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Don Paul
Big Wall climber
Colombia, South America
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Jul 26, 2012 - 12:59pm PT
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I would think that any first responder should be taught that once they determine they cannot save the person, the accident scene should be treated as a potential crime scene until LEOs arrive and everything there should be treated as evidence. The police are well aware of the importance of preserving evidence, in fact it is a crime to destroy evidence (obstruction of justice). Any climber could probably sue his partner for negligence although what kind of loser would do this, I don't know. But the point is, it's potential evidence no matter whether they think a crime was committed or not.
John what about contacting the right person at the NPS, explaining the problem, citing some examples, and offering a solution that doesn't conflict with their policies and existing obligations. Maybe Werner can help you identify who determines these policies, learn what you can about the person, then call them up and get a meeting. I think it helps if you have some organizational affiliation to show you're not alone. Maybe they would want to do it themselves, and you could just offer your expertise.
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mueffi 49
Trad climber
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Jul 26, 2012 - 01:07pm PT
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As I understand John L., his suggestion is more in the direction of evaluating the "probable cause" which led to the accident, such as:
1. top anchor failure
2. improper use of repelling device / locking carabiner or harness
3. lack of end knot / running through the rope
4. not tied in at belay while engaging / disengaging repelling device
5. Lack of personal experience with repelling ( frequency of repetition )
6. etc. etc
My gut - feeling is that a lot of the above listed mistakes might be the
" root cause " - only some form of record keeping might lead us to a better understand and hopefully reduction of these accidents.
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Mighty Hiker
climber
Vancouver, B.C.
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Jul 26, 2012 - 01:17pm PT
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There may be a lot to gained from a detailed analysis and comparison of rappelling accidents, and how we can improve. At the same time, always emphasizing that climbing and rappelling inevitably entail significant risk, no matter what people believe or are told. Our ever-cheerful "Yer gonna die!" being a good example of truth in advertising.
Avalanche researchers have learned quite a lot about the sociology of avalanche accidents over the last few years, and it turns out that it can be a significant factor. Sociology, and other environmental factors, need to be included in the analysis.
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Jul 26, 2012 - 01:28pm PT
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My gut - feeling is that a lot of the above listed mistakes might be the
" root cause " - only some form of record keeping might lead us to a better understand and hopefully reduction of these accidents.
---
The idea is to build a data base from "probable causes" and arrive at some rules of thumb. Though not strictly definitive, if, for example, we know that 50% of all catastrophic anchor failure comes from small to medium cams jammed into incipient horizontal cracks, we can state quite certainly that extreme vigilance must be given to anchors built to this sketchy configuration.
Having had to write all those anchor books, I was amazed with how little was really compiled that might lead to such rules of thumb. Basically, the more info and data we can compile, be it social or ecological or technical or subjective of reptilian - just bring it on.
Also, he wrote:
John what about contacting the right person at the NPS, explaining the problem, citing some examples, and offering a solution that doesn't conflict with their policies and existing obligations.
First, I'm not talking about YOSAR, where everyone knows what's going on. If you get out into the sticks, it's pretty doubtful that there is any policy at all, other than what rangers and LEO's just make up on the spot. I have spoken to many who have been totally overwhelmed by these situations for the lack of any coherent strategy about how to even approach the situation.
JL
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Majid_S
Mountain climber
Bay Area , California
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Jul 26, 2012 - 01:36pm PT
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I been tracking climbing accidents and fatalities for the past 10 years and not all of these records were published by ANAM and from what seen, just in 2010, more than 17 climbers were killed by rappelling accidents alone and more climbers die from it than from any other activities (other than avalanche).Almost all of these accidents involved experienced climbers and I personally refer this to "pilots switching to auto-pilot mode" and forgetting the basic check list.
pilots no matter how much experience they have, they are suppose to pull and follow the check list to make sure everything is done by order cause one mistake can be fatal.From anchor failures to using the wrong middle marking on the rope to falling from end of the line .......there is no end to this
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JEleazarian
Trad climber
Fresno CA
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Jul 26, 2012 - 01:42pm PT
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When I first started climbing in Yosemite, virtually every major accident was either a rappelling accident or a jumaring accident. Within my first year, I was confronted with the Madsen tragedy and the broken rappel sling on Goodrich Pinnacle. These changed two things I did:
(1) I never made another "blind" rappel without a big knot with a carabiner at the end of the rope; and
(2) I got a lot less stingy in replacing webbing at rappel stations.
