So my wife and I are climbing this weekend. I'm on belay and she has just clipped into the anchors at the top of a 5.9, 20 meters or so up. While she is pulling through the rope, a quick-draw falls off of her harness.

I see the whole thing and immediately yell, ROCK! It hits the wall and goes spinning towards a couple next to us who are tying on shoes and just kind of stumbling in prep to start an adjacent route.

I continuing to yell in their direction now, and they are oblivious. Then I'm waving at them, while I'm yelling. Still they are in lala land. Finally I watch helplessly as the guy gets a solid whack on the shoulder from the clip.

So, my wife see what happened and apologizes from up the wall, says it won't happen again. I apologize as well and the guy comes back with a kind of rude comment.

How would you respond?

So my wife and I are climbing this weekend. I'm on belay and she has just clipped into the anchors at the top of a 5.9, 20 meters or so up. While she is pulling through the rope, a quick-draw falls off of her harness.

I see the whole thing and immediately yell, ROCK! It hits the wall and goes spinning towards a couple next to us who are tying on shoes and just kind of stumbling in prep to start an adjacent route.

I continuing to yell in their direction now, and they are oblivious. Then I'm waving at them, while I'm yelling. Still they are in lala land. Finally I watch helplessly as the guy gets a solid whack on the shoulder from the clip.

So, my wife see what happened and apologizes from up the wall, says it won't happen again. I apologize as well and the guy comes back with a kind of rude comment.

How would you respond?

So my wife and I are climbing this weekend. I'm on belay belaying and she has just clipped into the anchors at the top of a 5.9, 20 meters or so up. While she is pulling through the rope, a quick-draw falls off of her harness.

I see the whole thing and immediately yell, ROCK! It hits the wall and goes spinning towards a couple next to us who are tying on shoes and just kind of stumbling in prep to start an adjacent route.

I continuing to yell in their direction now, and they are oblivious. Then I'm waving at them, while I'm yelling. Still they are in lala land. Finally I watch helplessly as the guy gets a solid whack on the shoulder from the clip.

So, my wife see what happened and apologizes from up the wall, says it won't happen again. I apologize as well and the guy comes back with a kind of rude comment.

How would you respond?

I think you did the best you could.

And if someone here tells you to cut their top rope don't listen, its the lack of bacon.

this didnt happen at Metcalfe, did it?

I see the whole thing and immediately yell, ROCK! It hits the wall and goes spinning towards a couple next to us who are tying on shoes and just kind of stumbling in prep to start an adjacent route.

I continuing to yell in their direction now, and they are oblivious. Then I'm waving at them, while I'm yelling. Still they are in lala land. Finally I watch helplessly as the guy gets a solid whack on the shoulder from the clip.

Is it me, or does it seem like the quickdraw took an abnormal amount of time to come down?

Josh

You really did all you could do, well other than your wife not dropping the quickdraw in the first place. Don't worry about it. The other guy's a jerk. Next time she could try aiming for his head.

i would respond: hey shut the fuck up i just gave you a free quick draw!

i would respond: hey shut the fuck up i just gave you a free quick draw!

They were pretty close, close enough that I could almost reach out and touch them. It seemed to take forever for the thing to hit the ground. It would have dropped in front of me, but it slammed into the rock about half way down and that just spun it in the direction.

The thing that irked me most was just that they were so oblivious to what was going on around them. Usually when some starts yelling at the rock, everyone starts looking. Like I said earlier, what if it had really been a rock?

We didn't want to give away the quick-draw as we figured with a hit like that it should be retired.

I hear you. It slammed pretty hard into the wall before it hit the guy. It was already pretty old, five years plus. It was "probably" fine, but I figure why risk someone's life to save $15.

The thing that irked me most ...

"Could you pass me that draw, bro?"

Hey, sorry you were irked. People can be so rude when you drop things on them!

It takes almost exactly 2 seconds for a 'biner to fall 20m. Well done on getting so many calls out to them in that time. Guess they are pretty dumb not to have listened to you, huh? Or maybe deaf, or perhaps just concentrating on getting their climb together?

Got to say though, if I'd dropped gear on someone I'd have taken the abuse and not posted it up on RC.com...

Maybe it was wifey's fault ? If you weren't feeling guilty you would have never posted this!

So my wife and I are climbing this weekend. I'm on belay and she has just clipped into the anchors at the top of a 5.9, 20 meters or so up. While she is pulling through the rope, a quick-draw falls off of her harness.

I see the whole thing and immediately yell, ROCK! It hits the wall and goes spinning towards a couple next to us who are tying on shoes and just kind of stumbling in prep to start an adjacent route.

I continuing to yell in their direction now, and they are oblivious. Then I'm waving at them, while I'm yelling. Still they are in lala land. Finally I watch helplessly as the guy gets a solid whack on the shoulder from the clip.

So, my wife see what happened and apologizes from up the wall, says it won't happen again. I apologize as well and the guy comes back with a kind of rude comment.

How would you respond?

Usually when some starts yelling at the rock, everyone starts looking.

Hold-on there....

Are you saying when you yelled rock you expected the guy to look up?

Yeah, cause that's what I do when I hear rock, I look up. If I have time I try and pull my sunglasses off too so I can see who is yelling better.

What Rock???

I had a similar thing happen years ago. I was at a very popular top roping crag, where at the top you can't quite see the bottom. I set my anchor, yell rope, count to 5 and hear nothing, toss it down.

When I get down, there's a pissy guy in my face "You need to fuckin' tell people before you toss your rope!" I told him I did and I'm sorry he didn't hear. I hollered pretty loud, but I think it's rude to scream it, climbers a mile away don't need to know I'm about to toss down.

My buddy at the bottom (who said I was loud and clear) told me later this guy was just busy macking on this girl, hanging out right at the bottom of the route instead of away from the wall like a normal person.

You can't win them all.

The guy should definitely not been a jerk to you. But in busy places where we can't see the bottom (like the Gunks) we yell rope as loud as we can, and then proceed to slowly lower the rope regardless of whether or not we hear a response.

This whole other thread (http://www.rockclimbing.com/...d;page=unread#unread) now reminds me that I recently had a rope snake gently past my face while on lead. I was at the roof (low crux) on pitch three on Bombs Away Dream Baby at the Gunks. What was our reaction?

My partner informed the rappeller that he had just lowered his rope on top of me & asked him to stop. He obliged, and when I cleared the roof, I told him to go ahead and rappel. He rapped past me & by the time he was on the ledge, I was close to the top. However, the second person rapping had to wait a few minutes until I finished because the route was directly below the rappel.

Had he dropped the rope on my face, my reaction might have been different (that happened to me last year on Friends & Lovers and I've never sworn so much in my life!). But he lowered, we communicated, his second waited to rap until i was done, and everyone behaved themselves!

Not all such incidents end badly. Yesterday, I was leading a route at Vedauwoo as a party of 2 was rappelling nearby. They threw their rope and it hit me. My partner yelled up from the ground. The rappellers started apologizing. I told them they owed me a beer. They agreed, said they had some in the car and would leave a couple of cans under my car, which they proceeded to do.

rob.calm

Is it me, or does it seem like the quickdraw took an abnormal amount of time to come down?
Josh

Hey, sorry you were irked. People can be so rude when you drop things on them!

It takes almost exactly 2 seconds for a 'biner to fall 20m. Well done on getting so many calls out to them in that time. Guess they are pretty dumb not to have listened to you, huh? Or maybe deaf, or perhaps just concentrating on getting their climb together?

Got to say though, if I'd dropped gear on someone I'd have taken the abuse and not posted it up on RC.com...