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petsfed
Apr 5, 2009, 11:26 PM
Post #201 of 228
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I once rappelled off a thoroughly rotted bit of static cord that was looped through a pinch in either dirt or rock, I really wasn't certain which. All so I could retrieve a couple of draws on a sport climb in Sinks Canyon.
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milesenoell
Apr 6, 2009, 12:44 AM
Post #202 of 228
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I was seconding a pitch, cleaning as I went. When I got to the top of a pitch and went to untie and thread the anchor using the standard tie an 8 on a bight, clip the 8, untie, thread, re-tie method that I had just learned. Of course I didn't bother to back it up in any way. So, standing in an Ok, but definitely not that great stance, I tied my 8, clipped it to my harness and untied from the rope. That's when I realized that I grabbed the rope on the wrong side of the draws and tied my 8 BELOW the draws. All it took was for me to grab the rope a little lower and clip it back in, but it definitely got my heart pounding thinking about how dead I'd be if I'd slipped.
Oh, and another one. Speed soloed a crack I had dialed at the end of a day, in almost complete darkness. The climb was fine, but trying to find my way down in the dark on the walk off I nearly went off a cliff.
(This post was edited by milesenoell on Apr 6, 2009, 2:03 AM)
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Myxomatosis
Apr 6, 2009, 1:28 AM
Post #203 of 228
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Thought solo'ing a 5.9 crack was a good idea for a warm up..... (didn't have big gear)...
Thank god sense kicked in at the "fall any higher and do damage" mark 
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bill413
Apr 6, 2009, 3:24 AM
Post #204 of 228
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Registered: Oct 19, 2004
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kylekienitz wrote: Assuming that 5 pitches of 5.8 with a single rope rappel would go without a hitch and therefore only bring one rope. ... I let my partner convince me that we didn't need to haul another rope four miles back to The Wedge. ... - always two ropes if on anything longer than 30m. especially on multi-pitch trad.
Harrowing story. Glad of successful outcome!
It was a similar discussion / experience that convinced me of the utility of climbing on double ropes. Never again do you have to have the discussion about bringing a rap / retreat rope - it's built into the system.
In reply to: So, dumbest thing ever done climbing: drink too much PBR the night before.
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kylekienitz
Apr 7, 2009, 3:17 AM
Post #205 of 228
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In reply to: In reply to: So, dumbest thing ever done climbing: drink too much PBR the night before. And the problem with that was? Oh - PBR - well....should have been a better brew.
Ok, I retract this statement. It was actually my first time with an excess of beer which just happened to be PBR.
Alas, do not worry - my faith in the sweet nectar has only increased since.
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jhb3999
Apr 8, 2009, 2:37 PM
Post #206 of 228
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Posts: 12
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What's rock climbing?
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Muddud
Apr 10, 2009, 9:41 AM
Post #207 of 228
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Registered: Mar 26, 2009
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haha, oh, god, way too many stories.
although i definitely learned not to trust when friends read a book and tell you to go hunting after rap rings that aren't there to go set a top rope. always read the book yourself, or you might wind up simul-climbing around some serious sketchy areas for the better part of an hour. ugh.
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jfitzpat
Apr 10, 2009, 5:33 PM
Post #208 of 228
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Registered: Apr 8, 2009
Posts: 32
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Probably the dumbest thing I've ever done was to hook up with a partner based solely on his gym banter. I did the first two pitches as one long one by agreement.
10' off the belay it becamse suddenly clear that this was his first trad lead, ever. He ended up climbing back to the ledge. I should have rapped off then, but didn't want to abandon gear.
To cut a long story short, I ended up leading all the pitches, and hauling him twice. We just crawled, and were nearly benighted. As it was, we finished the hike back to the cars by my lone Petzl Tikka.
The hardest part for me was that he never stopped the 'talk'. I tried to keep my cool, but I wanted to say, 'dude, when there are only two people in the elevator, everyone knows who farted...'
