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Caveman
climber
Cumberland Plateau
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Jun 17, 2015 - 08:20pm PT
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Climbed something at T-wall that was overhung and strenuous right out of the gate. I was about 17 feet off the ground with a piece of pro 5 ft below me. There was a bulge/overhang 7ft below and slightly right of line.
I was slightly left of line when I fell. Belayer had locked belay due to ground proximity but was attentive (Thank God) and as I headed straight for the bulge the belayer let 6 ft of slack run through the belay device (tuber?). Net result was that as I swung toward the bulge I tried to get my arms up to take the impact. A couple of ft from the wall I suddenly shot down away from the rock as he let the rope run.
Yes, flipping over is not good. No helmet, not good although a helmet would not have helped me. There is nothing that can replace an attentive belayer especially through tiered overhangs. If the dude belaying me had caught me like the guy on the video it would have been a train wreck. As it was I ended up just above the ground profusely thanking the dude for the save.
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yanqui
climber
Balcarce, Argentina
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Topic Author's Reply - Jun 17, 2015 - 08:31pm PT
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Why would anyone in their right mind let scrubbing bubbles belay them?
PS: After what listening to what drljefe said and looking more carefully at the video I'm actually starting to believe that with a better belay this injury may not have happened. But it's only speculation, right?
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Caveman
climber
Cumberland Plateau
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Jun 17, 2015 - 08:33pm PT
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"I'd have slapped the shitt outta him"
So , your gonna get him twice?
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tripmind
Boulder climber
San Diego
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Jun 17, 2015 - 08:46pm PT
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Honestly if I was climbing with an inexperienced belayer I would rather just have them lock off then try some more advanced smoke and mirrors type of tricks. If the rope slips out of their hands, then like 40ft of it can drop in about 3-4 seconds and then you hit the deck.
A few minor injuries are an acceptable risk, even in sport.
Also I have never been mad at my belayer, maybe frustrated at the laws of gravity, but its simple to realize that your failures on rock and elsewhere are results of your own actions. However I have heard a more skilled climber yelling at a guy about his belay or something while working a route at the same crag I go to. Pick your partners wisely.
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drljefe
climber
El Presidio San Augustin del Tucson
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Jun 17, 2015 - 09:05pm PT
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Not giving someone a high E string belay is not "smoke and mirrors" or "fancy".
Barney belayer should have a grigri too.
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Caveman
climber
Cumberland Plateau
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Jun 17, 2015 - 09:39pm PT
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"in a split second said belayer is supposed to "get fancy" ? leap to his feet and sprint forward, pay rope out like a madman, etc?"
So the jumping thing was not a fabrication? All the belayer needs to do is relax his grip and pay out 6 to 8 ft of rope. No need to get up, get fancy, get sprinty or pay out rope like a madman.
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phylp
Trad climber
Upland, CA
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Jun 17, 2015 - 11:03pm PT
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All of the above discussions are just a reminder to me to review belaying strategy with new climbing partners before leading or belaying. I can recall about 5 such discussions in the past six months. Telling people what I want for a belay on a particular route after looking up at it, telling people what I think is the right eay to belay for the route they are about to lead. And people agree, say "that sounds right to me". Or they have a chance to disagree.
Just because it's a sport route doesn't always equate to a soft catch technique belay. With rope stretch, you could hit the ground from 3 bolts up with any slack. Angles of travel affect it too. That's why I can't judge this belay just from the video. Things can be misleading on film.
But a helmet is always a good idea.
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tradmanclimbs
Ice climber
Pomfert VT
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Jun 18, 2015 - 03:09am PT
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The whole blame it on the belayer sh#t is an excuse. We have all been short roped and dropped in one way or annother. no one is perfect and on any given day even the best belayer might not play it just right. not to bring religion into it but there is an old saying that applys here. God helps those who help themselfs. One of the ways you can help yourself is to wear a lid.
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yanqui
climber
Balcarce, Argentina
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Topic Author's Reply - Jun 18, 2015 - 03:28am PT
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Yarding in slack when someone falls on an overhang like this is just wrong, plain and simple. I didn't realize the belayer had done that until drljefe pointed it out.
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rgold
Trad climber
Poughkeepsie, NY
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Jun 18, 2015 - 08:11am PT
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I think the whole soft catch thing is being oversold, whereas the reality is that it is highly situation dependent, even on sport climbs, where the concept seems more and more like an article of blind faith.
Most of the discussions I've seen seem to me to conflate lowering the impact to the falling leader and gear from the rope and mitigating the effects of penduluming into the wall, as if these two are one and the same phenomenon.
Having the belayer jump or stride towards the wall---if properly timed---has been shown to lower the loads on the top piece and the falling leader when the belay device is a Grigri that would otherwise allow no slippage of the rope.
The situation with pendulum falls is much more complicated, and depends critically on the shape of the terrain the climber is going to pendulum into. Convex walls, which cut way from the faller more and more the lower you go, are good terrain for introducing slack in the belay. Concave walls, which cut towards the faller are either questionable or downright contraindicated for reducing pendulum impacts by lengthening the pendulum arm.
I find the situation in the video extremely hard to decode, and am surprised at the certainty with which some folks assert that all would have been solved by a softer catch. The wall appears to me to be concave, which makes the soft catch a tricky judgement call, and in fact seems to be the worst possible concave configuration, very overhanging or even roof-like terrain with the pro set back in on a less-steep wall underneath. In this situation, there might be no room for the penduluming climber to swing past vertical and up (and so losing tangential velocity), so a hard impact might be inevitable, soft catch or not, and lengthening the amount of rope could make things worse, not better.
