|
|
Forums:
Climbing Information:
Accident and Incident Analysis:
Re: [billl7] Climber fell 40-60 feet while repelling :
Edit Log
|
|
distantThunder
Aug 8, 2013, 6:31 PM
Views: 11543
Registered: Jul 4, 2012
Posts: 43
|
you know - it would be nice if this thread was re-titled. Or someone took a number of the posts here, and copied them over to a new thread with a name like "Staying Safe On Rappel".
I'll pass on a couple of foul-ups that happened to me when I was a junior climber, In retrospect, I am lucky these incidents didn't kill me.
The trouble with being a junior climber is that you know just enough to get yourself in trouble - but not enough about how to get out of it. Hahahaha! Beats me how I survived some of this stuff.
Tightened Prusik
In the old days we did not have anything fancy like professional autobloc's. But we did have the good old fashioned prusik knot that could be slid down the rope ABOVE our rappel device. The idea sounded plausible to me when I was a young guy. But the trouble with sliding a prusik on the rope (as an emergency to catch you if you fall) is this ... what do you do when the prusik actually tightens up? Of couse, that's what happened, I was rapelling, somehow I put too much force with my top hand on the prusik knot, and the stupid thing just tightened up. GREAT - not! A perfectly safe rappel just became very complicated. What do I do now, I thought? I'm hanging from a rope by a prusik knot tied by some cord to my belay loop. My rappel device is connected, but it's loose - the prusik is holding my weight. For a young climber this situation is challenging mentally. Really, you are still learning to be confident with normal rappels. You are not ready for the process of tying off a rappel device, unweighting a prusik, and stayin mentally cool while you sort out the mess. I don't remember what I did at the time, but apparently it must have worked because I am still around. I do remember that I never used a prusik again as a backup. The point is that complicated backup gear can suddenly transform a simple maneuver into something that is quite unexpected. Do new climbers have the skills to unravel a "mess" while hanging rom the side of a cliff. It's dangerous.
T-Shirt Mania
Here's an even greater piece of idiocy. But so simple to do. Again while I as a young climber on rappel. I used to wear loose T-shirts. Why ... becaue it was really hot on the rocks in California. So my T-shirt is hanging out, I am rappelling down ,and you guessed it - the end of my T-shirt feeds up into the Figure-8 device. It gets totally tangled up in the rope and the Figure-8. And again I am hanging from the side of a cliff. Now the positive side of this - is that a loose T-shirt makes a great autobloc. HAHAHA!! You are not going anywhere. But the negative side is that unless you have jumars and etriers, a cool mind, and a LOT of patience - you are freakin not going to untangle the T-shirt from the rappel gear. It's a very dangerous situation. If I recall, I actually asked a friend to thow me up a small folding knife and somehow managed to cut off the end of the T-shirt and unravel the mess, and get myself sorted out. But this solution is a journey into the Land Of Lunacy. Hahaha! Because now you've got a junior climber hanging from a cliff, in a state of confusion, with a knife in one hand and ropes under tension. It could have ended badly.
It is a miracle that we survive a lot of this cr**. I suppose it's some sort of Darwinian test to find out whether you can think clearly under stress. But it's not a good way to operate. And yes - I did learn to keep my T-shirt tucked in. Hahahaha!!
In the end the old-fashioned guys just learned to work with simple gear and tried-and-true techniques. More often than not - that is the real lifesaver.
dT
(This post was edited by distantThunder on Aug 8, 2013, 6:43 PM)
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
