The recent accident on the Doub-Griffith is exactly the kind of situation that my partner and I have been talking about lately: what sorts of precautions can be taken by the belayer to control/protect the leader if said belayer is injured or rendered unconscious by rockfall during a leader fall? (It was my partner, BTW, who was on Vertigo when the D-G accident happened and reported what he saw in the original thread.)

In this case, it sounds like the belayer was able to control the leader fall preventing an aggravation of an already bad situation. I’d be curious to know how he managed to do it.

One solution would be to use a grigri, but in my opinion, I don’t think grigri’s are appropriate for mutliptch trad climbing. I’m sure others will disagree. Any other ideas?

A young guy by the name of Peter Terbush was killed instantly by rockfall in Yosemite a few years back. He was belaying the leader when rocks from above both of them struck the base of the climb and still he held the rope. An amazing feat.

If you are leading and pull anything off, I think it would be wise to grab your piece or in some way secure yourself to the wall if you can. If you are falling, well, not much you can do at that point. Belayers should always anticipate missles and where they should seek cover. Always assess safe zones where you belay. We used to do that caving as it was common for those ascending rope to knock stuff off at the lip.

I used to be of the same opinion Richard regarding the grigri and multipitch routes. This is the type of situation that makes me consider bringing a grigri along. Besides adding safety to the belay chain (provided the belayer knows how to use it properly), it could come in handy for rescue situations for ascending the rope/soloing/etc. And belaying the second up with it is convenient. If you can afford the weight it has its advantages.

That being said these situations are quite uncommon. Climbing with an awareness of rockfall and careful belaying will minimize the risk but never eliminate it. If the belayer is knocked unconscious I don't see much hope besides an autolocking device and damn good luck. It's good to hear everyone involved in the Eldo accident is doing okay.

It is really difficult to over-estimate the impact force of falling rock and in the 3+ decades of climbing I have seen too many examples. Even been involved in an accident on the easiest pitch of the Bastille where my partner was chopped in the shin by a loose blade that he swears he barely touched before it chopped his shin for 40 stitches-worth and sent him flying head over heels for 25'. (We self-rescued. He doesn't climb anymore, since then.)

Still it was only after climbing at the Gunks and experiencing gumby-induced rockfall so prevalently that I took to wearing a helmet at the crags. Now I try to not climb in areas with a lot of people and climb during the week.

Instant Karma. Good or bad, is what I got. I hope somebody has something else (though I hate gris-gris.) Friends were rapping down the last pitch of the Naked Edge and got hit by lightning killing the fellow on top. The guy rapping (w/no knots in his rope!!!) slumped onto the rope unconscious but his body locked the rap device and he was rescued.

This is when all those times you let the little old lady go first, when you did not shoot the bird at the inconsiderate s.o.b. driving like a madman, etc. pays off. Keep a good thought but watch your a$$.

Good luck and a good partner. It's why I don't climb with just anybody.

Nice move on starting the new thread, Richard.

Tough question.
With the way the human mind works, you can not be at maximum concentration and focus for long. Conscious thought also has a certain reaction time that is longer than reflexive or subconscious reaction times.

So people can occasionally say 'watch me' to get maximum focus from a belayer, but can't count on it all the time. Which adds further latencies to reactions- meaning a person has to direct attention, perceive, process, then react. Most 'unique' climbing reactions required to best react to novel situations will require this failrly lengthy (in time) reactionary loop.

A 30 foot fall, from beginning to end, does not take long. I have to admit, if I were the belayer, I'd be lucky to accomplish much. THe one time something like this happened to me while I was belaying, I was lucky that it was far enough overhead to give me time to react and anticipate and track the direction of the 'missile.'

http://www.mountainproject.com/v/colorado/empire/ra/10576072>>>>>

If it had been from 30' up rather than 70', perhaps there would have been a different outcome. That extra second makes a huge difference.

One of the best things that people can do in my opinion, is try to keep routes 'clean' within reason. If you can verify that there is nobody anywhere near anything and no chance of striking someone on a route. Pull the flake. On routes like DG, that's nearly impossible to know. You are too high up with too unclear of a bombing path/range.

It sounds like they did the best they could.

One time in RRG., KY, I pulled a flake the size of a motorcycle off on a FA. It tilted out slowly and I felt like Wile E. Coyote holding onto a acme player piano as I was wheeled off a cliff. I was 30' up, so rather than let it roll over and squish me like a bug, it's weight then pulling my belayer up under it and steam-rolling him too, I grabbed my last piece of gear and ripped it out and jumped off the climb, aiming at a bush to the side. By that and LUCK, we both survived. There were 1 heal-marks and a body-shaped impression of my back in the ground where I hit, scuffle marks from my frantic belayer a few meters to the left, and directly between where we landed, a 12-inch hole in the ground above a swath of broken trees going down the hill.

The route is called 'Crater 1.'

I personally know of 3 situations where using a gri-gri saved lives when the belayer was rendered useless. Climbing is dangerous; anything we can do to give us an extra margin of safety should be taken advantage of. Get a gri-gri, learn to use it and some day it may save your life.

In the case of the accident on DG, I would have to assume that the rockfall was a contributing factor to the long 30ft fall. That 100lb flake is directly above the normal belay stance. Normally there is a fixed nut about 5ft below the loose flake, so without the rock fall the fall would have been much shorter. Very scary...

I hope the guys involved have a quick recovery!

Thanks Richard...outside of a self-locking belay gizmo, I also don't see much way to completely avoid it. However, I must admit to taking a fairly cavalier attitude about positioning the belays with regard to rock fall. Particularly in comparison to the thought and engineering that goes into setting up an ice belay where it is a virtual certainty that stuff (large and small) will get knocked off. Ill be more cognizant of this in the future (probably, hopefully, etc).