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clmbr
Apr 11, 2009, 2:08 AM
Post #209 of 228
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Registered: Jul 31, 2008
Posts: 29
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Just finished leading a 5.10 and having lowered off me and the belayer were talking while untying, waiting for the others. They were taking their time so decided to quickly do a 5.8 offwidth on top rope, next to the climb I had just done.
Off I go and its a lot harder than i expected, so grunted up about 15ft, found the only tiny ledge in it for a foothold and jammed my arm into the offwidth for a rest. At the same moment my belayer and I looked at my tie in and realised I had a 'figure 4',not an 8 as I had been halfway thru untying and forgot to tie back in properly.
Suddenly the footrest wasn't so great but I managed to retie with one hand and lower off.
Always check yer setup, check each other and don't get distracted.!!!!
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barkandbite
Apr 11, 2009, 4:21 AM
Post #210 of 228
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Registered: Feb 8, 2009
Posts: 42
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10-4 on the double checking. it's manditory w/me.
i once started backing off a rap with only 1 of the 2 rsides threaded through my atc. Scheeze, i nearly went splat! I noticed just as i was starting to hang my ass off the edge!
stay in the game. check your shit
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herbertpowell
Apr 11, 2009, 11:31 PM
Post #211 of 228
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Registered: Apr 3, 2009
Posts: 79
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I'd say my biggest mistakes usually relate to forgetting something related to the sun and having a miserable day because of that.
Sunblock, sunglasses, hat, wearing a dark shirt on a glacier (ugh), etc.
The worst part is I never seem to learn, despite having had some nasty sunburns in uncomfortable places (behind my ears was probably the worst!).
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verticon
Apr 12, 2009, 10:42 AM
Post #212 of 228
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Registered: Aug 22, 2005
Posts: 223
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One month ago I was leading a 2 pitch WI4 with my GF belaying. I left the 2nd belay stance (bomber, 2 ice screws and a thread), went round a pillar and up. 60ft and 4 screws higher the rope becomes tight and I'm stuck.
I shout for some slack, pull on the rope, but nothing happens. Snowing, hard wind blowing, no chance to communicate.
After a few moments I feel the rope is slack and I continue climbing up to a tree on top of the cliff. I setup the anchor and I pull up the ropes. Well, surprise ! Instead of a tight rope with my GF tyed in, I get the two rope ends. I rapped down in rage keen to get an explanation. And I've got it: she dropped the stack of ropes from the stance, both ropes went around an ice feature and clogged. She didn't know what to do and because I was pulling on the ropes, she untied and set me free, hoping to rescue her on my way down, which I did, but I shouldn't... :o)
The dumb thing ?! Not teaching her how to manage ropes at the belay, not telling her that if I wanted to solo I'd rather did it on my own will, and climbing ice with an inexperienced belayer.
(This post was edited by verticon on Apr 12, 2009, 11:00 AM)
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mrswix
Apr 14, 2009, 1:21 AM
Post #213 of 228
(8172 views)
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Registered: Apr 29, 2008
Posts: 48
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thats some gf you got man...
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NDKalltheway
Apr 14, 2009, 7:39 PM
Post #214 of 228
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Registered: Aug 21, 2008
Posts: 27
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I was working for a summer camp and we were stringing a new cable between telephone poles for a high ropes course. I was climbing up and nearly to the top of the one pole (45ft) when poor placement of my lobster claws resulted in them being tangled up in the cables that were already put up. It was a mess, I was stuck on one side of the pole and my clip in points were awkwardly placed on the other side. The lobster claws were weaved along the opposite side of the pole I needed it to be in order to reach the drill point. I mindlessly unclipped the claws from my harness and untangled it. I wrapped it around the other side of the pole and reclipped. About halfway through tightening the carabiner, I figured out what I had done... chills shot through my body as I realized that I had been dangling from one hand and on shitty footing with a 45ft fall only a minor slip away.
Not exactly climbing, but definitely the hardest vertigo I've ever had.
