Touching the Void Movie - What Options Did He Have?

how do you unclip anything from your harness when it is loaded with 200+ pounds of weights? please demonstrate.

Wouldn't it be possible to tie a prusik (assuming you had some cord) to the rope below the belay device and then clip that to your belay loop. Then you could cut the knot and retie below the belay device. That said, it is really hard to Monday morning quarterback a situation like that, and I am sure that if he could have done something easy like that, he would have.

read the book, please

alexanderblum wrote:how do you unclip anything from your harness when it is loaded with 200+ pounds of weights? please demonstrate.

I could do it. Honestly not that hard. It wouldn't be anything like 200 pounds anyway due to friction in the system, but even at 200 pounds I could unclip a biner.

If the harness had a belay loop (not as common in the 1980s as today, I know) you could cut the belay loop if you were so wasted you couldn't unclip the biner. (Just clip the Munter biner into the waist and/or leg loops.)

If you had to, you could put a sling around your waist, clip the Munter hitch into the sling, then just cut away the harness altogether. If you needed to rap lower down, you could make an improvised harness out of a couple of slings.

I am sure you are right-it would be easy, and he didn't do it because he was lazy, or something. I am about 97% sure you haven't read the book.

alexanderblum wrote:I am sure you are right-it would be easy, and he didn't do it because he was lazy, or something. I am about 97% sure you haven't read the book.

I have read the book, when it first was published in the UK, and more recently, about 4 months ago.

I didn't say he cut the rope because he was lazy. You seem to think that saying that there may have been other options is a criticism of Simon Yates. I am not critical of Simon. I wasn't there, so I am not going to judge him and say he made the wrong choice. I don't know if I would have done anything differently. However, I do believe that there may have been other options, even if he did not recognize them at the time.

The question was asked, what were his other options? You seem pretty devoted to the idea that there were no other possible options. But there are ways to get around a knot in a belay device. Simon may not have thought of these possibilities, as he probably hadn't encountered this situation before, and he didn't have the luxury of hindsight or the ability to think about it without having to worry about being pulled down the mountain.

That doesn't mean it was impossible, however.

I would really, really like to see you get a belay device off of your harness with a body hanging from it, while sitting on a chair, with no other anchors to work with. I would be really, really impressed. I might even try your proposal this weekend to see if its not as ridiculous as it sounds. saying there are other options is not a criticism of simon yates, it just doesnt accept the reality of the situation. you cant open a belay device that is under load like that, take it off your harness, and then reattach to yourself on the other side of the knot, still under load.

Stich wrote:2. Yes, emphatically, cut the rope. If you, your sister, and father are all dangling from one cam please cut the rope and die. Just die.

Hell yes. Especially if that single cam is slowly slipping down the crack. You should definitely cut that shit (and make sure to cut loose the old guy, not the attractive young people).

alexanderblum wrote: you cant open a belay device that is under load like that, take it off your harness, and then reattach to yourself on the other side of the knot, still under load.

It is not necessary to "open a belay device," or re-attach it to your harness.

Option 1:

You attach a DIFFERENT carabiner to your harness. Rig up a Munter hitch to the DIFFERENT carabiner, using the loose rope from ABOVE the knot.

Then, all that is necessary is to rotate the carabiner that has the belay device, open the gate, and slip it off of the harness. No need to open the belay device. The belay device stays attached to the rope. The belay device and the knot go down the mountain as you continue the lower. You don't take it off the rope, you don't re-attach it.

Option 2:

As I said above, if option 1 is too hard, you can simply cut the harness to free the carabiner that has the belay device (in which case, you would use a sling around your waist to connect to the Munter biner.)

No particular skill or superhuman strength required for the second option, other than the knowledge of how to use a Munter hitch.

The original poster asked "what options did the first climber have."
There's 2 options above. Cris Drover just supplied another option.
So, there seems to be at least 2 (possibly 3) options besides cutting the rope.

The thing that screwed me up about the movie was that damn song
Brown girl in the ring by Boney M. I had that in my head for weeks afterwards, supergrim!

You won't be able to work those system transfers when they've got you weighted & free-hanging. cutting something loose to have another rig try and catch the load on the same bad anchor is just gonna fail their inadequate anchor situation.

Having a picket or screws handy would be a good idea; try and get an inline 3:1 w/ progress capture to get the knot off of you and onto some other anchor. Once the body belay in the snow started failing, it was all over one way or another.

matt davies wrote:And what about that shit-show on the Eiger? Did that guy really have to be sanctioned, even if Dragon is scary looking with a line on some dope art? C'mon Hemlock!

