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billl7
Apr 7, 2009, 8:58 PM
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sspssp wrote: billl7 wrote: As for chosing to lower off instead of rap: rapping a fixed lead rope probably means I have to wait for the belay of the third to finish before I get the lead rope. The second had trailed a rope that was already fixed to the anchor. So the leader could have rapped without waiting for the third to come up. And the third has to wait either for the leader to rap or the second to lower, so there is little time difference there.
As for the little time difference, I was not holding up the excerpt you quoted as THE reason. I listed other possible reasons. I did not want to get into discerning the exact reason - only Stark knows.
I just wanted to get across that a leader who wants to save time in his getting back to the deck could have ample reasons to be lowered instead of rapping (depending on the circumstances). And again, I'm not a proponent of lowering being the normal mode of getting down.
Bill
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clintcummins
Apr 7, 2009, 9:00 PM
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billl7 wrote: I was answering the question " I was puzzled why the leader didn't rap this line" where "this line" was the second line ... answer being that there wasn't enough slack in the second line for the first to rap. I could have been clearer. Thanks Clint.
Bill, he could have rappelled single strand on the 100' part of the second rope, but the third climber (on the ground) would have probably needed to untie.
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billl7
Apr 7, 2009, 9:08 PM
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clintcummins wrote: billl7 wrote: I was answering the question " I was puzzled why the leader didn't rap this line" where "this line" was the second line ... answer being that there wasn't enough slack in the second line for the first to rap. I could have been clearer. Thanks Clint. Bill, he could have rappelled single strand on the 100' part of the second rope, but the third climber (on the ground) would have probably needed to untie.
Still, I don't know that this would be faster than being lowered on the rope to which he was already tied by involving a person (Kwok) who was easier to talk to.
Am open to other reasons not presented for why Stark chose to lower instead of rap.
Bill
(This post was edited by billl7 on Apr 7, 2009, 9:09 PM)
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sspssp
Apr 7, 2009, 9:24 PM
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billl7 wrote: clintcummins wrote: billl7 wrote: I was answering the question " I was puzzled why the leader didn't rap this line" where "this line" was the second line ... answer being that there wasn't enough slack in the second line for the first to rap. I could have been clearer. Thanks Clint. Bill, he could have rappelled single strand on the 100' part of the second rope, but the third climber (on the ground) would have probably needed to untie. Very true. Edit: thanks for helping me see that. Still, I don't know that this would be faster than being lowered on the rope to which he was already tied by involving a person (Kwok) who was easier to talk to. Am open to other reasons not presented for why Stark chose to lower instead of rap. Bill
Yea, lack of slack in the second line might have factored into it, but if was planning on rapping he didn't have to pull the rope up tight (or he could have loosen it).
Lowering off the second might be just as quick, but it is not real pleasant to lower someone straight off the harness (and the "anchor" obviously was not taking any weight). Not saying it is hard, but I would think the awkwardness would lead one to lean towards rapping. It is not clear to me whether the second has clear memories of everything leading up to the accident or not. Maybe in time there will be better explanations of what still seems a strange choice.
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sspssp
Apr 7, 2009, 9:26 PM
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brotherbbock wrote: jt512 wrote: "6. Kwok fell 65' (approx.) and was held by the second rope at this point (the haul loop on the back of his harness was strong enough). [Edit:] During the 65' fall, Kwok did not lose control of the lowering device. Stark fell 100' total to the ground, receiving a fatal head injury. Jay I can't believe the haul loop held in a 65 foot fall. Kwok is lucky to be alive.
Some harnesses have a full strength haul loop. From the info on the supertopo site, it sounds like this harness did and (without rereading it all) I think the second rope was clipped in with a locking biner, which could add to the idea of why the second thought this was a sufficient anchor attachment.
(This post was edited by sspssp on Apr 7, 2009, 9:27 PM)
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yokese
Apr 7, 2009, 10:15 PM
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A (perhaps unnecessary) sketch of what I understand it happened, based on the reports in here and supertopo. I hope I'm not too much out of line.
It's unclear, and maybe not very relevant, whether Stark (in red) belayed Kwok (in green) directly from his harness or from the anchors. I left it as a question mark.
The question is how come they went from situation B to C without noticing the potential problem. It has been already mentioned in this and ST threads that probably they both thought that Kwok was attached to the anchors. It is also unclear to me if Kwok was still tied in to the rope depicted in red, which might have reinforced his believe that he was, in fact, attached to the anchor.
Probably, being both experienced climbers, the blind confidence in each other might have played a fatal role in this accident. I tend to be less careful of the set-ups and procedures of my most experienced climbing partners, trusting that they are doing it all right. May this unfortunate accident serve as a wake up call for many experienced climbers.