If I understand what John S is saying, we need a compendium for the general public and those new to climbing to convey both the danger of rappelling (because it's the only terribly exposed thing we all do unbelayed) and some "best practices" to optimize the risk.
If I understand what John L is saying, we could use a more systematic method or reporting accidents in order to obtain as much information as possible to distill "best rappelling practices."
Both seem like good ideas, but I feel a little like the mouse agreeing that belling the cat is great -- I like the idea, but I'm unqualified to help. I hope those that can work to bring this about.
There is, of course, the most likely possibility, namely that I simply misunderstood one or both of you.
John
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hillrat
Trad climber
reno, nv
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Jul 26, 2012 - 03:08pm PT
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From a noob-
Seems to me that these topics were pretty thoroughly vetted in the books i,ve read, including FotH, another whose title i,ve forgot, a couple more, then driven home in a single issue of Ax in N Amer Mtneerg. From my limited perspective it seems like people forget or never understand that they actually face death. Ignorance and complacency appearing to be common social factors. Thus the greater problem than simply defining best practices would be actually getting people to listen.
Something else i notice is the trend of fresh new gym climbers heading outside thinking a little TR practice and a lead class is sufficient. No book, no anchor class, no rap lessons. Maybe a whole different can o worms, but still...
Say you get a system of reporting developed and identify these best practices, still how do you reach people?
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rgold
Trad climber
Poughkeepsie, NY
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Jul 26, 2012 - 03:32pm PT
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I think that significant societal trends underlie some of the problems we see in climbing. We live in a technological age, in which we regularly use engineering products we do not understand. We are pretty much forced to have faith in the engineering, and by and large that faith has been justified. Automotive progress, with its combination of braking, steering, and restraint technologies provides a good example.
The net effect is that, dangerous as driving is, most of us feel removed from any immediate danger, and this enables all kinds of inattention---there doesn't seem to be any limit to what has been reported---with texting while driving the one of the most astonishingly idiotic in an almost endless list of potentially fatal behaviors.
When people come to climbing, they do not automatically shed their faith in technology and sense of being well-cushioned from harm. And there are forces within climbing that help to keep the faith in technology unabated. For example, in sport climbing, we trust our lives to equipment installed by anonymous others whose actual skills and qualifications are unknown to us. Going outside climbing, there are various adventure industries that provide thrilling experiences at height, requiring the participants to willingly suspend their fear of falling by putting faith in the engineering and technology of artificial environments.
The problem is that, although engineering has made great contributions to climbing, the safety margins are still miniscule. Your Gri-gri does not come with front and side airbags and crumple zones to protect you if you screw up. And so, as you step out of your car and onto the rock, you have to initiate a massive paradigm shift about your exposure to danger, and it should not be surprising if sometimes we fail to make that critical accommodation.
It is natural as well for climbers to strive for engineering solutions for their safety issues. Rappel back-ups in case you let go and knots in the end of the rappel ropes in case you aren't looking where the ends are. I'm not arguing against these things, just observing that they are part of a very comprehensive trend to take the fallible individual out of the equation as much as possible.
But there is a possible unintended side-effect, as we see in texting while driving. The fallible individual adjusts their behavior because of a sense of remoteness of danger brought on, in part, by the very measures developed to protect from danger. And those adjustments can be dangerous.
Jstan suggests some collective responsibility of the climbing community for this state of affairs. He seems to go further and suggest individual responsibility for anyone proposing procedures that are not "safe" from some perspective. This is some very delicate ground indeed.
I don't know whether the climbing community, assuming there is such a thing, is capable of swimming against the societal stream. The case has to be made that climbing is dangerous in a way that is not easily dismissed or rationalized away. Dangerous in a way that is not remote and hypothetical, but immediate and concrete. Dangerous in a way that cannot be ameliorated by engineering and still requires sustained and acute personal awareness.
Not only does this sense of immediate danger run contrary to commercial interests, but it may also be in conflict with individual psychological adaptations, and so meet with vigorous resistance. Look at the ease with which climbers dismiss the safety advice of gear manufacturers (mere liability-avoidance warnings, they say) for an example of this rationalizing tendency at work.
So: procedures are important, but attention much more so. How to we get others---indeed how do we get ourselves---to pay better attention. This is my understanding of the import of jstan's question.
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Ghost
climber
A long way from where I started
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Jul 26, 2012 - 03:48pm PT
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When people come to climbing, they do not automatically shed their faith in technology and sense of being well-cushioned from harm.
