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mackavus
Feb 4, 2003, 5:40 AM
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Has anyone ever had a really close call while they were climbing? Something that could have ended really badly? Even more important... Did you learn something so that it will never happen to you again?
I was climbing with my usual partner this summer at a little hot spot in Mocanaqua, PA. My partner led the climb, an easy 5.6 appx. 75ft, topped out, and set himself up to belay me from the top of the climb. When he was all set up and anchored in, I made my way up... I fell quite early in the climb. No big deal really except for my damaged pride that a 5.10 climber couldnt pull this off. The only problem was that I didnt fall the usual stretch of the rope, I fell far, and came to a sudden jerked stop. Just, before my fall came to a stop I looked up to see my partner him flying head first off the top of the climb heading right towards the ground! His anchors caught, and we both came to a stop, myself about 25 feet off the ground and my partner, inverted about 50 up rope from myself. We yelled to each other about 90 times to assure we were ok, and then he lowered me off and got himself right-side up. We abandoned the climb, quit for the day and a few band-aids were all he needed to repair his leg. The error: He had 3 really bomber anchors up there, just that the slack in the system was 4 feet too long. Although this was his fault, I gave him much credit that he mantained his belay the whole time. From now on I can guarantee EVERYTHING in the whole system is quadruple checked several times over. Yeah... this will NEVER happen again.
-Chris
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mackavus
Feb 4, 2003, 5:43 AM
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I just realized that this topic was posted not too long ago... To which many people replied... Well oops, share some new stories anyway!
-Chris
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benkiessel
Feb 4, 2003, 6:15 PM
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so this last summer i was in R.M.N.P. climbing hallet peak (some thing like 8 pitches) we got up like 5 pitches and the guide book said climb up and right, but being that there were not holds up and right i went up and left. know this looked good from below but once you got up there it quickly ran out of pro. i found a flake and belayed up my partner, who then continued to climb up and left. after about 50 feet he placed a #4 stopper and then continued until there was 160 feet of rope out with a #4 stopper in between us, he is getting nervous and finally finds a loose, rusty, old piton, and proceeds to clip in and belay me up, after yelling "DON'T FALL!" i make it up and then to get back on route he makes this 100 foot traverse with just clipping 3 more pitons he found along the way the whole time i am standing on a 2 inch ledge suction cupped to the wall not willing to weight the piton in any way, he finally finds a crack and sets up the most bomber anchor i have ever seen, were talking 6-7 solid cams. after that every thing was fine. we toped out and walked back to the car.
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flamer
Feb 4, 2003, 6:31 PM
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Welcome to Hallets!
Man I hear more stories exactly like this, coming off hallets, than any other rock face! Some really good routes though!
Ok so I was in the valley last spring for about a month. My partner and I decided to the free blast the second day there. So we cruise over to El cap and he start's leading the first pitch. There's one other party on the route and they are about 4 pitchs up. The nose has countless parties on it.
My partner get's just past the half way point, on the first pitch, when I hear "ROCK!"- only it's waaay in the distance. I look up in time to see a HUGE explosion of rock way above us. I yell up to my partner- "MARK!ROCK! BIG F**KING ROCK!" and proceed to plaster myself against the base just as the shower begins. My partner and I both get peppered with small fragmant's and then we hear this really weird buzzing noise- which ends up being the main chunk of rock- about the size of a microwave. It craters about 20 ft from me.
So now everyone that was at the base is in that weird "something scary just happened" mode running around making sure everybodies ok. My partner and I were fine and just when it seems everyone is ok we hear the party above yell down, "we need help!"
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flamer
Feb 4, 2003, 6:39 PM
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So somebody goes for YOSAR while the rest of us start figuring out what to do. So the injured party appears to be rapping off ok, so I finish belaying my partner to the anchor. The injured party gets lowered to the ground and I start to check her out(I'm an Emt). She has a pretty bad cut on her arm and is showing signs of shock. She doesn't have any other complaints so we start walking her down, and she ended up being just fine. Her partner was none other than Hans florine who told us he was 40ft out from the belay with no pro when the rock hit. He has no Idea how he didn't get hit (either do we). Neither he nor his partner were wearing helmuts. His partner had picked up the pack they were carrying and held it over her head, this may have saved her life because she said numerous rocks bounced of the pack. Turns out the rock came off of pitch 29 on the nose. That means it fell over 2500 ft!!
Moral of the story- rock fall blows!
josh
[ This Message was edited by: flamer on 2003-02-04 10:40 ]
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corpse
Feb 4, 2003, 7:10 PM
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"Moral of the story- rock fall blows!"
The other moral of the story I just learned - wear a helmet! Even if you are the belayer, I can see where wearing a helmet comes in handy.. Of course, a helmet won't help you if a microwave sized rock hits you.