Don't be dissing on the finest mountaineering movie ever made, and arguably the best movie ever produced in the 70's! lol

all this while sliding down steep sugar snow, with a frozen ass and hands.

I'll give this a shot. Additional parts list: 2 biners, 1 sling.

Tie a prussik as low as possible on the rope supporting the unresponsive climber. Clip a biner (biner 1) to the sling. Clip a biner (biner 2) to your harness and tie (8 on a bight or clove hitch) the free rope to biner 2. Clip the free rope into biner 1 to make a 2-1 pulley. Pull to remove some pressure from the belay device and (ha! yeah right!) unjam the knot in the belay device.

This avoids shock loading the crummy anchor and avoids cutting the rope, but relies on the belayer being able to lift half the weight of the unresponsive climber (who may be laden with gear).

With a third biner, or if biner 2 is big, the belayer could tie off the free end of the pulley and re-rig the belay device to pass the knot.

Edit: I'm very glad this quarterbacking need only be done from my couch today.

Jennie Allred wrote:I'm still trying to figure out if the guy that said there's no such place as Austria was being serious or not.....

Europe, 1938. Let me know when you find this mythical "Austria" you speak of.

apross wrote:The thing that screwed me up about the movie was that damn song Brown girl in the ring by Boney M. I had that in my head for weeks afterwards, supergrim!

You just had to bring up that God aweful song!

I support Simon's decision to cut the rope, but question why he didn't bother to check for the body. Of course at this point survival mode was in full force. Without being in the same position it impossible to tell, but when 200 lbs dead weight is pulling you off a mountain with no anchor I think we'd all cut the rope pretty fast.

Cliffhanger-

1. Buckles
2. Bolt "guns"
3. Choppers

Let's keep on topic people.

Tim Pegg wrote:I'll give this a shot. Additional parts list: 2 biners, 1 sling. Tie a prussik as low as possible on the rope supporting the unresponsive climber. Clip a biner (biner 1) to the sling. Clip a biner (biner 2) to your harness and tie (8 on a bight or clove hitch) the free rope to biner 2. Clip the free rope into biner 1 to make a 2-1 pulley. Pull to remove some pressure from the belay device and (ha! yeah right!) unjam the knot in the belay device.

The quicker way to try and just unload the belay device (just unload, not talking about anchor setups, load transfers, or hauls):

take some cord, about 15' or so of 5mm, which is good for buddy rescue stuff, or use your anchor cordalette,
tie an eight on a bight on one end of the cord,
tie a kliemheist with the cord on the loaded line,
put a biner in the loop of the cord that is on the load line,
take another biner into the anchor (helps to have that picket handy now),
take the cord and wrap successive loops back and forth into each biner as many as you can,
then pull the cord, it'll give you about 8" or so of instant unload.
A mule with overhand should hold the progress.

quick and easy block & tackle from Luebben.
this is something you can actually do in a blizzard with gloves on.

What strikes me as ironic is that the immediate cause of the problem was the use of a belay device. Had the belayer used a hip belay, there would have been no problem with the knot. Lowering a climber with a hip belay has been done---admittedly somewhat painfully---many times by lightly-clad climbers. When you have on several layers of clothing, it isn't a big deal at all.

A Munter hitch belay is another possibility, because a fully loaded Munter can be popped off the line. With the rope just past the knot already threaded through an installed belay device, the Munter could be popped when the knot arrives and the load thereby transferred to the belay device. This would involve a jerk that might be more than the stance could handle. The jerk could, however, be avoided by putting the Munter carabiner on a sling connected to the harness so that it is extended away from the installed belay device. But all this is overly complicated compared to the hip belay.

Both of these methods would have allowed continued lowering. If the dangling climber didn't reach a stance by the end of the second rope, the party would be in the same situation (except that cutting the rope at that point would have resulted in a shorter fall).

rgold wrote:Had the belayer used a hip belay, there would have been no problem with the knot. Lowering a climber with a hip belay has been done---admittedly somewhat painfully---many times by lightly-clad climbers. When you have on several layers of clothing, it isn't a big deal at all. A Munter hitch belay is another possibility, because a fully loaded Munter can be popped off the line.

makes good sense. simon's effort was badass - i bet they might have made it the whole way down if they had been using a hip belay for the lowers.