Bad week in Utah

Death in Zion
Zion accident

and near Moab Moab Accident

RIP Mark Davis. Condolences to those who were closer to him than I was, he was a great guy and really fun to climb with or run into at the crag.

rging wrote:Death in Zion Zion accident and near Moab Moab Accident

RIP. Anyone know what the cause of the accident on Moonlight was?

supertopo.com/climbers-foru…

Very saddened to hear of Mark's passing... Glad to have known him as a friend.
Condolences to all who knew him.

Tragic indeed...just also read about Eric. Peace to all.

about the zion accident from supertaco:

From the family

Dear friends… We need to share some sad news. Wednesday 3/9/16 Eric was climbing Moonlight Buttress in Zion National Park, a climb he had been on before. He was rope soloing, and rappelled in from the top presumably to work on the top pitches. Due to an undetermined error, he fell and died instantly. His fall was witnessed by a second party of climbers, the park rangers were alerted, and they recovered his body with his harness in tact, and his grigri attached to his belay loop. His gear was retrieved from the top of the climb. We as a family had initially asked friends and the media to withhold his name as we all needed time to contact friends and family before news was made public, but its time. We wanted to share this news with the world at large as there are so many people out there who know and love Eric and would want to know. While we are grieving the loss of a wonderful man, brother, uncle and son, what we’re focusing on as a family, was that this was an accident, and that he died instantly doing something he loved. Eric was at his best when he was climbing, and I know his passion inspired a lot of us. It would soothe our aching hearts to hear your stories, your memories, your thoughts and anything else about the life of Eric Michael Klimt that you wish to share. May his soul be free and the view be breathtaking.

Rip

Wow! Mark and I kept in touch for about 2 years, always trying to get out and climb in the Creek or on ice when I lived in SLC, but for various reasons it just never happened due to things in our schedules. He seemed like a strong, competent climber. I am sorry I never got the chance to get out with him, and I am shocked to hear he passed this way. RIP.

Edited to add: I just found out my boyfriend took a film production class from him in the last few years. He said he was a great guy and instructor, and he was also shocked and saddened to know someone so awesome had gone too soon. He didn't know Mark climbed, and by a strange twist of fate, each of us knew Mark before we knew each other, but through completely independent conduits.

R&I posted info on Mark Davis accident

R&I wrote: info on Mark Davis accident

If the lowering end goes out of sight (or commonly gets caught on a feature or collects on a partway ledge), the rappeller doesn't need to make an assumption whether he has lowered enough rope. If the rest of the rope at the base is visible, the rappeller could still monitor and keep pulling up rope until there are just about no more coils lying on the ground. If base is out of rappeller's sight, others at the base could help out by telling the rappeller when the ground coils are just about gone so rappeller would know to cease pulling up rope. For routes with fairly accurately known height that's no more than half the length of the rope (as is the case for Way Rambo), this would be a more definite way to know that the other end being lowered would be long enough to reach ground.

This is a fairly commonly known mini-procedure. Am surprised the lowering-end-being-out-of-sight contributing factor wasn't readily dealt with.

Pulling up an unmarked rope and stopping simply when one thinks there's enough rope on the lowering end, on a 100 ft route that a 60 is just long enough for rap, that's one dubious guesstimate with potentially way too costly consequence. Understandable that fatigue and/or other distracting voices could lead to lapses, but still...

So sorry to hear this happened, to a wonderful guy according to many. Heart goes out to family and friends.