Most dangerous newbie situation you've seen

I was at Hueco Tanks and a group had a TR on a route I wanted to try. I asked if I could get a lift on their rope and they gave me a belay. I had already seen them run the route eight or nine times, and when I topped out, I saw that they had tied a loop of webbing to the bolts and had the rope running through the webbing with no biners in the system at all. Just a rope running through webbing. I freaked. I had a couple of biners on my harness so I rigged a safe quickie and lowered and started screaming at these fresh from the gym death seekers. They didn't get why I was upset. I have taken many gym climbers out for their first few outdoor excursions, and lesson one is safety. Get some instruction before going out, please.

I made a new thread for the munter debate: https://www.mountainproject.com/forum/topic/113831214/anchoring-on-a-horizontal-anchor-modern-uses-for-the-munter

The scariest thing I've seen was at the Columns, a 40-something foot crag in Eugene.  There was a stereotypical bro-type who seemed to be taking his two female friends out climbing for the first time.  He gave a 30 second intro to belaying to one, showing the brake position as above the ATC (I saw this all the time in Eugene specifically for some reason), and sort of making it seem like the ATC will just work, without an attentive hand on the brake strand.  The second friend starts up, and about 25' later is clearly struggling.  Instead of coaching from the ground (and watching his first-time belayer friend) the dude solos up in his flip flops, feet slipping every other hold.  Meanwhile the belayer is clearly NOT continuously holding on to the brake strand, in between attempts to pull the rope upward through the device.  I'm 50 feet away belaying my friend, trying to decide how I should yell instructions to her in a way that won't confuse her and offend her bro-friend, when the climber says she needs to rest.  The belayer then awkwardly tries to hold the weight with her hands still above the device.  At this point I yell over that it is easier / better to hold the brake hand below the device, and that you should always keep a hand on the rope.  Luckily they were somewhat receptive to the advice.

While my story is somewhat tame compared to some of them, I think it suggests that a lot of dangerous situations start with climbers trying to impress someone else before they really know what they're doing themselves.

Most dangerous I've seen was meeting a guy that just came from Clear Creek after leading some sport 12s with his dad. He was getting more into trad.  So we met in Eldo. We decided to swap leads on a three pitch 9 which sounded easy to him. I led the first pitch. He was going to lead the second pitch.  The second pitch is about 40 feet of easy climbing with no protection. Then it tends to vertical, then slightly over hanging into the crux.  I let him know there is a hidden solid one Camelot to the right he can put in before heading into the steeper terrain so that he is not too run out.  He ops to skip this placement. So now he heads into the steeper terrain and is about 50 feet out with no protection.  He begins to fiddle with gear and starts to get pumped.  He fiddles some more and starts to get frantic.  Shit.  This is not good.

To be continued...  

I remember when I first started climbing, my buddy and I went out to the Reed Creek wall in Hatcher Pass. While he went up and around to setup the anchor, I looked after his dog and got my harness on. He climbed first, then my time came. I got to a rest position halfway up the climb, and looked behind me to checkout the view. Then I looked at him and saw he didn't have his hands on the brakestrand. He didn't even have his hands on the rope. He was taking a picture of me with his phone. Needless to say I got really pissed really fast. I decided to climb on because I didn't really trust him to lower me. When I got to the large ledge above the wall, I saw the anchor consisted of about 10 binders chained together and a dog leash. I was by no means an expert, but I knew that was no good, so I proceeded to yell and scream, took down the anchor, and walked off the top. His defense was "But I tied it with a water knot!" I never went climbing with him again.

Greg D wrote:

Most dangerous I've seen was meeting a guy that just came from Clear Creek after leading some sport 12s with his dad. He was getting more into trad.  So we met in Eldo. We decided to swap leads on a three page 9 which sounded easy to him. I led the first pitch. He was going to lead the second pitch.  The second page is about 40 feet of easy climbing with no protection. Then it tends to vertical, then slightly over hanging in to the crux.  I let him know there is a hidden solid one Camelot to the right he can put in before heading into the steeper terrain so that he is not to run out.  He ops to skip this placement. So now he heads into the steeper terrain and is about 50 feet out with no protection.  He begins to fiddle with gear and starts to get pumped.  He fiddles some more and starts to get frantic.  Shit.  This is not good  

Oh man, what a cliffhanger

David Kerkeslager wrote:

Oh man, what a cliffhanger

If it was a book it would be a real page turner.

On topic, I saw a dude at a crag in Chamonix teaching his buddy to climb. They went up a route and abseiled down, using a sling to extend the device while abseiling. After getting down the dude starting leading the next route. After a while he noticed that his buddy was having trouble paying out slack when he was clipping. The reason was that the buddy's belay device was still extended on a sling, which apparently makes it very difficult to use. So he explained how to fix it while 30 feet up, then finished the route.