David

One more thought- my parters can all attest to my "odd" belay hand. I use what some people would call a 'mitten belay' at all times. This means that the rope is wrapped in a circle around the brake hand, which is closed around it. It would be very hard if not impossible for me to 'drop' the rope even if hit by a rock, and i would wager that if knocked out, that the belay would probably hold, sucking my hand up to the device and locking itself off.
This feels odd at first, but you adapt to it quickly, learning to take in or pay out slack pretty quickly despite the wrap-around.

Perhaps this is the only pre-event perparation that I feel a person can make other than making sure to keep an eye open, good communication, and good gear and position at the belay.

One feller I climbed with stacked the rope by making 5-6 loops with the rope. He'd pull up ~30-40' of slack, tie and overhand on a bight, and clip it into a draw hanging from the anchor. As the leader went up he'd sequentially unclip and untie the loops.

I haven't adopted it myself, but didn't find it objectionable. Such a system would limit the extra fall length to 30-40' at most were the belayer knocked out.

I think it's more important to focus on preventing the accident in the majority of situations; I'm not sure most climbers really think about doing this.

While loose rock isn't always predictable, you generally know when you're going to yard on something that is questionable. And, if you suspect that it's loose, you can assess by tapping the rock, etc.

So, what I'm getting at is that I think you can generally communicate to the belayer when you think you will be pulling on a suspect rock. That way, they can have the heads-up to be on the watch, move, etc. I rarely hear leaders communicate this, unless it's overtly treacherous.

While it might not prevent all injuries, I think keeping in tune with the rock and good communication would greatly reduce the risk of the belayer getting hit in the first place (in comparison to the number of accidents that actually occur today).

If you know the area has the potential for rock fall, then really think about where you're putting the belay.

These are all things we do in ice climbing, where stuff falls from the sky all the time. Using a gri-gri ice climbing.... HAHA

Just my $0.02

I always thought a prusik as a back up for the belayer worked great. That way if anything happens to the belayer the leader would get locked off.

Falling rock is never a good thing. Unfortunately, Gilroy was right, I have had problems at the Gunks with falling rock from other parties. In most cases it is preventable, but it still happens. I wear my helmet whenever I'm at the base of the cliff or climbing because the "rock" fall is often unexpected. For example, I nearly got clipped by a #3 BD while sitting at a belay at the top of the first pitch. I never heard anyone shout "rock", or "duck" to alert me to this missile. I'm glad it missed me, even with the helmet on.

I have considered using a gri-gri for the belay device, but I find myself using doubles more often to link up pitches with minimal rope drag and to get back to the bottom faster. I'm obviously not going to use a gri-gri with my doubles and I don't know of any auto-lockers that can handle 2 ropes at a time. Any thoughts on how to facilitate locking the system up with doubles?

My thoughts are that if you go with a trying to tie a knot in the dull end at intervals, you risk short-roping your leader & also increase the risk of taking the brake hand off the rope when someone is leading.

The gri-gri can work, but it's not fail-safe. Plus if you introduce someone to lead belaying with a gri-gri, they should be using an advanced skill set to offer a dynamic belay. Can they do it? Probably not, as they want to grab the camming device to feed the rope; then when the leader falls, the belayer just grabs the device as hard as they can, instead of sliding the brake hand back.

I guess the main problems I have with using a gri-gri are complacency & lack of experienced proficiency.

For doubles, I was thinking of 2 gri-gris, but that's just too much gear to try and manage effectively. I would just use a standard ATC type device with a manual lead belay.

I guess the best way to approach this problem is to position the belayer away from any potential rockfall. It's easier said then done; I tagged my bro even though I put him under an overhang and away from my fall line. I think we decided he caught a weird ricochet after I threw the rock away from his position -- If I did it 100 more times, I wouldn't get anywhere near him, total fluke shot.

With rock, you can only use what the rock offers as far as natural features for anchors; or if it's fixed pro, only where the anchors are placed. Some rock lines are position-safe, but then other routes have loose rock above. So even though your fall line is acceptable; the fall lines above are not -- Eldo is notorious for this; like the Green Spur/Rewritten area. Ice is a little easier sometimes, because you can pick just about any area to set screws away from the fall line.


But to address the original problem,

The belayer goes down & the leader is ok -- probably have the leader build an anchor/get solo-aid-protected; possibly solo/downclimb -- certainly a no fall situation. Which, of course I would also be thinking: I wish I was belayed on a gri-gri (or similar device).

The belayer goes down & the leader goes down -- it's such a bad situation. Is there really a good answer? Which is why I guess I would look more to pre-positioning the belay anchor to climbing line.

i am a fan of autolocking belay devices for this reason alone. My partner and I have spoken about this. with an auto locker you are on a fixed amount of rope so you can down climb to your last piece. While doing this you can tie off the excess rope and reduce your whiper, were you to fall. It was the best case scenario we could come up with.

I agree with Avery. I have always communicated to my belayer if I'm remotely worried about something flying off; and I haven't heard that all that often. That said, there are always surprises. In this case, based on Lee's comments on the news, he did a tap test, it failed, and he climbed on it anyway. It's a hard call to make, I suppose. I'm not familiar with the climb, so perhaps it was the only route he could take.

Absolutely, but it only works for the second. I wouldn't recommend belaying a lead climber that way.

Can someone explain a "tap test" to me?

basically hit the rock with your hand to see if you get a hollow/vibrating sound. (also to see if the rock moves)

Oh. Thanks.