+10 to that!
A guide friend offered an interesting insight into that idea following a bad accident at Squamish around fifteen years ago.
In that case a climber had fallen from the crux of the Sword pitch of the Grand Wall, ripped three cams, and decked on the top of the Split Pillar. I don't believe he died, but there sure was a lot of blood still there a week later.
The corner below where he fell takes absolutely bomber cams, so, I wondered aloud, how could he have ripped three of them? What my friend said was interesting and very much underscores rgold's comment. His view was that people new to trad climbing were far more likely to screw up cam placements than stopper placements. Why? Because cams were complex-looking machines that, like the car-braking systems rg mentioned, would never fail. Just plug them into a crack and you were safe. Stoppers on the other hand, were just simple lumps of metal, scary and completely untrustworthy.
So the beginner placing a stopper was likely to work and work and work at placing it until s/he was absolutely certain it was safe, whereas a cam was assumed to work automatically and not require any attention to its placement.
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rectorsquid
climber
Lake Tahoe
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Jul 26, 2012 - 04:11pm PT
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...just in 2010, more than 17 climbers were killed by rappelling accidents alone and...
17 people died in a year because they were rappelling?
I think that the reason that the LEO's and paramedics don't treat a climbing accident like a crime scene is because these things are uncommon from their point of view. Sure, it may be a lot of climbers dying per the total number of climbers but per capita, it's insignificant. I think that 6x that number of kids are abducted by strangers every year and 400x that number of people are killed by drunk drivers in a year.
Heck, snake bites account for upwards of 20,000 deaths a year. I would worry more about snakes than the knots at the end of my rope if I were a betting man.
Dave
P.S. Statistics came from internet sources and might be completely wrong.
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jstan
climber
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Topic Author's Reply - Jul 26, 2012 - 04:12pm PT
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Rich:
I pretty clearly described the delicate issue that you raise. If you tell someone what to do you had better be right and you had better be sure your suggestion is properly implemented. Neither of which you can sure of.
Your discussion of how we are affected by the culture in which we are submerged, is quite comprehensive. That is what I was raising. I keep hearing we are the smartest creatures who have ever lived( on this planet). I am taking this to be apt. Really smart creatures would not simply wring their hands with every new rappelling death. They would look for proximate and underlying causes. And then would do something about it.
Once a population of people exceeds some number, around forty, each person has available the rationalization, "By myself I cannot do anything about that."
Giving up that rationalization is painful. But it is a good pain. Not like the pain of helplessly viewing one rappelling death after another.
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graniteclimber
Trad climber
The Illuminati -- S.P.E.C.T.R.E. Division
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Jul 26, 2012 - 04:42pm PT
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Maybe. First of all we need to face the liability. If you tell someone they are doing something dangerous or wrong and they take your advice - and get killed - you have a huge psychological problem, if not a legal one. How you do what you do is more important than what you do. You can't proceed simply out of the egotistical notion what you do is the only correct way. That said....
Yes, but how often does that happen? Whenever I this happening, the advise was always to do something safer. Giving advise to make things safer saves lives.
A much bigger problem is when you see people doing something dangerous and wrong and say NOTHING.
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Majid_S
Mountain climber
Bay Area , California
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Jul 26, 2012 - 04:59pm PT
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rectorsquid
Visit rockclimbing.com and I posted many of them there. last few weeks alone, we had three fatality
As I said before, as long as climbers switch in to auto-pilot without their check list, there will be fatalities especially while rapping
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Ghost
climber
A long way from where I started
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Jul 26, 2012 - 04:59pm PT
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Really smart creatures would not simply wring their hands with every new rappelling death. They would look for proximate and underlying causes. And then would do something about it.
I'm still not sure about all this. It seems to me -- and correct me if I'm wrong -- that there is no real mystery about rappel deaths. They occur in only a very few basic ways, and those ways are not hard to understand.
If it was only beginners who were dying, then yes, there might be some point in a safety campaign. But my impression is that a lot (most?) of the deaths occur when experienced climbers simply fail to pay attention.
Weight your system before unclipping? Yup, that'll save you from dying because you forgot to connect to the anchor or thread both sides of the rope.
Make sure the two strands are the same length? Yup, that'll keep you from plummeting.
Tie knots in the ends? Yup, that'll keep you from rapping right off your rope.
But most of the people who die rappeling already know all that. So I'm not sure why you should feel guilty when I (or any experienced climber) die by rapping off the end of my rope. Or what sort of campaign you envision that could prevent my death.