Larger version of the picture
Based on some messages posted after I posted mine, I'd like to add the following disclaimer.
Disclaimer:
The above diagram reflects just what I understand it happened based on the information in the ST and RC threads. In no way I claim that the depicted events are an accurate representation of what really happened.
The only purpose of the diagram was to provide a visual support of what Jay summarized in the very first post of this thread.
The fact that the human figures are standing up DOES NOT mean that I assume Kwok was standing up when belaying Stark.
The ropes are depicted in different colors for visual clarity. I DO NOT assume anything regarding the color of the ropes.
(This post was edited by yokese on Apr 8, 2009, 6:42 PM)
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glahhg
Apr 7, 2009, 10:20 PM
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I don't see how anybody could see their tag line (on their haul loop) get clipped to the anchor and then think they're sufficiently tied in, even if the tie in is not 65 feet away.
Seems like Woody didn't trust the anchor, so maybe he belayed the 2nd up via a stance, with the anchor as a loose backup (or not used at all).
Then there could have been confusion as to whether they were stancing things out or using the anchor, after that.
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shimanilami
Apr 7, 2009, 10:46 PM
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Thanks for the diagram. If this is, in fact, how things happened ... man, what a collosal and tragic mistake.
I'm sure these guys have a lot more experience than me climbing in teams of 3, but in my experience, the potential for such errors is much higher with three-somes because the "routine" is broken up. A reminder to self: when climbing with 3, triple to check my systems.
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jt512
Apr 7, 2009, 11:02 PM
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brotherbbock wrote: jt512 wrote: "6. Kwok fell 65' (approx.) and was held by the second rope at this point (the haul loop on the back of his harness was strong enough). [Edit:] During the 65' fall, Kwok did not lose control of the lowering device. Stark fell 100' total to the ground, receiving a fatal head injury. Jay I can't believe the haul loop held in a 65 foot fall. Kwok is lucky to be alive.
Al's got nine lives. Seven remaining, by my count.
Jay
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eastvillage
Apr 7, 2009, 11:19 PM
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I like what Dingus said about following safety rituals every time.
I've heard professional airline pilots use a call and response technique when coming in for landings, to help insure avoidable mistakes are not made.
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notapplicable
Apr 7, 2009, 11:29 PM
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shimanilami wrote: Thanks for the diagram. If this is, in fact, how things happened ... man, what a collosal and tragic mistake.
Whats really amazing and lucky is that the second rope happened to be a 50m. I can't speak to Jtree climbing but 60m has generally become the norm and 70's are growing in popularity. Had the exact same events unfolded with the second rope being a 60, people would in all likelihood be morning the loss of two men.
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marc801
Apr 8, 2009, 12:13 AM
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shimanilami wrote: A reminder to self: when climbing with 3, triple to check my systems.
I'd also suggest the following, since I don't remember anyone explicitly stating it....
I climbed many years and hundreds of pitches as part of a party of 3. One unbreakable rule/ritual that we always followed was:
each person had the sole responsibility of the their initial anchoring at each belay. He or she tied the knot or clipped the sling from their harness into the power point of the anchor with at least one other person watching. Then weighted it, then called for off belay.
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sed
Apr 8, 2009, 12:13 AM
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First let me just say I have made my own share of bad decisions while climbing, probably more than I am aware. Some of my mistakes were judgment calls and some were plain screw-ups. We are all human and we make mistakes and I think we could all agree with that. From what I've read it looks like Kwok intentially lowered Stark directly from his harness while he himself was not weighting the anchor. I try to put myself in that situation and I can't understand why I would do that. Was the anchor so far from the edge that he was worried about rope wear on a sharp corner possibly? Lowering someone directly from your harness while standing(or sitting) places a lot of pressure on you and when an anchor is available I don't know why I would do that. Maybe someone could suggest a reason.
Is it possible that Kwok knew he was tied in with 65 feet of slack and simply thought he was capable of maintaining his stance during the lower? Possibly a stumble over an uneven surface sent him over the edge? Again, maybe I'm reading the details wrong, it wouldn't be the first time.
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billl7
Apr 8, 2009, 12:40 AM
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sed wrote: Lowering someone directly from your harness while standing(or sitting) places a lot of pressure on you and when an anchor is available I don't know why I would do that.
Just two days ago, I caught fall from above (climber was below) with belay from my harness while sitting down at the edge. Anchor was behind me by about six feet horizontally and about one foot above my waist. Climber's waist ended up about 15 feet below my harness. I honestly was surprised that I saw he had fallen as I felt very little force. (edit: the involved angles including the way the rope ran over the rounded edge may have meant only about half of the fall force pushed down through my waist).