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tomtom
Apr 15, 2009, 7:36 PM
Post #215 of 228
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Registered: Jan 9, 2004
Posts: 366
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Last weekend I lowered off after leading a single pitch climb and noticed that I had only completed half of the reweave of my figure eight.
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technogeekery
Aug 3, 2009, 2:19 AM
Post #216 of 228
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Registered: Jun 17, 2009
Posts: 146
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This thread is too good to die, so I'll contribute.
I learned to climb at school with a bunch of other kids - we learned from older brothers, watching other climbers and books - ie we had no clue. Stings of misfortunes and near-misses resulted - we were very fortunate that we were able to learn from experiences without anyone getting seriously injured... A couple of classics from those times:
My partner and I decided to go new routing on a rural peak that we thought was unclimbed. It was a table-top mesa in the African bush with an easy scramble to get to the top, and ringed by sandstone cliffs. On the tallest of those cliffs (maybe 100m?) was an obvious 3-pitch line, relatively easy corners and faces to a big ledge about 80m off the deck, then an awesome overhanging wall like a wave about to break - split by a huge crack. So we gave it a go - the first two pitches went fine, but when I tried leading the overhanging crack, it was full of mud and batpoo, and I was spat out several times with a faceful of goo.
So we decided to clean it on toprope - maybe not great in the strict ground-up ethics of the day, but the line was too beautiful. So we escaped up an easier line from the other end of the ledge, set up an abseil anchor directly above the crack, and my partner volunteered to lower off and clean as I'd been doing the leading.
But we'd seriously underestimated the overhang - a few metres down and he was well clear of the rock, so he decided to abseil down to the ledge, and clean the climb on toprope (we weren't thinking clearly...) Very soon he was nearly at the bottom of the rope (a doubled 45m 9mm 1/2 rope) level with the ledge - and 5m away from it out in space... After much wriggling, jerking about and generally looking like a fish on a line, we realised that it was not possible to build enough momentum on the end of a line to swing anywhere near the ledge - he was stuck, shirtless, rotating gently under the hot sun, with a lot of air under his arse.
He was also feeling VERY nervous hanging directly above an 80m drop on a skinny rope. He took a few wraps of the rope around his leg, and I dropped the end of another 1/2 rope to him and put him on backup - and then we started working out how we were going to get him up. I had a bit of fun suggesting he throw his climbing shoes out into space to see if the reaction would push him into the rock, and dropping small twigs on him as he dangled in space - but in reality it was quite serious - we were 3-4 hours from any help, so we had to work it out ourselves.
Simple you say - prussik. Well yes, I'd read about that once in a book...and it came to mind, luckily. So I got a couple of slings, and for the first time ever, started twisting them around a rope to work out how this prussik knot thing worked. Eventually I found a configuration that seemed to work, so I lowered the slings down to my mate, shouted instructions down to him, and off he went.
Fortunately it worked, after a fashion - the knot was pretty basic and bound up a lot, and the 1/2 rope stretched a LOT so for a long time we weren't sure it was going to work at all. But eventually he started going up - and 2 hours later my brutally sunburned partner crawled up over the rim.
We rather gave up on the route (and climbing) for the weekend... So sometimes book learning can get you out of a situation that sheer lack of common-sense has gotten you into - but I have to tell you its better to do that sort of thing in nicely controlled circumstances first!
And then there were all the myriad stupid things we did like everyone else. The stupidest thing I've personally done is abseiled off the end of my rope. It was a doubled single-rope ab, I checked the ends were on the ground so didn't bother tying them - but then I re-adjusted the belay to make it more secure, and didn't re-check. Somewhere in the procedure I'd managed to pull one end about 10 ft off the ground. Luckily it was the ground and not a ledge, and landing flat on my arse from 10ft hurt my pride more than anything else - but thats where I started ALWAYS putting stopper knots on ab ropes.