Now lowering and top-roping accidents are a whole other thing. There is a place where a major safety campaign could maybe make a difference.
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DanaB
climber
CT
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Jul 26, 2012 - 07:02pm PT
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For example, in sport climbing, we trust our lives to equipment installed by anonymous others whose actual skills and qualifications are unknown to us.
Yes, indeed. I've posted this before, but very few people in the 'Gunks seem to check rappel slings or what they are attached to. They simply "clip into the anchors."
Drives me crazy.
They are not anchors.
A bit of drift here.
I don't know if people introduced to climbing in the last (pick a time frame) practice their climbing less safely than climbers who have been climbing (pick a time frame). But from what I have observed, they definitely have the perception that climbing is basically safe.
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Jul 26, 2012 - 07:44pm PT
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I'm still not sure about all this. It seems to me -- and correct me if I'm wrong -- that there is no real mystery about rappel deaths. They occur in only a very few basic ways, and those ways are not hard to understand.
It's my impression that most rap accidents were caused by conditions leading up to incident, usually involving a distraction, and a lack of mindfulness per the details which long ago became rote.
So while we can die only if the anchor blows, or we come unhooked from the line, or rap off the end somehow, there are 10,000 ways to get distracted and overlook some basic thing that will render us a Mother's Lament.
JL
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donini
Trad climber
Ouray, Colorado
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Jul 26, 2012 - 08:35pm PT
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JL is correct, there is no great mystery regarding the causitive factors of rappel deaths. They have have always occurred and they will continue to occur at about the same frequency and there is little we can do about it.
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rgold
Trad climber
Poughkeepsie, NY
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Jul 27, 2012 - 01:10am PT
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Every three years I take a defensive driving course. It seems kinda worthless to me, but my insurance company gives me a nice rate reduction for it. They are, of course, onto something I'm missing. Trivial as it may seem, they have actuarial data indicating that people drive more safely after taking the course, regardless of what the people thought they were or were not getting.
In terms of content, it would be easy to make up an analogous course for climbers. A bunch of facts and some illustrative videos. They'd all say, as I do with my driving course, that they already know all this stuff. And then, if the insurance company experience is right, they'll go out and be more attentive for a year or two or three, at which point they'll need a refresher.
The problem is motivation. I get 10% off my total insurance premium, so it is well worth my while to give up two evenings and be a little bored. What would get climbers to do the same thing? I'm sure the insurance companies come out ahead as a result of the accident reductions. But who would profit from better climbing safety? In general, no one that I can think of. But there is the insurance company mechanism for those who join the AAC and avail themselves of the rescue insurance. What if that cost could be reduced for suitable course participation?
The only other avenue would seem to be some kind of charitable mechanism, a store or gym giving discounts for climbers who take the course. One might argue that fewer injured climbers means more sales and memberships, but it is far from clear that there would any kind of noticeable commercial effect.
All pretty far-fetched, I know. My point is that there may be things that actually can be done to get people to pay better attention, perhaps even in spite of themselves.
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phylp
Trad climber
Millbrae, CA
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Jul 27, 2012 - 08:44am PT
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JL is correct, there is no great mystery regarding the causitive factors of rappel deaths. They have have always occurred and they will continue to occur at about the same frequency and there is little we can do about it.
I agree with this statement. At some level, the vast majority of rappelling accidents are caused by user error, not objective danger like a rock falling from the sky and cutting ropes while on rappel. Like Majid said, there is a very basic checklist. You check the anchor and its soundness, your equipment and how it is configured, and you follow basic protocols for staying clipped in. Many people do not follow the checklist they know, systematically, or they never learned it properly, or they deliberately chose to omit steps to save time.
In my view, placing gear on lead requires far more experience and subtlety than rappelling.
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Don Paul
Big Wall climber
Colombia, South America
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Jul 27, 2012 - 10:12am PT
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few people in the 'Gunks seem to check rappel slings or what they are attached to
The gunks is a place many people learn to climb, and people probably assume that if everyone else is using a rap anchor it must be safe. If you look for Gunks videos on youtube, there's some pretty frightening stuff. Its because you have a high concentration of beginners in one place.
I'd agree that most accidents, climbing or other kinds, result from inattention. I personally don't go into autopilot mode when rapelling, in fact I get paranoid because it disturbs the normal safety systems. I'd be much more likely to space out while swinging leads and reracking the gear.
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