That I was surprised is no exaggeration - after the fall, I checked the rope several times for stickage between my belay device and the climber - there was none.
With lowering from a stance last summer, I typically had my feet and butt typically wedged on opposite sides of a narrow canyon. Again, the weight felt negligble (edit: well, managable).
I think a free-standing stance - as shown in the helpful drawing - might not be bad but could/would be tricky to keep stable. Possibly the Great Burrito has a wide vertical crack at the top that one could take a stance inside? Or an irregular step along the skyline where one could jam a hip behind a bulge.
[edit: snipped out some speculation]
Bill L
(This post was edited by billl7 on Apr 8, 2009, 12:49 AM)
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notapplicable
Apr 8, 2009, 1:24 AM
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sed wrote: Lowering someone directly from your harness while standing(or sitting) places a lot of pressure on you and when an anchor is available I don't know why I would do that. Maybe someone could suggest a reason.
It has been noted that the anchor was (at least initially) in question and the choice to lower may have been based on a desire to get Woody down without weighting that anchor. Not because the anchor was totally bunk but with the intention of just using it as a "back up", due to a degree of questionableness. Lowering the climber in that way can be done with relative ease if the terrain is less than vertical and the belayer is seated.
More generally, I've caught a bunch of falls by the second while belaying from above, where the bulk (if not all) of the the climbers weight was held by my body. Other times the anchor is significantly engaged, it depends on the circumstances.
So no, I don't think it's unusual. I think it's just a function of individual systems, styles and preferences.
Edit in italics
(This post was edited by notapplicable on Apr 8, 2009, 7:56 AM)
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sed
Apr 8, 2009, 2:02 AM
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notapplicable, I'm not sure if you mean you've caught leader falls where the leader remained above you and the force on you was upward, or if you are talking about multipitch where the leader fell and went past you and the force was downward. There is of course a long history of body/device belaying from stances from the beginnings of climbing to current times. I'm not refuting that it can be a useful alternative when no others exist, I'm just saying that, given an anchor that was apparently just rebuilt, I would not choose to belay directly from my body without being weighted on the anchor, nevertheless it seems like that was done intentionally. Is this, to your knowledge, a fairly common practice?
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reno
Apr 8, 2009, 2:16 AM
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sed wrote: notapplicable, I'm not sure if you mean you've caught leader falls where the leader remained above you and the force on you was upward, or if you are talking about multipitch where the leader fell and went past you and the force was downward.
I thought NA's comment was about a leader belaying a second from above, rather than belaying a leader.
I can see utility in belaying directly from the harness, rather than the anchor, if the anchor is questionable. For such cases, I prefer to do so from a more stable position than standing... sitting down, legs braced against some features, etc.
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sed
Apr 8, 2009, 2:48 AM
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I belay a 2nd directly from my harness on occasion as well. When I do so I am also tied directly to the anchor, whether it's questionable or not. Leaving slack between the belayer and the anchor because you think the anchor is poor doesn't make sense to me. It's sort of an out of sight out of mind solution but in reality only compounds the problem. If you are in a good stance (preferrably sitting)and attached to a bad anchor, the anchor will at least assist in resisting the seconds fall. In the same scenario if there is slack between you and the anchor and the second falls, you may be able to absorb it safely but if not and you are pulled off then you are shock loading a weak anchor with two people. Maybe this is the discussion we need to have here. Already we are learning from this tragedy to double check everything but if it is common practice to belay from above or on mulitpitch with slack to the anchor, particularly in traditional anchors then maybe we should discuss the safety of that practice.
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notapplicable
Apr 8, 2009, 2:59 AM
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sed wrote: notapplicable, I'm not sure if you mean you've caught leader falls where the leader remained above you and the force on you was upward, or if you are talking about multipitch where the leader fell and went past you and the force was downward. There is of course a long history of body/device belaying from stances from the beginnings of climbing to current times. I'm not refuting that it can be a useful alternative when no others exist, I'm just saying that, given an anchor that was apparently just rebuilt, I would not choose to belay directly from my body without being weighted on the anchor, nevertheless it seems like that was done intentionally. Is this, to your knowledge, a fairly common practice?
Sorry, when I said "I've caught a bunch of falls from above", I was referring to falls where I was belaying from above while bringing up the second, not leader falls. I have altered the wording in my post for clarity.
I can't speak to it being a "fairly common practice" within the community at large, although I suspect it is. Perhaps someone could start a poll.
