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Climbing Information:
Accident and Incident Analysis:
Re: [jomagam] Climbing gym fatality,woman falls 30 feet ,Grapevine gym Texas:
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markc
Nov 5, 2013, 9:26 PM
Views: 8520
Registered: Jan 21, 2003
Posts: 2481
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jomagam wrote: JAB wrote: jomagam wrote: The gym I go to has 6 auto belays and never heard of any issues. Almost all the routes that are toprope-able can be done on AB, which means that your proposed gate would have to be lowered by non-AB parties, so a second place is needed to clip the AB's twist lock biner into. The AB can be pulled on a rail to position it by the finishing hold of the route you're jumping onto, so not sure how it could work in a case when you have 30 feet of wall where one can start a route. You're right, the gate solution wouldn't work with that setup. But to me it sounds like the gym takes a safety risk in order to save some money. To me the obvious answer is for the gym to stop being cheap and instead fix the autobelays in place, and maybe buy a couple more if they want to cover the whole wall. That's too complicated IMO. You're asking to have a dedicated area for autobelays, and for each piece of hardware only to cover a couple of routes instead of a dozen. Those AB-s aren't cheap.
Obviously the culture is established at your gym, and seems to be working well. If a gym purchases auto-belays, I think it's worth considering fixing them and using the gate system JAB mentioned. If there are two or three routes per wall section and six ABs, you're conservatively covering 12 - 18 climbs of varying difficulty. Thats not a ton, but it gives an individual an alternative to exclusively bouldering or gives the odd man out in a larger group the opportunity to climb without a belayer. A gym may be willing to trade off flexibility for that extra safety precaution.
Gyms in my area don't have auto-belays. I'd be curious to know if they're usually fixed or easily relocated by members in most gyms.
(This post was edited by markc on Nov 5, 2013, 9:27 PM)
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Post edited by markc
() on Nov 5, 2013, 9:27 PM
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