And finally the dumbest thing that ever happend when I was responsible for the climbing - I was climbing with my younger brother, and tried out a local "test-piece" for new leaders - easy, but broke through a dramatic roof on big holds, so quite scary and committing. I made it through, and set up belay at the top, ready to bring my brother up. Now as schoolkids, we had very little money, and my brother didn't have a harness. he'd belayed me directly from an anchor at the bottom, and when I'd set up at the top, I took my harness off, and lowered it down to him to use, while I prepared to belay him off the anchors directly. I wasn't worried about myself, I had a very secure stance and there would be no force on me if he fell. And fall he did, and hung, and thrashed around, and fell again, and hung, until he had no strength left and I lowered him back down to the ground.
I walked around (easy walk-off) to the bottom of the cliff, had a chat with him, and then as his arms were really pumped, went to help him untie... which is when I discovered that he wasn't tied in at all, he'd fallen and thrutched and lowered from about 20m on the overhand knot I'd used when I lowered the harness to him before the climb!
We never did tell Mum...
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gojiclimber
Aug 3, 2009, 3:44 AM
Post #217 of 228
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Registered: Mar 15, 2009
Posts: 27
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Probably the Dumbest thing I've ever done when I was learning to use my mini traxion for rope soloing.
After I reached the top of the rope I disengaged the mini traxion and went to single strand rappel of the other half of rope. Well, when I was halfway down the pulley re-engaged and couldn't be released without slack in the rope, and the atc weighted wouldn't allow me to feed slack.
I was stuck alone for a good while until I managed to make a huge pendulum to ledge where I could stand and unweight the rope.
Now I just remove the pulley for the descent.
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zeke_sf
Aug 3, 2009, 5:15 AM
Post #218 of 228
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Registered: Apr 28, 2006
Posts: 18730
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technogeekery wrote: This thread is too good to die, so I'll contribute. I learned to climb at school with a bunch of other kids - we learned from older brothers, watching other climbers and books - ie we had no clue. Stings of misfortunes and near-misses resulted - we were very fortunate that we were able to learn from experiences without anyone getting seriously injured... A couple of classics from those times: My partner and I decided to go new routing on a rural peak that we thought was unclimbed. It was a table-top mesa in the African bush with an easy scramble to get to the top, and ringed by sandstone cliffs. On the tallest of those cliffs (maybe 100m?) was an obvious 3-pitch line, relatively easy corners and faces to a big ledge about 80m off the deck, then an awesome overhanging wall like a wave about to break - split by a huge crack. So we gave it a go - the first two pitches went fine, but when I tried leading the overhanging crack, it was full of mud and batpoo, and I was spat out several times with a faceful of goo. So we decided to clean it on toprope - maybe not great in the strict ground-up ethics of the day, but the line was too beautiful. So we escaped up an easier line from the other end of the ledge, set up an abseil anchor directly above the crack, and my partner volunteered to lower off and clean as I'd been doing the leading. But we'd seriously underestimated the overhang - a few metres down and he was well clear of the rock, so he decided to abseil down to the ledge, and clean the climb on toprope (we weren't thinking clearly...) Very soon he was nearly at the bottom of the rope (a doubled 45m 9mm 1/2 rope) level with the ledge - and 5m away from it out in space... After much wriggling, jerking about and generally looking like a fish on a line, we realised that it was not possible to build enough momentum on the end of a line to swing anywhere near the ledge - he was stuck, shirtless, rotating gently under the hot sun, with a lot of air under his arse. He was also feeling VERY nervous hanging directly above an 80m drop on a skinny rope. He took a few wraps of the rope around his leg, and I dropped the end of another 1/2 rope to him and put him on backup - and then we started working out how we were going to get him up. I had a bit of fun suggesting he throw his climbing shoes out into space to see if the reaction would push him into the rock, and dropping small twigs on him as he dangled in space - but in reality it was quite serious - we were 3-4 hours from any help, so we had to work it out ourselves. Simple you say - prussik. Well yes, I'd read about that once in a book...and it came to mind, luckily. So I got a couple of slings, and for the first time ever, started twisting them around a