For me, it's a common enough practice. By way of example: Not too long ago my only anchor option was a large boulder about 15-20 foot from top of the climb. One choice was to sling it short with the rope and belay back from the edge where I could neither see nor hear my partner. My other was to sling it long and belay by the edge where I could see and hear my partner. I expected him to struggle at the bulge crux and wanted to see and hear him, so I chose to sling it long which amounted to a rather stretchy anchor. I was able to get a single cam placement by the edge and, in the event of my seat belay failing, I was counting on the rope to effectively stretch out and equalize the two, thereby relying on the rope for the strength of the belay and the cam as a limiter to my slide. In this instance I held two falls and never weighted the anchor because I was seated with my left foot braced in a pod below. I never intended to weight the anchor and never did.
Many people would have chosen to manage the belay differently and that fine. I chose to to give a stance belay and rely on the anchor as a back up, not out of dire necessity but simply as a tactical choice. Wasn't the first time nor will it be the last.
(This post was edited by notapplicable on Apr 8, 2009, 3:55 AM)
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reno
Apr 8, 2009, 3:11 AM
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sed wrote: I belay a 2nd directly from my harness on occasion as well. When I do so I am also tied directly to the anchor, whether it's questionable or not. Leaving slack between the belayer and the anchor because you think the anchor is poor doesn't make sense to me. It's sort of an out of sight out of mind solution but in reality only compounds the problem. If you are in a good stance (preferrably sitting)and attached to a bad anchor, the anchor will at least assist in resisting the seconds fall. In the same scenario if there is slack between you and the anchor and the second falls, you may be able to absorb it safely but if not and you are pulled off then you are shock loading a weak anchor with two people.
That seems pretty sound.
I'd also agree that even when belaying from above, being tied into the anchor is a good idea.
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billl7
Apr 8, 2009, 3:42 AM
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reno wrote: I'd also agree that even when belaying from above, being tied into the anchor is a good idea.
My comfort level with this is that the terrain needs to be so easy that I can't imagine having to escape the belay. But if I think there is a chance of that then I'll build an anchor. Usually, the stance-only belay from above occurs when I've led off to explore and it turns out that the terrain backed off pretty quickly.
Bill
Edit: 'healyje's comment at the bottom (?) of this ST.com page provides an interesting view of anchors as backups to a stance.
(This post was edited by billl7 on Apr 8, 2009, 4:05 AM)
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majid_sabet
Apr 8, 2009, 7:11 AM
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yokese wrote: A (perhaps unnecessary) scheme of what I understand it happened, based on the reports in here and supertopo. I hope I'm not too much out of line. It's unclear, and maybe not very relevant, whether Stark (in red) belayed Kwok (in green) directly from his harness or from the anchors. I left it as a question mark. The question is how come they went from situation B to C without noticing the potential problem. It has been already mentioned in this and ST threads that probably they both thought that Kwok was attached to the anchors. It is also unclear to me if Kwok was still tied in to the rope depicted in red, which might have reinforced his believe that he was, in fact, attached to the anchor. Probably, being both experienced climbers, the blind confidence in each other might have played a fatal role in this accident. I tend to be less careful of the set-ups and procedures of my most experienced climbing partners, trusting that they are doing it all right. May this unfortunate accident serve as a wake up call for many experienced climbers. [image]http://www.rockclimbing.com/cgi-bin/forum/gforum.cgi?do=post_attachment;postatt_id=3468;[/image] Larger version of the picture Edited to add the picture. I don't know why it shows up so big in the thread. If necessary to maintain the layout, I can upload a smaller size version... Done
I was waiting for NPS report to come out to get a sense of what went wrong but you did a good job on the drawings.
Thanks
MS
(This post was edited by majid_sabet on Apr 8, 2009, 6:33 PM)
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rudder
Apr 8, 2009, 9:17 AM
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vivalargo wrote: All in all this is a totally bizarre accident, including the surreal way that the facts were kept private and only partially disclosed, how the disclosure of an "accident report" was mixed with emotional confessionals from friends and next of kin, blaming and taking sides on what should and should not be said, and when it should be said, and lastly, the confusing medly of oversights that led to the accident. JL
What John said...
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dlintz
Apr 8, 2009, 12:35 PM
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Nice diagram Yokese, that's pretty much what I envisioned from the accident descriptions.
In this thread there are many references to the anchor possibly being unsound. I don't recall that being mentioned in any of the supertopo threads. Did I miss something?
d.
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billl7
Apr 8, 2009, 12:47 PM
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dlintz wrote: In this thread there are many references to the anchor possibly being unsound. I don't recall that being mentioned in any of the supertopo threads. Did I miss something?
(This post was edited by billl7 on Apr 8, 2009, 12:52 PM)
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