People tend to think that having a rope on somehow makes them safe.

I am sorry but someone who is not capable of climbing safely without a rope is not capable of climbing safely with a rope. This is a fact in my experience particularly whenever you go beyond a top rope. Roped climbing safely involves making choices and taking actions in accordance with the limitations inherent in a climbing rope.

Interesting post, Dan. Out of cuiosity - what inspired you to write it?

Many times on otherwise well protected routes there are sections where you absolutely cannot fall without getting hurt or dying. If you are doing this with a rope you should be able to do it without a rope. If you cannot do it without a rope you should not be doing it with a rope.

Over reliance on a rope is dangerous. It is better to rely on yourself and use the rope as an additional backup as was intended.

In general I agree with you, but I think you need to distinguish between 'capable' and 'willing' here. You make it sound like you have to be a ballsy free soloist to climb safely without a rope.

I find the term climber to be synonymous with free soloist. It is just a matter of degree.

The rope may not make them any safer but it sure as hell can keep them from getting killed.

sometimes you are essentially free soloing while leading, but with the rope there you may not appreciate the true seriousness of the situation you are in.

Curt

It decreases it, of course.

No, I'd have to disagree. It doesn't decrease it. Have you never fallen unexpectedly? My first lead fall was totally unexpected, and I was overconfident enough at that point that I would probably have tried to solo things I shouldn't have. The rope provides a means by which you are vastly more likely to survive the fall than without it.

I think you missed the point of that comment.

Average joe on the street goes out and buys a rope to start climbing. Typically, this is not going to make his life a safer one.

Rob
The average joe does not become a climber.

< I think too many people would continue to push their limits until they got hurt. >

People do this with a rope everyday.

"More or less of a climber" is a meaningless concept.

Which are you more likely to get hurt doing? What I care most about is what *I* would be more likely to get hurt doing. I know myself well enough to know that right now, free soloing is not what I should be doing, at least not if I want to do any fifth class climbing.

Would you concede that for a given average climber leading a 5.9 would be about as equally dangerous as soloing a 40 foot 5.1 or something to that effect? could be just an exposed third class move.

The problem is the statement "more dangerous" What exactly do you mean by that? Do you mean "more likely to fall"? If so, then leading a 5.9 is way more dangerous than soloing 5.1. Do you mean "more likely to die". Assuming good non-runout gear (bolts?) , then soloing a 5.1 is more dangerous than leading a 5.9. Do you mean "more likely to get hurt" They are uncomparable because the soloist is exceedingly unlikely to get just hurt.

Most people that solo have a fair amount of experience that compensates for the increased risk.

We have looked at roped-up examples, now
let us look at an unroped example.
Derick Hersey.
Derick onsight free-soloed in the 5.11 range.
Derick died from an unexplained fall on a
popular, relativly clean 5.10 in Yosemite
that he had climbed before.
He most likely did not fall because of the
difficulty of the climbing.
Now, would he have been safer with a rope?

How do they get that experience?

If they get it by soloing, you had inexperienced people who IMO are likely to overestimate their abilities sooner or later and get hurt.

I'd be the kind of climber who thinks he can solo something, gets XX feet of the deck, loses my focus and falls.

Yes Dingus, we should not learn from the accidents
of others in order to make our lives safer.
The point is that by all measures (he had the skills,
he had the head, etc.) Derick could climb the
DNB free solo, but he screwed up in some unknown
sense and died because of it. Think about it.

johnnord:
Thanks for quantifying the concept in a scientific manner.

The one qualification is that free soloist tends to be more conservative than a typical roped climber at a given difficulty level. This has led me to believe that free soloing has a lower accident and death rate then roped climbing. backed up by empirical data.

As far as Accidents in NA: they do not keep detailed enough records to do any kind of meaningful comparison based on their data. I tried.

Derick could climb the
DNB free solo, but he screwed up in some unknown
sense and died because of it. Think about it.

I am sorry but someone who is not capable of climbing safely without a rope is not capable of climbing safely with a rope.

People regularly deal with no fall situations when climbing with a rope. How is this any different from free soloing?

Many times on otherwise well protected routes there are sections where you absolutely cannot fall without getting hurt or dying. If you are doing this with a rope you should be able to do it without a rope. If you cannot do it without a rope you should not be doing it with a rope.

Over reliance on a rope is dangerous. It is better to rely on yourself and use the rope as an additional backup as was intended.

.....Part of the reason for this is that, with the rope on, unprotected climbing may be a reversible choice. Yes, you are running it out at the death level, but if you get stressed you have the option of looking for protection opportunities, or it may be clear that if you can hold it together for the next n feet, protection will be available.

Very true, the rope is like a motorcycle helmet, it might save you but you don't want to go testing it out any more than nessesary. But this theroy has held me back in sport climbing in the past.

What is the most important piece of safety equipment or The rope vs the mind? I think some people overate the importance and significance of a climbing rope.

Now I may not know alot, but I do know we are all simple monkeys who will, given enough time, screw up. This said, I would like to be able to screw up once, twice, maybe even thrice before I die.

The heart of it all boils down to the fact that in climbing we are working to develop ourselves on multiple fronts: movement (technique), problem solving, protection, and mental/emotional discipline/endurance and in this discussion we are placing an emphasis on exploring the latter.

If anything, I'd say the exact opposite has been happening; that (again on a percentage basis) the total climbing demographic is moving farther and farther away from recognizing and accepting the requisite level of personal responsibility and discipline necessary to embrace and manage the risks associated with free soloing.