rope to work out how this prussik knot thing worked. Eventually I found a configuration that seemed to work, so I lowered the slings down to my mate, shouted instructions down to him, and off he went. Fortunately it worked, after a fashion - the knot was pretty basic and bound up a lot, and the 1/2 rope stretched a LOT so for a long time we weren't sure it was going to work at all. But eventually he started going up - and 2 hours later my brutally sunburned partner crawled up over the rim. We rather gave up on the route (and climbing) for the weekend... So sometimes book learning can get you out of a situation that sheer lack of common-sense has gotten you into - but I have to tell you its better to do that sort of thing in nicely controlled circumstances first! And then there were all the myriad stupid things we did like everyone else. The stupidest thing I've personally done is abseiled off the end of my rope. It was a doubled single-rope ab, I checked the ends were on the ground so didn't bother tying them - but then I re-adjusted the belay to make it more secure, and didn't re-check. Somewhere in the procedure I'd managed to pull one end about 10 ft off the ground. Luckily it was the ground and not a ledge, and landing flat on my arse from 10ft hurt my pride more than anything else - but thats where I started ALWAYS putting stopper knots on ab ropes. And finally the dumbest thing that ever happend when I was responsible for the climbing - I was climbing with my younger brother, and tried out a local "test-piece" for new leaders - easy, but broke through a dramatic roof on big holds, so quite scary and committing. I made it through, and set up belay at the top, ready to bring my brother up. Now as schoolkids, we had very little money, and my brother didn't have a harness. he'd belayed me directly from an anchor at the bottom, and when I'd set up at the top, I took my harness off, and lowered it down to him to use, while I prepared to belay him off the anchors directly. I wasn't worried about myself, I had a very secure stance and there would be no force on me if he fell. And fall he did, and hung, and thrashed around, and fell again, and hung, until he had no strength left and I lowered him back down to the ground. I walked around (easy walk-off) to the bottom of the cliff, had a chat with him, and then as his arms were really pumped, went to help him untie... which is when I discovered that he wasn't tied in at all, he'd fallen and thrutched and lowered from about 20m on the overhand knot I'd used when I lowered the harness to him before the climb! We never did tell Mum...
^^^I'm not reading that.
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bill413
Aug 3, 2009, 4:13 PM
Post #219 of 228
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Registered: Oct 19, 2004
Posts: 5674
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zeke_sf wrote: technogeekery wrote: This thread is too good to die, so I'll contribute. I learned to climb at school with a bunch of other kids - we learned from older brothers, watching other climbers and books - ie we had no clue. Stings of misfortunes and near-misses resulted - we were very fortunate that we were able to learn from experiences without anyone getting seriously injured... A couple of classics from those times: My partner and I decided to go new routing on a rural peak that we thought was unclimbed. It was a table-top mesa in the African bush with an easy scramble to get to the top, and ringed by sandstone cliffs. On the tallest of those cliffs (maybe 100m?) was an obvious 3-pitch line, relatively easy corners and faces to a big ledge about 80m off the deck, then an awesome overhanging wall like a wave about to break - split by a huge crack. So we gave it a go - the first two pitches went fine, but when I tried leading the overhanging crack, it was full of mud and batpoo, and I was spat out several times with a faceful of goo. So we decided to clean it on toprope - maybe not great in the strict ground-up ethics of the day, but the line was too beautiful. So we escaped up an easier line from the other end of the ledge, set up an abseil anchor directly above the crack, and my partner volunteered to lower off and clean as I'd been doing the leading. But we'd seriously underestimated the overhang - a few metres down and he was well clear of the rock, so he decided to abseil down to the ledge, and clean the climb on toprope (we weren't thinking clearly...) Very soon he was nearly at the bottom of the rope (a doubled 45m 9mm 1/2 rope) level with the ledge - and 5m away from it out in space... After much wriggling, jerking about and generally looking like a fish on a line, we realised that it was not possible to build enough momentum on the end of a line to swing anywhere near the ledge - he was stuck, shirtless, rotating gently under the hot sun, with a lot of air under his arse. He was also feeling VERY nervous hanging directly above an 80m drop on a skinny rope. He took a few wraps of the rope around his leg, and I