Accident, Rapping off of rope with a grigri

The analyses by Em Knot and Healyje are very good.

Your solution, to simply "KNOT YOUR ROPE" is poor.
Why? Because it only stops a limited set of rappel mistakes,
and it consumes precious attention from more important things
(such as the primary causes of accidents).
Another way to think of it:
A knot is like relying on the airbag in your car to save you,
when it's more effective to keep your car out of the oncoming traffic,
keep it on the road, and/or fasten your seatbelt.

Here some mistakes you made during the climb:
1. Forgot to tie knots in ends (although it's not important)
2. Forgot your ATC at the bottom
3. Attempted to switch from rappelling to lowering, but lowering setup
was wrong (could not reach you to the ground).
4. Did not watch section of rope being fed through your GriGri to see
if the end was near (or if there were extra knots which would not
feed through).
5. Relaxed, thinking about beer and food, while still on rappel.
You should feel "on alert" or even a bit scared when on rappel.
Especially since you knew you had already made mistakes.
How many mistakes would you count before you decide not to trust
yourself and start reducing risks? 5? 10?
6. You climbed by yourself, when you are apparently not experienced
enough to do it safely. You are age 23 and have been on MP for
less than 1 year.

Here are some mistakes in your analysis.
1. Knots only stop a limited set of rappel accidents.
They (might) stop the rope end from going through your device.
They do not stop anchor failure, incorrectly threaded rope in anchor,
incorrectly threaded rope in device, device not properly attached to harness,
harness not properly buckled, etc.
2. The most serious consequence you list from this accident is not being
able to climb for 8 weeks. You do not seem to realize you could easily
have died in this accident. A 20-25' free fall can easily be fatal,
and such a death happened a few weeks ago at Indian creek.
You will probably also discover:
- it will take more than 8 weeks to heal up well enough to even walk
- your ankle will never work as well as it did before

Rappelling is potentially complicated, because so many risk factors can
be involved. For example, see the list at:
supertopo.com/climbers-foru…
My advice is to simplify the rappelling process as much as possible,
by using minimal gear and reducing the number of steps.
One implication is to not be distracted by tying and untying knots.
Instead, focus on where the ends of the rope are, and if they are about
to go through your device.

Please take your life and risks more seriously, or you won't be around for very long.

Man, that totally has a zealous, ritcheous flair. Who gives a shit how long someone has been on MP? The internet is not a measure of a climbing career. I have friends that had been climbing for 15 years by age 23 and have never been involved in this site.

Clint, you suggested that it's better to be aware if you're about to rap off the ends of your rope. This is precisely when I want a knot AND a rappel back-up. These precautions take seconds to implement and don't distract from rigging a proper system. Rather, they are part of a correct process.

Knotting ends is a good habit, especially for newer climbers.

Yes, situational awareness is critical, but so are measures that avert catastrophy. That's why a back-up knot is called a back-up knot. It's why we wear seat belts in a car or helemts on a motorcycle.

Perhaps teaching a different approach is more critical and well aligned with your school of thought. Simply asking the questions "is my system closed?" and "if not, does it need to be?" could help avert catastrophe too. You need to have a full understanding of your entire rope system.

In this particular case, a knotted end (good habit) would have prevented an accident even though the system was inherantly flawed. And yes, a properly rigged system would also prevent traumatic outcome.

Good habits are crucial for newer climbers. Bad habits breed more bad habits.

One thing is for certain, the OP is a lucky dude! And an open minded one at that: he shared his experience here. I'm sure his head is spinning around the whole matter and that he's learned a thing or two. Life's best lessons are often the hardest ones.

I have never understood why some people are so averse to knotting the ends of rap ropes.

Yes, we should also consider the rest of the system and situation. Yes, you might not do it if there is high risk of snagging the knot when you pull the ropes.

Rapping or lowering off the ends of ropes if one of the most common causes of climbing injury. A quick look at Accid in N American Mtneering will confirm that. Knotting the ends of the rope should be the default action. The analogy to seat belts is right on.

Kudos to the OP. I don't know if any of us have never made a mistake in the mountains. I've been climbing a long time and still screw up sometimes. He was nice enough to let us learn from his experience. I thank him for that regardless of his time on MP.

Tom

My sense, after 59 years of climbing and thousands of rappels, most of them without third-hand backups and knots at the rope-ends, is that, through a combination of technique and gadgetry, climbing has come to seem increasingly casual. We used to be scared of rappelling, because the margins for error were much smaller than they are now. I don't have statistics, by I almost never heard of anyone rapping off the ends of their ropes.

But that was then. Nowadays rappelling is much more common and is preferred to even short walk-offs that take less time than the rappels. Third-hand rigs allow climbers to let go whenever they feel the need. And the devices themselves supply more friction and so are more controllable.

With all these improvements, it might be viewed as surprising that there seem to be more accidents per capita. One of the problems is that the gadgetry and backup systems have significant but not necessarily obvious failure modes. This means that the sense of security supplied by these improvements is at least partially illusory. Paradoxically, the modern climber has to be much more sophisticated about their equipment than the tweed-knicker crowd of old, because the equipment itself can fail in subtle and unexpected ways.

What has changed my mind is that my cohort, the old codgers, who ought to know better, seem to be just as subject to complacency as those who have grown up with the gadgets and procedures. I know of way too many very experienced climbers who have rapped off the end of the lines, usually in totally casual circumstances. I figure if these guys can do it, so can I. So except for special snag-worthy circumstances (high winds that could blow the ropes sideways, lots of trees with branches far out from the cliff face that could capture a knot in a "Y"), I've started knotting my rope ends (sorry Clint).

chris magness wrote:Man, that totally has a zealous, ritcheous flair.

And hard earned at that if you had the slightest clue about Clint's background.

And to be clear, knotting rappel ropes is not a standard practice at lots of crags and for very good reasons. And as rgold points out, way too many 'modern' climbers are over-reliant on devices and 'techniques' in a manner which often leaves them short on basic understanding and attentiveness.

Again, knotting the ends for your rap line is definitely NOT the objective lesson from the OP's experience and anyone thinking it is needs to sit way, way back and think things through much harder then they have so far.

rgold wrote:My sense, after 59 years of climbing and thousands of rappels, most of them without third-hand backups and knots at the rope-ends, is that, through a combination of technique and gadgetry, climbing has come to seem increasingly casual. ......With all these improvements, it might be viewed as surprising that there seem to be more accidents per capita.

Risk compensation. The "safer" and easier you make things the less care people take in staying safe.

A simple look at the accident rate of sport climbers compared to run out trad will clearly show this risk compensation at work.

I guess the main lesson is, don't do new things unless you have practiced them in a safe situation first.

It also shows clearly why many accidents happen - we fall into logic traps. We think it looks ok, but we forget that what is happening was not what we thought was happening.

Which is why I now always tie knots in the end of my ropes. I know this is not to everyone's fancy, but I reason that others have gone off the ends, so no reason why I might not. I have also realised that a few times I have been so fixed on finding the next place to build a rap station that I don't have a clue how close to the ends I am.

I even tie a knot on single pitch! This is in part because I think that if I always tie a knot, I will have tied one the one time I needed to on a multi pitch. But is goes deeper than that. As the OP showed, things aren't always what we thought. For example, yesterday I was climbing and rapping on someone else's ropes. I never asked if they were 50m or 60m before the first rap, or even 45's because someone had chopped a bit off. Or maybe he might have thought they were 60s, but forgot. Or maybe the rap station had recently be moved back from the cliff edge, or.....