In short, we now have a vast commercialized base of people who love the idea and identity images put forth of by climbing and a much smaller percentage who emerge out of that base that are willing and prepared to truly embrace it.

The simple fact of the matter is using safety equipment makes the activity safer, just like using seatbelts makes driving safer (regardless of whether the driver is reckless or not).

I find it somewhat annoying and a little disheartening to constantly read posts from 'old school' climbers who like to divide the climbing community into 'us' and 'them' based some idealized view of what a 'real' climber should be.

Show me one accomplished free soloist alive today that achieved their level of proficiency without the use of a rope and I will grant you your point. But you are not going to find one. You don't spring forth from the womb and start 3rd classing 5.12. You don't start 3rd classing 5.12 without one helluva lota rope work. So using a free soloist as an example of the relative safety of ropeless climbing to make the point that using a rope doesn't make climbing safer is a magician's card trick... make the rope disappear. Because that free soloist relied heavily upon the disappearing rope to make that amazing feat even possible.

In this arbitrary thing we call rock climbing the only inherent values are those we assign. These safety attributes you and alpnclimr1 harp on are only of value to the person doing the climbing.

In absolute terms? If I am staring up at a flaring granite crack and down at my feet are two racks of gear, one consisting of modern cams and biners, the other some hexes, nuts and ovals (in good repair mind you) unless I'm making some retro-point (which I'm not) I will reach for the cams. So will most experienced climbers, cept Hot Henry Barber and a few other holdouts. Most of us will choose to make climbing safer.

So? You say this as a lament. Why must the masses conform to YOUR ideal, instead of their own? If your free solos are appropriate, simply because you deem them appropriate, then the risk averse choosing to top rope some pedestrian 5.9 is equally appropriate. There really is no need to take the discussion beyond that.

If you old guys would learn to stop telling people how bad they suck and how far they've fallen from the glorious days of yesteryear, and perhaps start selling the virtues of your ways in positive language focused on modern objectives, you might gain a few more ears and a bit more respect for your views. But regardless, time rolls on, with or without you.

DMT

...Using safety equipment renders climbing safer. Not using safety equipment makes climbing less safe.

Now you can conjur up all the semi-solos you want. You can cite faulty use of equipment all you wish, it doesn't change anything. The simple fact of the matter is using safety equipment makes the activity safer, just like using seatbelts makes driving safer (regardless of whether the driver is reckless or not).

DUH!

I find it somewhat annoying and a little disheartening to constantly read posts from 'old school' climbers who like to divide the climbing community into 'us' and 'them' based some idealized view of what a 'real' climber should be.

Healyje,

Thanks for that great post. Tightroping was the perfect means to highlight some of these concepts.)

(Have you ever read the intro to Vertigo Games by Glenn Randall? There is a great little exerpt about tightrope walking in the 1800's)

Wake up to reality and get used to it. Back in the good ol' days there was a pecking order by the camping fire and a lot of other weird habits. It's a shame most of it is gone... some people could use a little more character and ethics.

LOL - thanks for proving my point. Perhaps you consider yourself to be one of the chosen few who is fit to judge the character and ethics of your fellow climbers

My fellow climbers have same ethics as I do.

Perhaps you consider yourself to be one of the chosen few who is fit to judge the character and ethics of "the old school" - bully for you.

This is true only if there is no correlation between the rate of reckelessness and using safety equipment.

A reckless driver wearing a seatbelt is "safer" than a reckless driver NOT wearing a seatbelt, all other things being equal.

Some people say they feel much safer after placing a marginal runner on X-route, although they know it will never hold. Without rope they might opt for staying on the ground. This is what I meant with correlation.

Dean Potter can likely free solo a familiar multi-pitch 5.11a R in the valley safer than I can climb with a rope on an unfamiliar route of the same rating in a climbing area and rock new to me.

bump???

What Dean Potter does or does not do has no bearing on your relative safety (unless he falls on you). You cannot compare his relative safety to your own.

Potter would be safer using a rope on that wired 11a and we both know it too. You would be far less safe on that unfamiliar 11 a without a rope than with.

If a guy stupidly runs it out using a rope once in a hundred pitches... does that one transgression render his use of the rope unsafe? Of course not.

Cheers
DMT

just curious - where are you getting those numbers from? It seems like similar statistics were quoted in another thread recently,....

Adnix - just curious - where are you getting those numbers from? It seems like similar statistics were quoted in another thread recently, except that it was the absolute number of falling object accidents, not the percentage, that stayed the same.

I wasn't linking the two in that way, merely illustrating the point that [relative] safety can only be evaluated on a per ascent basis.

In the context of the original question "Does using a rope make you safe?" - no, it does not in and of itself - what you do with it, and every other aspect involved with the ascent, determines how safe you will be.

You DID link them Bro, not me. You said he without a rope was safer than you with one. I call that a link. Relative safety on a per ascent basis? Where did you come up with that?

Again, I would say that you were probably relatively safe on most all of them, but not uniformly so - more likely some sort of skewed distribution across a curve from unsafe to safe

Thanks Curt

Colin
I think everyone should consciously solo at least once for that exact reason.


Tim
A properly used rope can make climbing safer, but it cannot make it safe. Other then that I wouldn't disagree.

I think everyone should consciously solo at least once for that exact reason.