Self Rescue: have you done it for real?

I would love to hear firsthand accounts from "ordinary" climbers who have used self-rescue techniques in a real-life situation/accident.

By ordinary, I am referring to people who do not volunteer or do this sort of thing as part of their job (guides, rescue folk, etc.).

What were the circumstances? Did you improvise along the way or use established techniques that you had practiced beforehand? Did you have to escape the belay? Did you attempt to haul or rappel with an injured partner? Was screaming or using a phone to get assistance an option?

How has this experience influenced your climbing and decision-making since? For example, do you carry extra gear which could be useful in a rescue? Do you practice techniques "on the ground" to stay fresh?

Apologies in advance if this opens any old wounds, that isn't my intent.

my self rescue story isn't too exciting, but I did break a bone in my right hand while simul climbing with my buddy in yosemite.

We were on a 3 pitch 5.6 to start our 10 day trip, I was second on the rope and about half way through the second pitch when my partner called down for a belay. I clipped into a couple of pieces and started feeding rope through the gri-gri. After he had gotten past the section he was hung up on, he called down that I could continue climbing. As I stood up, I lost my balance and started to fall face first toward the slab, I instinctively put my right hand out to keep from smashing my face against the wall. Somehow I caught my ring finger wrong and broke my fourth metacarpal.

It really hurt and it took me what I think was 45 minutes to get my act together and figure out that the best way out was up to the top and then back down. Meanwhile, my partner is a full rope length away, he can't hear me yelling that my hand is jacked, and he's 10 feet above his pro, stuck on a 5.6 slab. He can see a ledge and the anchors, but can't get there because the rope is tight. He was pretty pissed at me until he realized what happened.

Once he realized I was hurt he tried to rap with me hanging off his harness but I declined 3 rappels with my face in his crotch. Our original plan was to simul rap back down, but we scrapped that in favor of the traditional one at a time approach. Since I was rapping with just my non dominant hand, I used a prussic back up which I pretty much always carry.

Screaming for help/calling yosar was definitely an option but not one I really considered. While this was a fairly minor injury/accident I'm of the mindset that, "I got myself into this mess, I'm going to get myself out" I did ask the party of 2 hot girls that were coming up behind us if they would clean a nut for me since I couldn't get it out with just my one hand while trying to hold myself on the wall. They did clean the nut, but did not return it to us. I'm not sure of the karmatic implications of that, but c'est la vie. They also declined my multiple invitations to come to our campsite for a drink.

I don't think it's really changed anything about how I climb or what I carry, though I have studied up/practiced a bit on improvised splints and that sort of thing, though the real bummer about a hand/arm injury is the lack of function is really inconvenient when trying to climb and rappel, and especially scramble.

What does ymmv mean?

The most relevant to what you’re looking for that I’ve dealt with was a bit shy of a year ago. I met up with some new rope buddies in City of Rocks for a weekend. For the final day we had planned a couple routes, starting with a 4 pitch 5.8+ with Jeff Lowe as the FA way back in the day. There were 4 of us total so we split into 2 teams to cruise the route. I was on the second rope, while the soon to be injured was the lead of the first rope. Now myself and the guy I was climbing with we’re exactly in gung-ho mode so we let the first team do their thing getting ahead of us. I lead pitch 1 and had the other climber take pitch two, and somewhere along the way while he was leading we had a shower of crap go flying down off to our side, in the direction of the first rope team. at first we just wrote it off as the first team being jackasses, until my ropes lead made it around the corner and teams ones lead started “mildly” shouting at him that he’d taken a whip and either broken or dislocated his ankle and we needed to link up to join ropes to get him out of there.
Where the injured was at was on the third pitch of how they’d pitched out, mind you looking over the beta on the climb it still should have been the second but oh well. His belayer had caught the fall but when he fell he was extremely run out on a blank face with the only gear being a ¼ button head bolt a good 15-20 feet below where he fell from, and perfectly placed to deck a ledge should anyone who fall on it…