dropped the end of another 1/2 rope to him and put him on backup - and then we started working out how we were going to get him up. I had a bit of fun suggesting he throw his climbing shoes out into space to see if the reaction would push him into the rock, and dropping small twigs on him as he dangled in space - but in reality it was quite serious - we were 3-4 hours from any help, so we had to work it out ourselves. Simple you say - prussik. Well yes, I'd read about that once in a book...and it came to mind, luckily. So I got a couple of slings, and for the first time ever, started twisting them around a rope to work out how this prussik knot thing worked. Eventually I found a configuration that seemed to work, so I lowered the slings down to my mate, shouted instructions down to him, and off he went. Fortunately it worked, after a fashion - the knot was pretty basic and bound up a lot, and the 1/2 rope stretched a LOT so for a long time we weren't sure it was going to work at all. But eventually he started going up - and 2 hours later my brutally sunburned partner crawled up over the rim. We rather gave up on the route (and climbing) for the weekend... So sometimes book learning can get you out of a situation that sheer lack of common-sense has gotten you into - but I have to tell you its better to do that sort of thing in nicely controlled circumstances first! And then there were all the myriad stupid things we did like everyone else. The stupidest thing I've personally done is abseiled off the end of my rope. It was a doubled single-rope ab, I checked the ends were on the ground so didn't bother tying them - but then I re-adjusted the belay to make it more secure, and didn't re-check. Somewhere in the procedure I'd managed to pull one end about 10 ft off the ground. Luckily it was the ground and not a ledge, and landing flat on my arse from 10ft hurt my pride more than anything else - but thats where I started ALWAYS putting stopper knots on ab ropes. And finally the dumbest thing that ever happend when I was responsible for the climbing - I was climbing with my younger brother, and tried out a local "test-piece" for new leaders - easy, but broke through a dramatic roof on big holds, so quite scary and committing. I made it through, and set up belay at the top, ready to bring my brother up. Now as schoolkids, we had very little money, and my brother didn't have a harness. he'd belayed me directly from an anchor at the bottom, and when I'd set up at the top, I took my harness off, and lowered it down to him to use, while I prepared to belay him off the anchors directly. I wasn't worried about myself, I had a very secure stance and there would be no force on me if he fell. And fall he did, and hung, and thrashed around, and fell again, and hung, until he had no strength left and I lowered him back down to the ground. I walked around (easy walk-off) to the bottom of the cliff, had a chat with him, and then as his arms were really pumped, went to help him untie... which is when I discovered that he wasn't tied in at all, he'd fallen and thrutched and lowered from about 20m on the overhand knot I'd used when I lowered the harness to him before the climb! We never did tell Mum... ^^^I'm not reading that.
It is definitely worth reading - the image of the partner being rotisseried in the sun is pretty evocative.
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bobbj22
Aug 3, 2009, 8:12 PM
Post #220 of 228
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Registered: Aug 13, 2007
Posts: 54
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I missed a draw when I was rapping/cleaning a route and had to prusik back up some while very pumped out. I made it and removed the draws quickly since people had been waiting, however, I forgot to remove the prusik. I then looked up and realized I put the prusik on both ropes and couldn't pull the rope when I got to the bottom. I tried to swing myself to the rock so I could work my way up to it and knotted a bight on my foot for maximum swing potential. It didn't work and my bight knot slid up to my belay device. I was stuck in mid air with my atc jammed, my prusik dangling several meters above me, and I'm so tired that a large bowel movement would have pushed me into a fatigue coma. Everyone thought it was hilarious because of how tired and pissed off I was and eventually my buddy climbed up and scooted my prusik down after watching me flail and curse for 5-10 minutes. I'm blaming it on the lack of sleep but I sure won't forget feeling humiliation/frustration/self-loath and having those feelings cycle over and over within a few minutes. FML
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Myxomatosis
Aug 3, 2009, 9:28 PM
Post #221 of 228
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Registered: Jun 12, 2007
Posts: 1063
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You can make a big loop with the rope below the ATC then stand in the loop and therefore, making your body higher up the rope to reach your prusk.