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wigglestick
Feb 4, 2003, 7:29 PM
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No $#!& there I was on the 5th pitch of Prodigal Son in Zion. Earlier we had misread the topo and were forced to stop in the middle of the 5th pitch on a small ledge at the bottom of a bolt ladder. I am belaying my partner who was heading up the bolt ladder which was angling right. I am hungry, thirsty, and tired so I am rummaging around the Atom Smasher looking for the Beef Jerky and some water. Our second rope is stacked neatly right next to the bag. I begin to hear this whistling sound and it is getting louder and louder. I look up to see a 1'X 1'X 2' sized boulder falling right towards me. I manage to yell out a weak "rrrroooooooccccckkkk" which did nothing but attract the attention of my partner and the party across the way on another route. I leaned as far to my left as my daisies would allow and held onto my helmet like you see in those old war movies when a big ass bomb is about to drop on them. The next thing I hear is BOOM!!!!!!!!
the rock landed directly on my ledge and half landed on the haulbag and half landed where the second rope was stacked. The rock exploded on impact and I was choking on the dust in the air. Luckily the only casualty was a chopped second rope and a crushed water bottle. But if I hadn't heard that whistling sound and looked up I would have gotten that sucker right in the back of the head.
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elvislegs
Feb 4, 2003, 7:45 PM
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Sport climbing locally last year. Finished the route, clipped in to the chains with two different daisy chains girth hitched to my harness. One daisy is a sewn spectra by BD with a locker in it, the other is 1" tubular webbing tied with a water knot and then daisy chained with overhand knots, also clipped with a locker (note: also I always back all this up by tying a figure eight on a bight in the rope and clipping it to my belay biner before untying to thread the chains).
So I lean back against them, resting my weight against the slightly shorter, home made daisy, then untie to thread the chains and lower. After resting on them for a minute, I feel a little "give" in the normally very STATIC daisies. I quickly grab the chains and look closely.
The problem? Before I left the ground I had shortened the home made daisy by clipping the locker a few loops back, only I had missed and gone all the way around the thing. All that held me tight was the knot I had made to tie the loop jamming in the small end of the biner. I fixed it and lowered without incident.
Not an epic, but it could have been. I learned that being redundant is key because you never know when you might screw up. If I had tied in with just one sling, like alot of people I see sport climbing, or not backed up everything with the rope, I would have decked from like sixty feet up, most likely head first. I also learned that familiarity breeds contempt. I had been climbing every morning for three hours, all summer long, and had lost a lot of the fear that keeps us sharp.
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cracklover
Feb 4, 2003, 7:47 PM
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I've got several - here's one:
J-tree last year. The couple next to me was a military boy ~19y.o. and his girlfriend. You've all seen the type - he likes climbing, she likes him - that's the only reason she's out here tied in. When I arrive he's preparing to belay her from the top of the climb, and at the same time trying to shout down instructions for her to tie in - she's forgotten how to tie the knot, and he's dumb enough to think he can explain it from up there. Instead, she is just getting more and more confused. I graciously ask if she'd like a hand, and she accepts.
Okay, so it's a typical 5.7 j-tree climb - a combination of smearing on slabs and jams in flaring cracks, and her sneakers just aren't cutting it. She's having a miserable time, and he's trying to convince her that she isn't. Bad scene.
Fast forward 30 minutes... I led my climb,
and I'm just scrambling over the top looking for something to anchor into. Meanwhile, she's now anchored at the top, belaying him up on the next climb over. He falls, and her belay fails. He slips/backpedals
the 15-20 feet back down the slab and slams into my belayer, knocking him over. Only luck kept my belayer from pulling me off the top - and had he done so, it's very unlikely he would have stopped me before I cratered.
Moral? Sometimes you're climbing around people who are a danger to themselves and everyone around them. When you've been climbing a few years you get that spidey sense - you can smell them at 15 paces. You just know there's gonna be an accident or a near miss if you stick around long enough. Do what you can to help them, and then be extra extra extra careful climbing near them.
GO
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bandycoot
Feb 4, 2003, 8:38 PM
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Short and sweet:
I was scrambling along a fin of rock to set up a top rope, and it was almost like a low angle knife edge. My lace up shoes had uber long laces. they were tied, but I still stepped on them and fell face first, one hand on either side of the knife edge. A little either way and I would have taken an UGLY 30+ footer.
Lesson: If you're laces are too long, wrap them once under your shoes before tying them on top!
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ltdrew
Feb 4, 2003, 9:21 PM
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Slack rappells are used to get to the ground from a helicopter quickly. this is how i got down a 70 foot cliff a little too quickly.