His belayer lowered him off to a good ledge still over 50m up from the ground, and she was able to lower herself to the same ledge. Once she was on the ledge they built a quick anchor and she started lowering him to the ground. While this was going on my lead had pitched out high of the ledge and I followed until a bit above the ledge and off to its right. Since there wasn’t any gear in I decided to traverse over rather than waste time finishing the pitch. After getting the traverse done I was still 15 feet above the ledge, and wanted to just be lowered, however my lead couldn’t figure out how to lower in auto block mode, instead I managed to down climb allowing him to feed rope through the device.
Once on the ledge, my lead rigged to rap down to us, the injured is on the ground and proceeding to crawl away being the tough mofo they are. Join the ropes rigged for a double rope rap, had the belayer rap first knowing when she got down she was to chase down the injured and do what she could. Myself and the other climber rap out go to pull rope and get the worst stuck rope I have EVER had to deal with to make things a little more frustrating. But, fear not eventually we got the ropes unstuck and pulled. After that we hauled ass back to our packs and then played catch up and carried the injured out the rest of the way.
There was no cell service to even try calling for help, and no one else around through the whole ordeal. Ironically we had joked about no one else being around since when we started the climb the ranger trucks were doing laps though the area, then when we had an injured climber they were nowhere to be seen.
IMO the biggest thing that allowed the situation to not get worse was no one freaked out, everyone kept their cool. This is something that cannot be taught but is VERY important in any epic situation, if someone freaks it’ll only make things worse and lead to bad decisions.
Lessons: 1. tough mofo’s who crawl out while waiting for the sh*t show to get off the climb behind them drastically reduce the carry out distance.
2. If you’re going to use an auto block device know how to lower someone in autoblock mode. It might seem simple but practice it before you need it…
3. Whenever you see a route with any of the Lowes attached to it and a + after it, expect it to be anything other than the assigned number grade….
Personally I do practice self-rescue/rope rescue techniques fairly often. At this point I’ve had a few close calls, often needing some of the knowledge to prevent a situation from turning into a full on epic. I’ve had many a talk with the belayer that caught the fall since that epic, most recently tonight after seeing this thread, I actually asked her to pipe in instead of me since she was the front line. Ironically she continues her stance of she didn’t do anything and I did more than her, which is total bs since she was the front line of it… As I said above the biggest thing was no one freaking out, especially her, she’d just witnessed the biggest whip she’s seen to date. The injured tried to say he was ok at first and stand up only to have his ankle roll like his foot wasn’t attached right in front of her, and she kept cool and did what was needed. She listened to the task direction of the injured, and after he was lowered she listened to me on best course to get things rigged and everyone out of there. Hope that helps and sorry I’m a bit long winded.
p.s. the only extra gear I carry is a wild country ropeman and a small pulley in case I have to start Z dragging people up behind me. Also I’ve found that the biggest adjustments I’ve made to my climbing have been from the near epics, that have been prevented by dumb luck .

jellybean wrote:What does ymmv mean?

your mileage may vary

Only minor things... Still using the same kinda techniques though, but nothing that couldn't be gotten around another way (ie, lowering). I've Z-hauled some seconds thru cruxes or when they fell and couldn't get back on. Surprised me that i could free-haul a 200+lb man with just a grigri and a tibloc. And i've improvised ascenders when i've swung off a roof and couldn't get back on as a second.

Friend got really sketched out on a one pitch moderate lead climb when it started to get really windy(one of her first). She was a decent bit above her gear, but on a good ledge. Basically rope solo'd up to her then up to the anchors so we could just rap off.

Thanks for the responses. The most I've had to do is ascend a stuck rap line (both strands) for a short distance, which wasn't too big a deal.

Larry: I'm surprised to hear you were able to free-haul your 200 lb. partner using a 3:1, do you remember how far you raised him? The other day, I practiced hauling a 135 lb. weight while hanging from an anchor in a tree, and it was really, really hard. It took me about 15 minutes to get everything set up and move the weights a foot off the ground.

It was this experience which got me thinking about the likelihood and feasibility of having to use rescue techniques in the field.

Rich Goldstone, whose e-pinions I hold in high esteem, suggests that the more exotic rescue techniques (escaping the belay, etc.) are rarely called for or implemented by ordinary climbers. Considering the relatively low number of replies, I'm thinking he is probably right. Very scientific, I know.

I'll probably continue to practice, just to hedge my bets.

Jason... what exactly was your system? It shouldn't take long to set up and yoi should be able to haul those weights pretty easily. Use your legs and just treat it like squatting over and over.