The belayer yards in two or three feet of slack at the instant of falling, and that doesn't seem like a good idea unless there was a real concern about hitting the wall lower down. The belayer is sitting down, which indicates that the standard soft catch protocol is not even in play (you can't jump or stride forward while sitting). These do look like lapses in optimal technique. The fact that the belayer is sitting means that the leader knew starting out that a soft catch was not in the game plan, so certainly shared equally in the outcome if indeed, a soft catch would have helped. But for all we know, the party discussed the need for not letting out extra slack; I still think you can't really tell the rock configuration well enough in the video to make a judgement.
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rgold
Trad climber
Poughkeepsie, NY
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Jun 18, 2015 - 08:57am PT
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Just don't do this test on a concave wall so that you hit sooner with the extra slack, because you might need that sam splint then too.
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yanqui
climber
Balcarce, Argentina
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Topic Author's Reply - Jun 18, 2015 - 08:59am PT
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Just don't do this test on a concave wall so that you hit sooner with the extra slack, because you might need that sam(e) splint then too.
.... especially if you've been flipped into a violent rotation and the timing will allow your head to impact the wall.
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phylp
Trad climber
Upland, CA
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Jun 18, 2015 - 09:21am PT
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The wall appears to me to be concave, which makes the soft catch a tricky judgement call, and in fact seems to be the worst possible concave configuration, very overhanging or even roof-like terrain with the pro set back in on a less-steep wall underneath.
That's what I was thinking too R Gold, hence my similar comment above. It's hard to tell exactly from the video, but that situation is kind of what it looks like.
The only time I every had a partner really injured on a fall that I caught was a very similar: Steep Ramp leading up to a traverse right, Gear with a long sling placed before going right up and over, then another small roof, fall before gear was placed. After the accident, I replayed that event over and over in my mind, trying to think if there was any way I as a belayer could have kept my partner from that ankle injury. It was a hard impact but more slack could have meant something even worse.
I usually wear belay glasses when I'm belaying a leader on sport climbs but the exception is terrain that's complicated like in that video, because the belay glasses change the perspective.
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rgold
Trad climber
Poughkeepsie, NY
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Jun 18, 2015 - 09:28am PT
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Ultimately its a judgement call
My only point. For the record, I noted all the "bad" things the belayer did. (Well, I couldn't tell if he "sat back," but he did yard in slack and was sitting to begin with.)
I personally can't tell for sure from the camera angle, perspective compression, and video resolution exactly how that wall was shaped and so what the optimal belayer response should have been. As I said, the belayer seems to have been seated the whole time, so the party (and not just the belayer) were either clueless or had decided ahead of time on a hard catch.
Also on a personal note, I've had at least one fall where a soft catch would have broken my neck, so maybe I harbor some subliminal bias...
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Matt's
climber
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Jun 18, 2015 - 09:29am PT
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if you look closely, when he fell, he had a bolt at the height of his stomach (approximately).
he chose not to attempt the clip...
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Caveman
climber
Cumberland Plateau
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Jun 18, 2015 - 10:03am PT
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BTW this kind of landing can be had on trad gear. IMHO bolt or gear has nothing to do with it.
How about "No problem with falling on overhangs, right?
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yanqui
climber
Balcarce, Argentina
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Topic Author's Reply - Jun 18, 2015 - 10:28am PT
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BTW this kind of landing can be had on trad gear. IMHO bolt or gear has nothing to do with it.
How about "No problem with falling on overhangs, right?
The reference to "sport climbing" was simply because there tends (I think) to be a more casual acceptance of falling in that discipline than in trad climbing. As if, somehow, all the danger has been taken out when you sport climb. This video shows that serious, unexpected sh#t can happen when you fall sport climbing. Some posters seem to believe the problem only existed because the belayer didn't do his job. Maybe so, but I am still not convinced that had the belayer done what (I think) he should have done then the result would have been a head plant against the wall.
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Ksolem
Trad climber
Monrovia, California
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Jun 18, 2015 - 10:32am PT
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A lot gone by here. Just want to point out that a soft catch does not always mean feeding out rope. In many cases simply making a soft upward jump as the rope comes tight is what's needed. This requires almost no reaction time.
edit: I see I'm late with this point. Petzl used to have a nice video demo of various ways to soft catch with a gri-gri. I just looked for it but their site is endless and basic search found nothing.
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rgold
Trad climber
Poughkeepsie, NY
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Jun 18, 2015 - 03:08pm PT
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Here's a shot of the climb from the bottom. The leader is in the same vicinity of the climber who fell in the video. UKC blocks direct posting of the image, so this link will work ONLY IF you register as a user on their site: http://www.ukclimbing.com/images/dbpage.html?id=172193.
Looking at the image, my first thought was that there is a lot of space to fall into and no way a hard catch would be appropriate. But then I noticed there is a sunlit bulge a bit lower than where the climber swung in and hit. (It is this first thing in the sun beneath the overhang.) If you look closely (perhaps enlarging), you can see the leader's rope turning around this bulge and heading inward, so the bulge definitely sticks out from the wall. Whether it juts out enough to be a dangerous obstacle or not I have no idea, but it might have factored into the belayer's thinking.
All in all, it does looks like a soft catch was called for though.
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yanqui
climber
Balcarce, Argentina
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Topic Author's Reply - Jun 18, 2015 - 04:02pm PT
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Thanks for taking the time to post again, rgold, but I don't see the picture (or) video you posted on my end.
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