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Accident and Incident Analysis:
Re: [Trixie] Accident on Mt. Lemmon:
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jt512
Dec 11, 2009, 5:11 PM
Views: 11756
Registered: Apr 12, 2001
Posts: 21904
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Trixie wrote: I think in that situation knowing that the climber is going to laminate himself on the ground, most of us would have, in desperation, grabbed the climber's side of the rope.
I don't think I would have. What would one be trying to accomplish by grabbing the leader's side of the rope. Pulling in slack? You pull slack through the belay device from the brake side of the rope. Duh! This is exactly why the brake side of the rope should be kept by default in a neutral position—as I have been arguing for at least the last decade—not locked off all the time. With a 30-foot fall that she should have seen coming, starting with the brake rope held 60–90 degrees from the leader's rope, she probably would have had time to take in two armfuls of slack, hand over hand on the brake side of the rope before locking off with both hands (on the brake side of the rope) and diving to the ground.
What happened here was an inexperienced and/or poorly trained belayer, probably using an inferior "modern" locked-off-by-default belay technique, panicked and reacted improperly in response to the fall—none of which, of course, mitigates her gumby partner's culpability in the accident.
Jay
(This post was edited by jt512 on Dec 11, 2009, 5:13 PM)
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Edit Log:
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Post edited by jt512
() on Dec 11, 2009, 5:13 PM
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