Tito Traversa, 12, Fighting For His Life

In a rough translation from the french website– it says that they had recently purchased new quickdraws, and that a young girl friend of the climber had improperly attached the carabiners to the dogbone, i.e. had attached the biner only to the plastic ‘anti-flip’ piece instead of the actual dogbone.

8 of the 12 draws that the climber was on before the fall were mounted that way….

HOWEVER, there is definitely fault here, and it is the climbers', predominantly.

Having gone through this before I agree with Leggs, discretion should be used in our comments as family and friends have a hard enough time dealing without reading what they might view as negativity.

Probably the worst accident in the history of sport climbing.

This is, perhaps, what caused the accident...

Any thoughts why...

Establishing why anyone did or didn't do something seems pointless now.

... a young girl friend of the climber had improperly ... attached the biner only to the plastic ‘anti-flip’ piece instead of the actual dogbone.

“He was on a trip with a group of 10 kids and 3 adults ...”

The risks, as in all sports, are there. Falling in free climbing is expected. At most, though, you can break an ankle. You can not and you should not die.

The causes and unfortunately we know why so much atrocity has condensed into an error so trivial and so devious as to deceive even the most experienced climber

Tito is gone. Certainly not us to communicate it to the world. The news crowd the columns of all the newspapers: the front page, on the local news in the sports pages. Even the journalists know sdoganare dismay at such a loss that goes far beyond the loss of a life. Tito's death also brings with it the bitter taste of defeat and betrayal of who we love the most. How can climb in the second millennium kill a child? The causes and unfortunately we know why so much atrocity has condensed into an error so trivial and so devious as to deceive even the most experienced climber. This episode will be for the whole movement scalatorio a huge setback. Tito will forever be a symbol of high hazard and risk of our sport, forgetting what this child had accounted for all. Tito was life, new hope. Tito was the seed that just climbing in young people was the sap and oxygen throughout the movement, and we hope you can still find it.

Many mass media these days are turning into poison Tito. It has unleashed a ruthless hunt for the culprit who is looking for a new victim, forcing us to never forget that if you can identify a culprit, this is already a victim of the events of July 2. If the priority is to cry a sample in less, if the imperative is to look for the culprit to give explanation to the tragedy of Titus and his parents, let us remember that for all those who remain this episode will be a wound that will never stop bleeding.

A painful thought we want to turn to parents, private forever of their oxygen, which can possibly find in the lives of other people, in which the bodies of Titus will return hope.

A thought also address present at the time of the accident sunk in the dark and all of us, emotionally involved in this affair, that we look stunned, unable to find words. We will come back to climb for a period we pay more attention to our material and perhaps justice will give us an answer, but would like this to come later.

The urgency is to lock ourselves in a painful silence that can accompany the peace that only Tito has found.

Hello, little Titus.

Rgold wrote: I truly believe we need to find constructive ways to put fear back into the climbing experience. It isn't a tennis match.

Isn't that a choice a person should make and not a community of climbers?

There are thousands of routes with a high pucker factor still waiting to be done.

This was 12 year old kid out with a group of other kids and adults. The adults f*#k-up. Period.

the frontal cortex involved in decision making and judgement, is not fully developed until 25 years of age

another member of his group had recently purchased

There's no way around it.

Bob D'A has it right.

My previous post was an attempt to address a (if I may say so) more important question, which is why the adults didn't think to check the draws, how it is that belayers lower people off the end of the rope, how it happens that people start up a route with the rope simply draped through the harness tie-in points, all these things and so many more in situations in which there are no environmental or physical stresses to impair judgement or force hastiness.

One of the parents of the kids put the quickdraws together that way.

I have loss a child...you never overcome it.

There is tragedy enough to go around as it is.

Because they were climbing very high numbers the adults assume that they know what they are doing with the rest of it.

but you would think even Tito himself would spot the funky draws as he racked up.

Of course, setting up the draws in that wrong configuration is an incredibly stupid error to have made, obviously one born of inexperience. It’s something I can’t possibly imagine anyone ever doing. Obviously the person who made this mistake looked at a properly racked draw, and tried to recreate what she or he saw. It was a horrible mistake. But it was also a freak mistake—something none of us could’ve ever predicted.

As we know, if the worst-case scenario can happen, the universe sometimes conspires to show us that it will.

This isn’t the first time a climber has died because of someone’s inexperience. And it won’t be the last. But this was an accident that could’ve happened to any of us, regardless of age, gender, experience.

In fact, this was the first day of Tito’s life that he went climbing outdoors without his father there

I don't think an EXPERIENCED adult would have been nearly as likely...

Human error made easier by poorly-designed equipment.

poorly-designed equipment.

...intrinsic perceptual difficulties in detecting unexpected configurations.

I hope it puts pressure on the manufacturer to get rid of those rubber band things

Kids had no business using these without adult supervision. End of story

F'in lawyers. Nobody gets anything out of this but them.

To the guy who doesn't think there was "gross negligence" involved in this death: my god, I don't think it would be easy to come up with a better example