Jason - I was belaying the second direct off the anchor with a grigri, standing on a decent ledge. I slapped a tibloc and a biner on the down line and did a few squats to pull him up with that 3:1. He was a new climber at the time and i had gotten him in a little over his head. I Only had to move him a few feet. It would not have worked well if there was significant rope drag.

I was free-hanging from an anchor in a tree, in an attempt to make things as difficult as possible for myself (probably not very realistic). I belayed the weights using an ATC-Guide in guide mode (attached directly to the anchor) and set up a standard Z-haul rig using regular carabiners. Attempts to raise the weights using only my arms was laughably difficult, so I switched to doing one-legged squats by standing in a sling, which still felt very hard.

The weights were lying on the ground when I started and ended up about a foot off the ground, so in reality I moved them nearly 3'.
The setup didn't take too long, and the fact that I was free-hanging definitely slowed things down. Had there been any more friction in the system, and I question whether I would have been able to move the weights at all. My normal climbing partner is closer to 200# with gear, which got me thinking.

I can't imagine that I bungled things. It definitely wasn't easy!

No, not at all! I was just curious. I've had do it a few times (mainly clients while at work) but I've always been fortunate to have a good stance.

When you're free hanging, you could always redirect the pull strand so it pulls down. It would be best if you had a pulley to do this, but a carabiner would be okay. That way you can at least use your body weight in assisting the pull. Not too sure it would make a big difference, just throwing ideas around.

Are you familiar with a 5:1? It's pretty straightforward from the 3:1 and would give you extra pulling power if you absolutely could not budge your partner.

Kris and I were climbing in the Gorge of Despair once. The GoD is about 12 miles from a road guarded by a huge trail less bushwhack.

The climb is overhanging and also leans to the left, Kris had made it to the top of P3. The top of P3 was at a point where we didn't think one could retreat from, due to the steep leaning nature of the route. I climbed the lower overhanging part of the pitch and was just getting to the lower angled section when, whilst doing a hi-step, my right knee sort of snapped/buckled and my right heal kicked my right ass cheek.!!!
In medical terms... I had a LOCKER, my knee now had a big bite of my meniscus and it wasn't letting go. Kris couldn't see me but he was smart enuf to keep me on a hard top rope while I climbed the 5.9 crack, one footed, up to him. All the while I was crying and screaming due to the pain.... when I finally reached Kris on that tiny ledge, way off the deck with many unclimbed pitches above, we decided that we were screwed and would most likely end up as skeletons if we couldn't figure this out.

Anyway Kris did a long free hanging rap in the dark and was able to swing in far enuf to get a hook on, then a bolt for an anchor. Another long free hanging rap got us to the ground. Thank God.
My knee was still locked and the 1/8 of a mile crawl through a maze of avalanche twisted trees and boulders was the most difficult thing I have ever needed to do in my life. Kris says I passed out a few times, I do not remember.

Reaching the tent was welcome because we had our stash of hard narcotic pain reliving drugs. I ate a few and the pain diminished and I passed out, thankfully.

Early next morning the knee was still locked but not as painful as the night before. I had a friend who had a locker one time. I remembered what he said the docs did to unlock it so I made a plan. Kris took off with a empty backpack and filled it up with some snow and came back to me and I started icing my knee. We also rigged up a "SYSTEM" using climbing cord where I could pull on the rope and get the thing to start to straighten out some. The pain relieving drugs were working really well. It took all day to get my leg to go to 90 degrees at the knee and once it was there I could sort of amble around on my hands and good leg.

So we decided to see how far I could go like that. I started the next day at like 4 am, I could only carry my empty pack and down sleeping bag and a bit of water. I rigged up a splint for the knee with a sleeping pad and tape. (always have some tape)
Hiking up hill was easy cause I had my hands out in front and I could sort of bounce on my good leg... going down was hell, and I did a lot of falling down forward.... just like in "touching the void". The pain relieving narcotic drugs really kicked in and these saved me. It took me about 16 hours to finally do the 12 miles, the last few, were hell.
Kris caught up to me and stayed with me for most of the hike out. At the last creek crossing it was starting to get late so he went ahead and went to the Kings Canyon store for cold ones and food. The beers were the best tasting things ever.