I learned to rappell on a pair of military green lines (right hand lay no sheath) double wrapped on a steel d ring; lots of friction. I was a gung ho (aka stupid) sophomore in college when I picked up a 300 ft blue water static kermantle for a steal. Without much thought I decided to pull an aussie slack rappell on just one line double wraped on an old steel d ring. I pulled 20-25 ft of slack, ran, and jumped of the slightly overhanging cliff. It was a smooth transition from free fall to rappell because I had virtually no friction. I also realized that I couldn't stop like I wanted, to put it lightly. To sum up in two words. I BOUNCED. My girlfriend/now wife was fruious, but I came out relatively uninjured(just some bad cuts and bruises).
I'm a little more cautious in all I do now.
Drew
[ This Message was edited by: ltdrew on 2003-02-04 13:22 ]
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asaph
Feb 4, 2003, 9:48 PM
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I was on my first two pitch route (10c) and my partner was leading the second pitch while i was hanging on belay. he flailed a bit and sent a massive cliff bar hurtling towards me! luckily the slings were long enough that I could side-step it, but boy howdy that could have been bad!
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polarwid
Feb 12, 2003, 5:27 AM
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[small]This topic was moved to the Injuries & Accidents forum by polarwid[/small]
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rrrADAM
Feb 12, 2003, 3:53 PM
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Simmilar Thread with 86 replies...
http://www.rockclimbing.com/forums/viewtopic.php?topic=2618&forum=25&86
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itsreachyman
Feb 12, 2003, 4:12 PM
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Here a scary one: Several years ago, I started climbing with a woman who was very confident and seemed to have a lot of experience. She was previously a Ropes Course instructor and had climbed all over the US and Europe.
Being a lot less experienced, I let her set up the belay (which I could not see from the ground) for a bunch of teenagers we had with us that day. The boys belayed eachother for an hour without incident then I went up to clean the anchors. When I got to them, I WAS SHOCKED!!! She had set up the anchor by running our rope directly through one old peice of 11mm rope that was tied off to a chockstone backed it up with a sling run through a tight crack. By the time I got there, our rope had half way burned through the old 11mm rope and the sling easily pulled through the crack! YEOW!!!
I felt terrible that these boys could have lost thier lives because I blindly trusted someone who appeared confident without double/triple checking her abilities.
Moral of the story: 1)Always get to know the true abilities of your partner before trusting them with your life or someone elses. 2) never climb trad with someone (ever) if you can't trust thier judgement, no matter how experienced he/she may be. (at least in sport climbing, you can usually watch for and correct mistakes as they happen).
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godsmybelayer
Feb 16, 2003, 10:03 AM
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Some kids had bought a bunch of quick draws and rope, they were climbing and taking falls. Big ones, and it hurt them really bad, why? It was static rope. The climbing shop had sold some kids static rope and quick draws without asking if they'd use them in conjunction. sheesh!
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tylerphillips
Feb 16, 2003, 7:44 PM
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I was 50 feet out with no screws (ice to thin) and just at the lip of the pitch when I heard it. I remember think just for a split second "is that a jet in the canyon?" then the painful realization that about 400 lbs. of ice had peeled of from an upper pitch and was thundering down the easier pitches above. My partner started screaming and I tried to get more than 3 teeth of my picks in the ice I bounced of rock not once but three times finally got a Ok stick and hunkered down, head low and bowed and waited. Volleyball size chunks went flying over my head and a couple smaller ones clocked me, but I survied, downclimbed and got really drunk. The easier pitches above had broken the bigger chunks up. When we got to where we could see the upper pitches we saw a 20ft by 15 foot piece of ice that was missing. Lesson learned don't get greedy for sticky ice just cause it's warm.
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dannyboy95
Feb 16, 2003, 7:51 PM
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Accidents really stink! One time I fell off the wall at my gym and really hurt my wrist! Next time I'll try praying...Maybe that will help....LOL!
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dirko
Feb 17, 2003, 1:31 AM
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My second week in the valley, me and some friends decided to climb Nutcracker at night. None of us had ever done the route before, nor did we bring a topo, but we figured that the full moon would see us through.
We started at 10 p.m. The first two pitches were a breeze. Good friction, beatiful scenery. Then we got off route. We ended up both stuck at a belay on a small tree that I would imagine is somewhere left of the third pitch. It is really puny, perhaps as thick as my wrist. We were stuck.
Well, we can't climb any higher, guess we will have to rap. Too bad this tree sucks. Too bad our rope when doubled is significantly shorter than the rappell. I went first, I dont know why. I rapped a single strand. I took all the gear with me. When I got to the bottom, I clipped all our gear to the end of the rope. First our slings, then the cordelette (which I untied from a loop to make longer, then all of our quickdraws, then all of our biners. With all this junk, our line was long enough to double. I plugged a single .75 Camlot into the ledge I was standing on, clipped it to the end our our new, longer "line" and John rapped the half of the rope that was not biners down to the ledge. Then we pullled it and did one more rap down to the ground.