If your prusk was still to far out of reach, I wish I was there to laugh at you 
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koepkeca
Aug 3, 2009, 9:50 PM
Post #222 of 228
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Registered: Jul 13, 2009
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scottb wrote: A handful of things come to mind from when I was learning, but this is the worst: I went out to a local crag with a friend who was more experienced than I. Only, just barely... My friend had just bought a set of nuts and he wanted to lead on them. He went up an easy crack, built an anchor and lowered off. I went to TR it. When I got to the "anchor", this is what I saw: two nuts wedged under either side of a boulder perched on top of the cliff and they were slung together with an ADT... At this point I had never built an anchor off of gear but I had read enough to know that something wasn't right. But instead of saying "WTF is this?!!" and topping out and walking off. I just thought: "He climbs trad, he climbs harder than me, he knows what he's doing, it's prolly fine." So I weighted his anchor and let him lower me off. It was fine... but I feel like I lucked out big time. Moral: when learning don't hesitate to call out your "mentor" if his setup looks like garbage. If he becomes defensive, find someone else to take you out. Of all the stupid stuff that I've lucked out on while learning to climb, this one, ironically had the fewest consequences, but it makes me cringe when looking back on it more than anything.
^^ We once forgot to lock the locker on Top Rope that attached the rope to the anchor. NEVER AGAIN...
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peg_leg1
Aug 3, 2009, 10:38 PM
Post #223 of 228
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Registered: Nov 10, 2006
Posts: 21
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I'm still alive after climbing for 16 years, so I guess I haven't been that dumb.
OK, so two years ago I was ice climbing in the Adirondacks. I was rapping off a climb using just one 8.2 rope to get down. With the rope iced up, the one end started feeding through much faster than the other. At a moment of terror I saw the end of the rope coming toward my belay device. I clamped down on the rope as hard as I could and waited for a sure death free fall. But the climbing gods were with me. The rope stopped about two feet from the end of the rope. I anchored myself in and fixed the situation, and have been tying knots in the end of my ropes ever since. Also useing two locking biners through rope/belay device help a lot with thin/icy ropes.
J
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zeke_sf
Aug 4, 2009, 3:02 AM
Post #224 of 228
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Registered: Apr 28, 2006
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bill413 wrote: zeke_sf wrote: technogeekery wrote: This thread is too good to die, so I'll contribute. I learned to climb at school with a bunch of other kids - we learned from older brothers, watching other climbers and books - ie we had no clue. Stings of misfortunes and near-misses resulted - we were very fortunate that we were able to learn from experiences without anyone getting seriously injured... A couple of classics from those times: My partner and I decided to go new routing on a rural peak that we thought was unclimbed. It was a table-top mesa in the African bush with an easy scramble to get to the top, and ringed by sandstone cliffs. On the tallest of those cliffs (maybe 100m?) was an obvious 3-pitch line, relatively easy corners and faces to a big ledge about 80m off the deck, then an awesome overhanging wall like a wave about to break - split by a huge crack. So we gave it a go - the first two pitches went fine, but when I tried leading the overhanging crack, it was full of mud and batpoo, and I was spat out several times with a faceful of goo. So we decided to clean it on toprope - maybe not great in the strict ground-up ethics of the day, but the line was too beautiful. So we escaped up an easier line from the other end of the ledge, set up an abseil anchor directly above the crack, and my partner volunteered to lower off and clean as I'd been doing the leading. But we'd seriously underestimated the overhang - a few metres down and he was well clear of the rock, so he decided to abseil down to the ledge, and clean the climb on toprope (we weren't thinking clearly...) Very soon he was nearly at the bottom of the rope (a doubled 45m 9mm 1/2 rope) level with the ledge - and 5m away from it out in space... After much