Most dangerous newbie situation you've seen

Munter is AMGA approved for top belay. better option than guide mode if you think your client will need to be lowered. 

ViperScale wrote:

The whiskey is saying yes atm.

Glad you’re having a good night!  

My wife and I were climbing at 90 foot wall at Tahoe. A guy comes up to us and asks what the route ratings were. We mentioned that generally the wall starts easier on the left and gets progressively harder as you move right. I notice his shiny unscratched rack of nuts and hexes (no cams) as he walks over to the right side of the wall to try a 5.10b. He climbs up about 15 feet, places a nut, climbs another 15 feet and is struggling while trying to place another nut. He gets the nut in and makes a few moves before getting shakey and taking a whipper. Both pieces immediately pulled and he decked from about 30-40 feet up landing on a pile of boulders. We mobilized to assist him and sent help running a mile back to the trailhead to call for assistance. Ultimately he needed a helicopter rescue. We searched but didn't find any news on the accident. His girlfriend was terrified and thought the whole accident was her fault. It was her first time climbing outside.

Moral of the story? Research your routes and find a mentor to teach you gear placements before setting out on a sustained 5.10b trad route. Learn how to place effective gear on easier terrain.

My n00b moment (okay there was many but this one is post worthy) was my first big wall attempt. We went to attempt Crack in the Cosmic Egg. All went well in the week before. Planned all the gear, practiced aiding, hauling and settling up a porta on Bushwhack Crack (5.8) in the rain three days in a row before we left. Went to Zion with gear, ledge, beta, stoke and ambition (most of which borrowed from work). Well, the approach kicked our ass by the time we reached the route we were so beat we spent an hour at the base racking and eating then starting up. Long story short the aid climbing/hauling was was harder that we anticipated. We ended up on the porta a couple pitches below where we should have got. Spent the night feasting on the chicken we hauled up and getting shifty on the bourbon. The next day we had to shit in the AM. Unfortunately my friend had used the poop tube as a walking stick welding the damn thing shut. Desperate we shit in bags and put them back the the chicken plastic container. Then got scared trying to put up the rest of the route and bailed.  Carrying our chicken shits all the way back to the car. Oh and I didn’t put the alvocado away before going to sleep and rolled all up in that shit. All and all it was my favorite failure to date. 

Zach Myers wrote:

Nick Goldsmith wrote:

Munter is AMGA approved for top belay. better option than guide mode if you think your client will need to be lowered. 

I'm aware of that and consider it bullshit. The munter has to be attended very closely and when weighted flips over in a jerky fashion. There are plenty of devices that you can lower on that also auto-block. Plus, shit happens and I think anyone would prefer to be backed up by something besides a human. AMGA needs to update. The munter is only acceptable if you don't have a belay device.

pat a wrote:

Not the most dangerous, but the most ridiculous:

I climbed the 2 pitch 5.3 sport Clip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah at Rumney with my two young boys while my wife waited at the base with our toddler.  When we hiked off, there were 20+ Chinese school kids running around. Kids are climbing 30 feet up the slab and sliding down on their asses, getting scary close to the big drop off a nearby cliff, clearly bored to tears, etc.  Nobody seems to be watching them except my wife...

One dude is belaying another dude up the first pitch, looking pretty lost.  He's belaying with an ancient sticht plate and a brand new twin/half rope that looked...really short.  They're using radios and the climber calls down "how much rope is left?" and gets back a "not enough!"  

I look over at my wife.  She looks back and managed to convey the gist of the situation via spousal non-verbal jujitsu.  We quickly packed up and fled before we got sucked in...  

Later I got the full story:  the guy on the route "grew up climbing in wisconsin" and is chaperone for this group of kids on a summer field trip from China.  He decided they should try rock climbing, so he hiked them an hour up the mountain at Rumney to get to the easiest thing in the guidebook.  

They were there to set up a toprope for the kids.  My wife knew they were in for a hell of a day when she mentioned "your rope looks too short to toprope from the ground. you'll have what you need to belay from the anchors?" 

He followed up by asking how attaches himself to the anchor, how he gets his gear back, etc. 

"You belay your partner up, do the second pitch and hike down.  Do you have a third adult around to stay down here with these kids?" 

No, of course he didn't.   

She continued to drop hints that he was gonna have a bad time, but he went for it.  It's an easy 5.3 slab so I assume they lived through it.  If it was one of you guys and I'm mischaracterizing what happened, I appologies. I'd love to hear how your day went, though! ;)

Since then, when we witness any shitshow at a crag, my 10 year old smartass kid will loudly proclaim "Chinese Field Trip!"  

So some White Guys make multiple fuckups, thereby causing a huge shitshow via their irresponsibility, but "Chinese" is the label that gets applied?

White people fuck up. Non-White people get blamed.

SMFH

Khoi wrote:

So some White Guys make multiple fuckups, thereby causing a huge shitshow via their irresponsibility, but "Chinese" is the label that gets applied?

White people fuck up. Non-White people get blamed.