I went on to climb a bunch more and even do some big walls without dying.
The moral of the story is: don't be over-confident. Don't climb at night without supervision of the more experienced. Always bring a topo. Be prepared to bivy if it is less hairball than bailing. And your greatest asset is your own mind. Don't lose it.
P.S. Oh yeah. I learned to rappell off my parents old three-story porch in a swiss seat with a figure eight clipped into a keychain biner.
[ This Message was edited by: dirko on 2003-02-16 17:34 ]
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carnaged
Feb 17, 2003, 1:45 AM
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Last summer, I was out at the crag, leading a 5.10d, it was a fairly long route too, I was up almost three quarters of the way up, where I came to a good rest. it was on a ledge about three feet out from the rock, and the bolt before the rest was just underneath the over hang.
After resting, I began climbing again, only to find out there was a huge runout about 20 feet, and clipping the next bolt, was also the Crux of the entire route.
I came to the crux, and grasped an undercling, but almost a foot out of reach was the bolt. I had somehow pulled over the ledge, and just barely clipped the bolt.
If I had fallen, I would have decked into the ledge, and fallen even further.
I finished the route, not before i $#!& my pants.
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therealbovine
Feb 17, 2003, 4:47 PM
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J tree, climbing a not-so-hard crack with partner. Hes on lead, about 35' up. His last peice is ten feet below him. He is looking pumped, places a peice in the crack above his head. He drops the rope multiple times trying to clip the peice. On his fourth attempt, he falls with 10+ feet of slack in his hand as he was reaching again for the clip. Nothing I could do but start yarding in rope. I was surrounded by boulders and could not run to take in the slack. I knew he was going to hit the deck. Next thing I know am laying on the ground, bleading all over the place (from a head wound). He had fallen on me from 35'. I sufferred torn and strained muscles and ligaments in my back and neck, a concuscion (sp?). I was laid up for 4 weeks. Couldn't even lift my arms above my head. I broke his fall and he walkd away with no injuries.
Watch for falling climbers.....
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poorclimberboy
Feb 17, 2003, 5:56 PM
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ok I'm surprised my climbing partner hasnt posted my little near miss yet, I guess I get the honors,
climbing at quincy quarries on the reflector oven wall, nothin too big, around 40 feet, big enough to still hurt if you crater, I had set up the tr with one locking biner and 1 non-locker, I had been lowered about 5 feet when I hear my non-locker unclip and I fell what should have been about 10 feet but, my belayer thinking my whole tr setup had gone had let go of the belay so now I'm free falling tword the ground and for some reason the belay locked off about 3 feet off the ground so I never cratered, lesson learned, use a grigri on tr
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danskiz
Feb 17, 2003, 6:26 PM
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I was leading my first A4 pitch about 700 feet up. About 3/4 up the pitch I had to do a 10 ft hook traverse to a dihedral. I get to the dihedral and dont like the looks of this huge boulder that appears to be just glued to the cliff. This route hasn't been climbed in like 30 years, so I knew there would be loose rock. I spend 20 minutes trying to figure a way around it with out touching the boulder. I finally resort to attempting it. So I place a hook over the top of the boulder, and lightly test it, It seems to be holding ok. So I bounce test it, its holding. I commit to the hook placement, get up so the hook is about waist level, and start placing a beak in the seam above. Right before I start pounding the beak the wall starts to move. I look down and sure enough the boulder I am hooking on is coming off with me on it. Somehow I managed to grab a flake as I was falling, and caught myself. Because the route traversed my belayer just got sprayed by a few pebbles when the boulder exploded. Were talking a chunk of granite about 5 feet tall, 3 feet wide, and 8 inches thick. The sick part was after I got my head back on, I realized that when the boulder went, my rope got pinched in between the boulder and the main face. There was only two strands of the core left intact. I lost 6 feet off of a brand new rope. Lucky I caught myself. Lesson learned- A4 is serious sh@t!
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weaselman
Feb 17, 2003, 7:08 PM
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lol you guys are nuts
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yeti
Feb 17, 2003, 8:21 PM
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I love my 10 meter sling... But.
I love that sling: I've used it tens of times to set up top ropes and fixed lines on new routes. But one day, the edge of the cliff I was about to clean was actually right by a solid tree. So I slinged the tree with my 10 meter sling. There was a lot of loose sling left over. I clipped in my rope for the rappel, and proceded to lower by holding onto the sling. Suddenly I nottice that, for some reason, I had clipped the rope in one of the loose ends of the sling. Had I weighted the rope, I would have found myself plummeting to the ground 15 meters below.
Lesson learned: long slings are only good for when you need them.
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