that I do very often.

I've always thought mountain biking and climbing are very similar. They're both as dangerous as you want to make them. Climbing obviously has higher consequences, but the calculations of risk vs ability are pretty much the same. The bolting debate though is a strange one I've never got my head around. Why for instance is a gritstone outcrop in Derbyshire too precious for bolts when the the Dawn Wall on El Capitan isn't? The taboo around bolting grit is very strange and illogical IMO.

Edit: After years on UKC (and being flamed for it) I can't believe I'm in the same debate here 🙂

Boxedler - I was thinking the same thing. One of the first thing we taught as CCF instructors

Grumbling about 'old duffers' going on about tradition, *on a different forum* to the one they post on, has got to be a level of daftness higher than whatever it is one doesn't think is a decent tradition to continue with I reckon. One might as well shake a fist at the sky. 😉

Dazh: Looking for logic in things like climbing traditions, like anything which humans do, is fruitless because humans are essentially illogical. Having grown up going Trad climbing on Derbyshire grit, that's my reason for not wanting bolts on it, as memories of my Dad teaching me to lead are tied up with Trad climbing on gritstone at Stanage and Burbage and places. It's my own personal reason, and I'm happy that climbing tradition is in line with it. I don't claim it to be a logical one. 🙂

Edit: If I had to find a reason which wasn't to do with personal memories, it'd be something like the beauty and intricacy of gritstone itself, is mirrored in the intricacies of figuring out how to protect a climb using traditional gear, and that I think something of the experience of climbing on gritstone could be lost if bolts were place. I find gritstone a beautiful kind of rock, and having to pause and contemplate placing protection - in looking at the rock as a part of doing this, can make one appreciate the beauty of the rock more, I think.

If one was able to cruise up easily clipping bolts, the nature of the climbing could be less contemplative in nature, and less focused (by necessity) on the natural details. I find working out how much bigger than the rock grain the nut I'm placing is, and how far back into a narrowing crack it needs to go, means I can't help but absorbed the nature of the rock...it's colours and patterns and how it's formed.

This whole thing about having to risk death or serious injury to climb a route is a stupid macho thing borne of tradition

You don't have to. You can choose to do an easier or safer route. If you feel under pressure to risk your life for a route you need to examine your own motivations, not the ethics of the sport.

The best and boldest climbers I know are not stupid and macho. They are quiet and contemplative individuals who understand and appreciate the benefits and risks of their chosen pastime.

The analogy would be putting padding on trees or rocks so the consequence of getting it wrong isn't death. So it has it's place - dh. Full bore, but you get to live. Sport climbing - same.

No, that's analogous to trad gear because you can remove the pads afterwards and no one will ever know they've been there. Bolting is more like chopping the trees down to avoid crashing into them.

Not a climber, so the technicality of the belay job is lost on me, however I am stunned by the impressive speed of reaction to be prepared to what appears to me to be the intention to immobilize the climbers spine.
He caught him on the first bounce!

There's the assumption that naturally/trad protected routes are all death on a stick, some are but it's actually a continuum from that to routes that are safer, have more protection than a sports route. These days with every route documented and discussed on the web, it's rare to get on a route that you don't have some idea of its seriousness.

The adding/chopping down trees analogy is a good one, in trad climbing you can pad as few or as many as *you* want! the next person along can do the same but might choose to pad deifferent trees.

It amuses me how some will trust bolts placed several years ago by persons unknown with possibly no training but won't trust gear that they have placed themselves.

I know absolutely nothing about climbing but that bloke on the ground had an impressive reaction, just what needed to be done in a split second. Very impressive.

I am stunned by the impressive speed of reaction to be prepared to what appears to me to be the intention to immobilize the climbers spine.

It's the instinctive protective reaction of one brother or mate towards another that touches me as I used to climb and cycle with my own younger brother, which brought us very close.

The belayer could have a ground belay/anchor, stopping him being pulled off the ground. Not that I do very often.

That has it's own risks with seconds being killed by dislodged rock and unable to avoid the debris.

I can concur that it's the easy routes that catch you out. My only ground fall was at Bircham. The back of one leg bum to knee turned black due to landing on a no.8 Hex.

The belayer could have a ground belay/anchor, stopping him being pulled off the ground.

Delayed response as I wanted to check the video again to be sure. If he had, his brother might well be dead now - he didn't get pulled off the ground as the rope tension hit, he jumped first so that his weight came back onto the rope at the right point. Incredible reactions.

I used to think trad climbing was 50% head, 30% technique and 20% head. Even to be a good onsight sport climber your head is as important as strength. The climbers who have made the transition from climbing walls to elite level trad/sport/winter climbing are pretty damn impressive these days (because they are so fit)but they are a not exactly common; the head part of the equation being much harder to acquire than the other parts.
As someone who was weak but good at the other bits I used to often try and fail on routes that were too hard for me (didn't like grit as failing often means decking out!). Being weak meant I was good at trad and useless at sport climbing and bouldering.
What I like about mountain biking is that you don't ever really fail; maybe you got off and pushed on the climb when you shouldn't have or took the chicken line on the descent but you've still done the route (you set your own parameters if you like, you don't just go home having failed on a route).

That was scary.

I still get goosebumps thinking of some of the sketchy things I've climbed. Only serious accident though was on an indoor climbing wall, I was belaying a friend, she slipped and whacked her knee in an odd way - didn't fall far, jsut a bad angle. Lowering someone down who's screaming at the top of their voice isn't something I'll forget. She'd dislocated her kneecap, made a full recovery in a few weeks.

DD did you ever climb with my brother Pete Carlyon from Stroud? I'm sure he used to climb with a friend called Rob. We lost our younger brother in a falling accident.

Hey tang...I [i]may[/i] have...but to be honest, it was all so long ago...and I didn't do a massive amount of outdoor stuff with Rob. He just took us on the easy stuff as we were newbs. Then I moved to Bristol and mainly stuck to sport stuff at St. Werburghs. He used to do the scarier stuff with other guys. I'd sometimes meet them at the house but you know what house shares are like - you'd end up knowing your housemates' mates by first names only. Rob used to go out with Tanya - she died years ago from Hodgkins Lymphoma - she might only have been in her early/mid thirties - they married just before she died. He climbed regularly with Roger, a Porsche driving BA pilot, also Tanya's dad. Other than that, I can't really remember his mates' names now. AFAIR he was a pretty good climber - certainly got up to some tough stuff. He was into property development/building as a job I think. His surname was Barr.

A good chance he climbed with my brother, he lived in Stroud then and a very talented experienced climber. He still climbs now but lives in Briz, I'm mildly haunted by the tragic loss, and have stuck to two wheels firmly planted on the ground.

Is that a UKB reference?