SMFH

yeah, prob shouldnt let his kids go around calling shitshows "chinese fieldtrips", but then again, climbers *arent ever* racists so that couldnt possibly be a racist thing to say (Sarcasm)

One time, I saw a girl belaying with her gri gri upside down. I tried explaining to her that what she was doing was highly unsafe, but she insisted she was correct, despite the pictures on the gri gri being upside down. She continued saying that she was doing it for 6 years (which is even scarier). Long story short, her belayer insisted I switched out with her and take him down. They argued for a while after. 

Tradiban wrote:

I'm aware of that and consider it bullshit. The munter has to be attended very closely and when weighted flips over in a jerky fashion. There are plenty of devices that you can lower on that also auto-block. Plus, shit happens and I think anyone would prefer to be backed up by something besides a human. AMGA needs to update. The munter is only acceptable if you don't have a belay device.

One guide I talked to says he prefers it when guiding clients because you can turn it into a clove hitch with one extra half-twist of the rope.  So it's extremely fast to belay the second, anchor them and move on.  Plus it weighs nothing, costs nothing, and you can never drop it.

This one time, a total n00b kept insisting a munter hitch was unsafe. He didn't kill anyone that time but he never changed his attitude. Who knows what he'll be unable to learn like that.

Tradiban wrote:

I'm aware of that and consider it bullshit. The munter has to be attended very closely and when weighted flips over in a jerky fashion. There are plenty of devices that you can lower on that also auto-block. Plus, shit happens and I think anyone would prefer to be backed up by something besides a human. AMGA needs to update. The munter is only acceptable if you don't have a belay device.

Pic: munter with locker for auto-block.

Also, a double Munter provides more friction than a standard Munter.

I cringe every time I see a person belaying a leader while standing 10 feet from the wall with a giant loop of slack in the rope as the climber passes the first point of protection. I often feel compelled to intervene but am shocked the belayer cannot see the potential groundfall scenario or at least that they will get dragged off their feet into the wall.

Tradiban wrote:

I'm aware of that and consider it bullshit. The munter has to be attended very closely and when weighted flips over in a jerky fashion. There are plenty of devices that you can lower on that also auto-block. Plus, shit happens and I think anyone would prefer to be backed up by something besides a human. AMGA needs to update. The munter is only acceptable if you don't have a belay device.

There is nothing wrong with the Munter if you know how to use it, except that it needs constant attention. Like you always need to pay constant attention when belaying someone.

It certainly isn't a noob thing. It is widely used in mountainlous environments. And it is still being teached as a prefered method for that kind of stuff overhere in central Europe.

It's kind of fun to think back about your own noobishness, back when you weren't a hotshot yet. A wonder how we survived those first few outings!

On one of my first trips I leaded a sport climb on a tower, maybe 20 m high or so. Continuing straight ahead was too difficult for me, but there was always a bolt from a neighbouring route to the right that looked somehow nicer. After I circled half the tower, I was dying in rope drag, Somehow managed to pull myself to the top. My mate refused to follow, because despite his noobness he recognised that he wasn't really belayed on the first 10 meter.

Or that time when I tried to make a FA on a pile of choss. After a while I understood while therre were no routes on that rockface, so I climbed down again. The last bit was too difficult for down climbing. I could get one nut in. I was pretty poor back then, so I didn't want to leave a carabiner too. Somehow I managed to untie, thread the rope through the wireloop of the nut and retied, then was lowered with the rope running through that steel cable! I really should have died on that one.

Tradiban wrote:

The munter is only acceptable if you don't have a belay device.

Oh wow. Munter is the belay strategy of choice in lot of multipitch situations.

Gavin Towey wrote:

One guide I talked to says he prefers it when guiding clients because you can turn it into a clove hitch with one extra half-twist of the rope.  So it's extremely fast to belay the second, anchor them and move on.  Plus it weighs nothing, costs nothing, and you can never drop it.

You can never drop it but it can drop you. As the climber I prefer a back up over speed.

Howard wrote:

Pic: munter with locker for auto-block.

Also, a double Munter provides more friction than a standard Munter.

This doesn't work that well and causes the rope to twist up.

Tradiban wrote:

You can never drop it but it can drop you. As the climber I prefer a back up over speed.

Hmm, it looks like I fell for a troll post....

Forget my reply above. I completely agree with you now. Using a Munter hitch is a noobish thing to do and will certainly kill the one you are belaying.

Kees van der Heiden wrote:

There is nothing wrong with the Munter if you know how to use it, except that it needs constant attention. Like you always need to pay constant attention when belaying someone.

It certainly isn't a noob thing. It is widely used in mountainlous environments. And it is still being teached as a prefered method for that kind of stuff overhere in central Europe.

Quite the exception! Yes, you should always have your hand on the break side but like I said before "shit happens". Plus, using a munter off the harness is obviously not great so you are going to need a belay device anyway, PLUS you will need something to rap with. Yes, I'm aware its possible to rig a rap set up without a device but we all know that's not ideal.

Central Eurpoe needs to update.

AND the munter hitch in any situation will twist up the rope. 

Ya, nothing wrong with the munter, LOL.