My knee was the size of a small watermelon but sitting in the Kings River really helped the swelling, it had been the longest day of my life. I recalled what my friend had told me about having a locked knee and what his course of treatment had been like. He told me that after the doctors sort of pulled his knee to 90 degrees they told him he had to delay the surgery for about 30 days to let the swelling go down some. Knowing this, and with 7 days of vacation remaining, I suggested we go to the Needles. I spent the next seven days hanging around the Pondrosa Bar, drinking Gin N Tonic and hanging out with "RED" the late great barkeep of the place.

So sorry about the rant, long story that should have been short....
To answer the OP questions.

Escape the belay? No, I never had to and I can't really imagine how you can do this on a wall.

Rappel with an injured partner? Yes we did, Kris had the fireman's belay working.

How has this experience influenced your climbing and decision-making since? Only go climbing with good people, strong climbers, who have their sh#t together.

For example, do you carry extra gear which could be useful in a rescue? No, I never carry extra anything, but some things have multiple uses, like tape - for your hands, for taping up holes in down sleeping bags and maybe making a splint.

But never go without the PAIN KILLING drugs .... have a serious talk with your doctor and get a stash.
Its what got me through all of this, without them I don't know what I would have done.

And don't worry about old wounds, I healed OK.

Sounds intense Guy! Glad to hear you made it back safe. I usually carry a bunch of ibuprofen, but perhaps I need to step it up...

From Guy's impressive story and the melodramtic place name (Gorge of Despair), it sounded like a made-up tall tale. A quick search revealed that, nope, it is the real deal. Yikes.

mountainproject.com/v/despa…

Well done, and nice pics. I would add this route to my to-do list, but unfortunately it is three number grades above anything I've lead on gear!

Great reading. No epic self-rescue story to report from my end but I’ve thought about and practiced the standard techniques on various occasions.

A key aspect of hauling in vertical small-party self-rescue situations is ensuring that your system (and how you work it) allows you to haul for a good distance before you need to reset it. Resetting makes you lose your hard-won height gain. You can make your system more efficient using gear with less stretch than prusiks and less friction than biners (lightweight pulleys, taxion pulley, tibloc, etc.). You can also make it more user-friendly by redirecting the rope down, as mentioned, and setting up a walk-up system on it (eg prusik/garda & foot loops). But the best way to maximize efficiency is simply to ensure that the height gained by hauling is much longer than that lost to resetting. For a Z, that means making sure that you have the longest possible distance between the primary anchor and the lowest point on the rope where you can reasonably set your primary haul prusik.

Ensuring that kind of spread is tricky to do when practicing hauling while hanging from a tree branch. I made that mistake myself, practicing the Spanish Burton haul in my back yard. I also feel that switching to complex systems (5:1, etc.) by adding additional pieces of rope or webbing that improve the mechanical advantage may be a bit of a trap for vertical self-rescue scenarios where you are likely going to be limited in how far up you can build your primary anchor and how far down you can reset your primary hauling prusik. These systems cut down drastically on your effective pulling distance, giving much poorer ratios of height gained to height lost for the same spread. If a higher mechanical advantage is needed despite adding down-redirect and walk-up mods, I feel that a Z acting on a Z for a theoretical 9:1 ratio is a better bet.

Hauling distance is much less of a concern for horizontal (crevasse) rescues and for large-party, organized rescues but a small-party vertical self-rescue haul is a very different kettle of fish, which is probably why many consider that it’s not even worth attempting, other than to occasionally provide a little extra help to your second over a short distance.

Yes I have, on more than one occasion. Know your shit. Because when shit hits the fan you better stay cool. It would be difficult to rehash the details. So, this is all I can offer:

I know what a body sounds like when it hits the ground. Heard it more than once. It is not a sound you want to know. Also, it is hard to tell between rock fall and bones breaking and helmet hitting rock. Again, not something you want to be familiar with. But, if you climb enough, you will be near an accident. Be prepared to help out. Hopefully, it is not you or your partner you are rescuing.

No, I don't carry anything different. I always have a small knife clipped to my harness. I always have slings and usually access to lots of rope. I always carry a munter and can make a klemheist out of most anything. It is all expendable in an emergency.

