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sagarmatha
Oct 9, 2002, 6:57 AM
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In the last few days I have been reading the Canadian Alpine Club online database of rock climbing accidents, and I have noted a few trends in rock climbing accidents:
- most (but not all) victims of climbing injuries/fatalities were leading at the time of the accident (no surprise);
- in a high proportion of cases, injuries were sustained after one of more pieces of protection pulled out during a fall;
- helmets are often mentioned as an important factor in the limitation of the extent of a climber's injuries;
- overconfidence, lack of experience and lack of knowledge of a route were determining factors in a number of accidents;
- a notable number of accidents involved holds breaking off;
- only a very small proportion of accidents are due to bad luck (eg. the wheater changing in the nexy five minutes).
One factor that is hardly mentioned across the whole list of accidents is protection structurally failing (eg. the wire on a nut breaking, or a cam falling apart when loaded). Do you guys know of any instances when this has actually happened?
[ This Message was edited by: sagarmatha on 2002-10-08 23:58 ]
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geezergecko
Oct 9, 2002, 2:23 PM
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Goran Kropp (bicycle to Everest guy) died last week when his cams pulled and a biner broke on his second last placement. So yes, sad to say, gear does fail.
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tradklime
Oct 9, 2002, 2:25 PM
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The only gear failures that I am aware of are forged friends breaking stems and biners breaking.
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wigglestick
Oct 9, 2002, 2:36 PM
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In the realm of aid climbing gear fails often. But the gear is so thin that you almost expect it to fail. An old friend of mine has had he cable of a #1 HB offset break and the lobes of a #00 Metolius shear off.
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tradklime
Oct 9, 2002, 3:08 PM
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wigglestick- not surprised about a soldered nut failure, have to constantly inspect those for frays. Interesting with the cam lobe failure. Can you describe the failure of the metolius cam in more detail? Did the metal crack under load? Did it simply deform and pull out?
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tradguy
Oct 9, 2002, 3:08 PM
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geezergecko - I hadn't heard about the biner breaking. Do you know an more details, such as what type of biner it was, how it broke, and why (loaded across a sharp edge, for instance)?
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wigglestick
Oct 9, 2002, 3:25 PM
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Tradklime- I guess the lobes didn't shear off, more like they deformed so that they were not round anymore. It was almost like the metal was too soft. I only saw the piece for a few moments but my friend sent it to metolius, hoping to get a new one in exchange, and I think he did.
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tradklime
Oct 9, 2002, 3:52 PM
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Thanks wigglestick, still interesting about the deformation. Metolius uses a harder alloy like BD and most others, haven't really seen that before. I've seen a bit of deformation with my aliens, but never enough for it to be a cause of a placement to fail. It's more like a dent from a crystal or something. Perhaps your friend just got unlucky with a bad mix or something. Hopefully, it didn't affect a large number of units.
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unirock
Oct 9, 2002, 3:57 PM
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Tradguy, apparently it was a Camp biner that broke, then all the other gear pulled except the first piece. Don't believe it was determined yet if it just failed or whether it was jammed into the rock and broke.
[ This Message was edited by: unirock on 2002-10-09 08:58 ]
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geezergecko
Oct 9, 2002, 5:40 PM
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For more on the Goren Kropp tragedy :
http://www.cascadeclimbers.com/ubb/ultimatebb.php?ubb=get_topic;f=1;t=003107
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jt512
Oct 9, 2002, 9:08 PM
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I've heard second hand reports from reliable sources (eg, former QC manager at Black Diamond) of numerous biner failures, apparently due to loading with the gate open. Then there are the recently well-publicized reports of figure-8 devices breaking locking carabiners (usually resulting in a fatality).
-Jay
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boltdude
Oct 9, 2002, 10:05 PM
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Some biner breaking incidents:
A Korean climber got gripped at the crux of Shakey Flakes in 1997, grabbed the bolt, the bolt pulled out in his hand, and he took a sliding 50' fall on the next bolt. The rope end biner, a modern bent-gate Lucky II carabiner with gate open rating of 8kN, broke. No deformation on the gate, so the gate either vibrated or scraped open. Classic factor 0.5, 50' fall on 100' of rope out. They got lucky as all hell in that the continued fall, a factor 2 on the belay, didn't rip the poor bolts at the belay.
A friend was 90' up on a straight-up rivet ladder on El Cap, clipped a 1/4" bolt with a single old style Black Diamond Quicksilver (the pre-1995 or so era, not the Quicksilver 2), stepped up on a rivet, the rivet blew, he fell 6 or 8 feet and the biner broke. Super-low fall factor (0.1 at the most), it must have cross-loaded really weirdly or something. He eventually got caught by a fixed head after a 30+ foot fall.
Another friend was leading the 4th pitch of Direct Northwest Face on Lembert Dome, took a short fall when he was 20' off the belay, broke an old fixed nut (no surprise on that considering everyone tries to get them out by hacking on them with nut tools), then broke 2 carabiners - the ones on the rope end of the next 2 pieces. Both were old blue-gate REI D-biners, the ones that look like the standard Black Diamond Light D. Presumably the relatively high fall factor (probably initial fall factor of 0.3, then higher), plus the rope stretch being taken out by the first fall on the fixed nut, had something to do with it.
We were testing 1/4" bolts near El Cap this April, dropping a 180lb haulbag on old bolts (several of which broke easily), and on one old bolt we used a Yates Screamer with lockers on both ends. This was about a 40' fall with 120' of rope out, or a 0.3 fall factor. The Screamer ripped as designed, the bolt bent but held, but the lower locking biner - a new Metolius (Lucky makes the biners) locking version of the standard offset D biner - "broke" (major deformation) with the gate popped out of the biner (the biner held, but it was broken as the gate was flipped outside the biner).
On another topic, there were 2 fatal accidents at the Cookie Cliff (1998 or so) involving cams pulling out of the rock in flared or smooth cracks; as far as I remember, the cams appeared to be OK and the placements were questioned (of course you can never tell if some rock broke out, etc). Both were very serious accidents where helmets MAY have made the difference between life and death, but may not have prevented the fatalities even if worn.
Greg
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wlderdude
Oct 10, 2002, 5:20 PM
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That girl in the movie "Cliffhanger" died when her harness broke! The webbing just slid through the plastic buckles!
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rollingstone
Oct 10, 2002, 11:28 PM
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Sagarmatha: If you were to go back through the last thirty years or more of Accidents in NAM, you would find the same thread repeated over and over; the majority of accidents reported there involve user error, whether it is rock, alpine, or ice. Helmets are frequently mentioned, because many of the head injuries would have been preventable. Most climbers, I think, develop the expertise to use the particular gear they are using, so a major failure will often involve that momentary lapse of judgment we all hope never happens to us.
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mreardon
Oct 11, 2002, 12:17 AM
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I agree with Rollingstone. Most breakage is from misuse of the equipment and not the equipment itself. Personally in the 12+ years I've been out climbing, I have seen three 'biners bent from misuse (gate held open during a fall, or cross loaded) and once had a stiff friend (remember those?) that I put in a horizontal crack and took a large fall that forced it to snap at the stem. It was my fault for the break however because I put it in the horizontal and didn't compensate where the rope should have been attached (closer to the crack, not far away like I did).
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