wriggling, jerking about and generally looking like a fish on a line, we realised that it was not possible to build enough momentum on the end of a line to swing anywhere near the ledge - he was stuck, shirtless, rotating gently under the hot sun, with a lot of air under his arse. He was also feeling VERY nervous hanging directly above an 80m drop on a skinny rope. He took a few wraps of the rope around his leg, and I dropped the end of another 1/2 rope to him and put him on backup - and then we started working out how we were going to get him up. I had a bit of fun suggesting he throw his climbing shoes out into space to see if the reaction would push him into the rock, and dropping small twigs on him as he dangled in space - but in reality it was quite serious - we were 3-4 hours from any help, so we had to work it out ourselves. Simple you say - prussik. Well yes, I'd read about that once in a book...and it came to mind, luckily. So I got a couple of slings, and for the first time ever, started twisting them around a rope to work out how this prussik knot thing worked. Eventually I found a configuration that seemed to work, so I lowered the slings down to my mate, shouted instructions down to him, and off he went. Fortunately it worked, after a fashion - the knot was pretty basic and bound up a lot, and the 1/2 rope stretched a LOT so for a long time we weren't sure it was going to work at all. But eventually he started going up - and 2 hours later my brutally sunburned partner crawled up over the rim. We rather gave up on the route (and climbing) for the weekend... So sometimes book learning can get you out of a situation that sheer lack of common-sense has gotten you into - but I have to tell you its better to do that sort of thing in nicely controlled circumstances first! And then there were all the myriad stupid things we did like everyone else. The stupidest thing I've personally done is abseiled off the end of my rope. It was a doubled single-rope ab, I checked the ends were on the ground so didn't bother tying them - but then I re-adjusted the belay to make it more secure, and didn't re-check. Somewhere in the procedure I'd managed to pull one end about 10 ft off the ground. Luckily it was the ground and not a ledge, and landing flat on my arse from 10ft hurt my pride more than anything else - but thats where I started ALWAYS putting stopper knots on ab ropes. And finally the dumbest thing that ever happend when I was responsible for the climbing - I was climbing with my younger brother, and tried out a local "test-piece" for new leaders - easy, but broke through a dramatic roof on big holds, so quite scary and committing. I made it through, and set up belay at the top, ready to bring my brother up. Now as schoolkids, we had very little money, and my brother didn't have a harness. he'd belayed me directly from an anchor at the bottom, and when I'd set up at the top, I took my harness off, and lowered it down to him to use, while I prepared to belay him off the anchors directly. I wasn't worried about myself, I had a very secure stance and there would be no force on me if he fell. And fall he did, and hung, and thrashed around, and fell again, and hung, until he had no strength left and I lowered him back down to the ground. I walked around (easy walk-off) to the bottom of the cliff, had a chat with him, and then as his arms were really pumped, went to help him untie... which is when I discovered that he wasn't tied in at all, he'd fallen and thrutched and lowered from about 20m on the overhand knot I'd used when I lowered the harness to him before the climb! We never did tell Mum... ^^^I'm not reading that. It is definitely worth reading - the image of the partner being rotisseried in the sun is pretty evocative.
You were right, it was a good read. Usually, long posts on the knob aren't that good and my brain was too fried from studying to chance the letdown.
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bill413
Aug 4, 2009, 3:17 PM
Post #225 of 228
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Registered: Oct 19, 2004
Posts: 5674
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zeke_sf wrote: bill413 wrote: zeke_sf wrote: ^^^I'm not reading that. It is definitely worth reading - the image of the partner being rotisseried in the sun is pretty evocative. You were right, it was a good read. Usually, long posts on the knob aren't that good and my brain was too fried from studying to chance the letdown.
I agree - a lot of the long ones are not well crafted. Glad you enjoyed this one.
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