I took a quasi factor 2 fall on a multi pitch FA attempt when a hold broke 15 feet above the P2 belay with no pro in as I approached the first horizontal line of weakness on the pitch. I clipped the ledge my wife was belaying from on my way down reducing the fall factor while breaking my foot and cartwheeling on down the wall. My wife was anchored to a tree and extended towards me in anticipation of me placing gear and then being aligned with the line of pull. Unfortunately that meant she was in the exact opposite orientation to where the force of the fall pulled her which was smack dab into the tree. THe sideways blow to her helmet smashed one of the internal webbing anchor points into her forehead, stunning her while my fall pulled her half off the ledge. She was lying face in, not moving but has automatically locked off the fall and held me. I was unsure how out of it she was so swun over to a crack and put in some gear, anchoring myself prior to calling to her. When I did and she sat up, a large quantity of blood that had been pooling in her helmet fell down the face on the rock in front of me. Head wounds... She was unsure if she had a concussion and was hesitant to trust her judgement belaying me up to her so I had her tie me off while she talked through exactly what she was doing. I rope solo aided my way up to her which was a bit tricky with a broken foot. It looked like she was OK but very shaken up- it was the worst physical injury she had ever experienced. We knew the ground was less than 60m down so tied one end of the rope to the tree and simulrapped it (with extra biner, prussic backup etc. Then we hobbled back to the car turning a 20 min walk into a 2 hr ordeal. Then we drove 30 min to the nearest hospital.

Has this influenced me? Yes- it reinforced the idea that you have to know a bunch of self rescue techniques and be comfortable using them in a variety of circumstances. You also need to know how to improvise and adapt as the situation that gets you will be different from what you practiced.

A few lessons learned- My wife's awesome belay catch as well as a few other personal experiences have reinforced just how important it is to have practiced catching falls to drill that automatic reaction into you and your potential partner. My wife and I had been climbing for just shy of a decade at that point. Id hate to have had a gumby belaying me on that. A good mental attitude helps a lot and suffering helps develop one. Go suffer. Learn to stay calm while suffering.

In another incident, we found a guy who had broken both ankles pitching off an ice climb. He was dragging himself out while his girlfriend was out trying to contact SAR. I was able to carry him on my back for a while but we had to get him down a steep gorge and up the other side in deep snow. He was another tough dude like the other guy mentioned above so I laid him in the snow, hood up, and tied a cordalette to his harness then dragged him down the gorge. Getting him up required us to bury a pack as a deadman anchor and set up the longest 3:1 Ive ever done using both our double ropes. We would kind of pick him up the best we could and haul on the line (we ended up with 3 people there so one picked him up somewhat while 3 hauled). It was just too steep to carry him. It all sucked but he knew we were all the help he had and were doing our best. He did his part and sucked it up, we tried our best to make it easy on him. We got him up to the final trail out just as the first SAR snowmobile arrived.

Once again, the mental fortitude aspect was really important as was improvisation. The other lesson is hauling your average person around is really really difficult and slow. This is something to really take into consideration when faced with a situation like this.

As for practicing this kind of stuff, I used to practice it all a lot when I first got the climbing bug. Belay escapes, knot passing, ascending, rope solo aid, simulrapping, partner rescue as leader or belayer etc. Learning how to do each more than one way. A lot of it is variations of normal climbing techniques. After a while I stopped practicing but with the concepts firmly in place and the basics "practiced" by just climbing I have a high level of confidence in myself that I can get out of about any jam I get in to.

I forget who said it but this stuff isnt rocket surgery. Learn the theory and it becomes a lot like plumbing.

(And I dont mean to knock plumbers- they rock!)

With all respect due rgold, anyone who regards a belay escape as an 'exotic technique' should probably stick pretty close to the road. And I don't mean the Carriage Road.

 My 2 cents: solo aiding, unknown adventure crag. Piece pops whilst feeding rope through clove hitch self-beelay. Must convert welded clove into rappel and hike out, with broken thumb and protruberant pinkie-bone end. Salient lessons: bounce test harder; clove-hitch self-belay sucks; avoid dragging bone on rock. " 

John D wrote:We were [simul-climbing] a 3 pitch 5.6 to start our 10 day trip, I was second on the rope...As I stood up, I lost my balance and started to fall face first toward the slab, I instinctively put my right hand out to keep from smashing my face against the wall...it took me what I think was 45 minutes to get my act together and figure out that the best way out was up to the top and then back down...He can see a ledge and the anchors, but can't get there because the rope is tight. He was pretty pissed at me until he realized what happened.

How did he feel about you falling on the bottom end of a simul-climb on easy terrain? Cuz that's what I would have been upset about..