Greg D wrote:

Most dangerous I've seen was meeting a guy that just came from Clear Creek after leading some sport 12s with his dad. He was getting more into trad.  So we met in Eldo. We decided to swap leads on a three page 9 which sounded easy to him. I led the first pitch. He was going to lead the second pitch.  The second page is about 40 feet of easy climbing with no protection. Then it tends to vertical, then slightly over hanging in to the crux.  I let him know there is a hidden solid one Camelot to the right he can put in before heading into the steeper terrain so that he is not to run out.  He ops to skip this placement. So now he heads into the steeper terrain and is about 50 feet out with no protection.  He begins to fiddle with gear and starts to get pumped.  He fiddles some more and starts to get frantic.  Shit.  This is not good  

Maybe you should focus on belaying instead of posting from your cell phone while he tries to get his first piece of gear in!

Fredrik Ehne wrote:

If it was a book it would be a real page turner.

It took me a second to get this but it's a better joke than mine.

At vantage with friends a few winters ago.  One friend (J) had some experience climbing, his gf (D) was just learning.  Led up a long, fun 5.8ish thing at the Sunshine Wall.  Lone climber approaches us and asks if we can make our threesome a foursome, as his partners have left for the day and he wants to get in a longer workout...I asked a couple of exploratory questions to suss him out, but apparently not the right ones.  J was queued for the route, and D and I went a little ways to set up another climb for her. I lead it up, come back down, and send her up on top rope.  During this time, J has TR'ed to the top of the 5.8ish and was now belaying the anon climber.  Anon TR's fine, comes back down, then apparently asks J to belay him again on TR as he "new routes" on the chossy chimney next to the route.  J, being both too nice and still newish, says yes (this I learn later).  The thing about Vantage and its wonderful, yet extremely chossy, columns is you need to spend a good amount of cleaning to make a route safe for those below--something to be done not on TR...

I's still belaying up D when I hear some yells from J and Anon's direction.  Finally, "Rock!" and Anon strips a chunk of rock the size of those Patagonia duffels down.  It misses killing J (wearing his helmet for all the good that would do) by maybe five to ten feet.  D starts worrying, wondering what is happening, but I don't want to make it worse by yelling at Anon.  Anon, on his part, decides to lower down, and tell J that he's done with his workout, puts on his shoes and hightails it out of there before D and I could make it back there...

I was livid, but I was definitely the noob in this situation--letting some unknown climb with us...Moral of the story: vet, vet, and vet again.

Never saw Anon again, but figured he killed some belayer somewhere and got stuck on a wall...crow meat.

Not climbing but worth telling anyway. I was at the cliffs in Pacifica S. of San Francisco watching a paragliding instructor yelling at his student who was balking about launching. She clearly was in over her depth of knowledge but he badgered and pushed and she went off the cliff. She screamed and just floated straight out to sea instead of turning and riding the updrafts along the cliff or landing on the beach below. Luckily, she just crash landed in the water about 50 yards out. Cold. Sharky water. The instructor just flipped his wig and started running to save her, forgetting entirely that there was a near-vertical cliff below him. He ran-slid about 20 feet before tumbling another 100 to the beach below. He landed  with quite a thud, tried to get up, took 3 steps and fell over with a broken leg bent all crooked. Meanwhile, his student was screaming bloody murder out in the waves.

I pulled out my cell phone and called 911. Fire dept was there in about 3 minutes, which was good. As far as I know everyone survived.

Fredrik Ehne wrote:

If it was a book it would be a real page turner.

Good one.

Yeah, Siri let me down and I didn't have time to proof read.

Continued from above.

He shouts down that he cannot find any gear. I shout up "there is a red C3 and a yellow C3 right there and a good nut a little higher". He fiddles some more as he gets more pumped. I feel like he is running out of time. He is facing a 100 foot fall with ledges.  He grabs a .4 and shoves it in and yells take.  It looks terrible.  It appears only half in.  But I know he's coming on to the rope whether I like it or not.  He falls off.  The Angels above keep the cam in place.  There are only 2 lobes in the rock.   While he is hanging he wiggles in another piece which gives me a tiny bit of relief.  After he de pumps he steps up a bit and finds the good nut, pulls the crux and eventually finishes the (page) pitch.  

Later that year he gets benighted on yellow spur in a t shirt in March.  

Beknighted?

Ted Pinson wrote:

Beknighted?

benighted (adjective): Stuck out overnight, unable to get down (usually due to darkness).

Ted Pinson wrote:

Beknighted?

Forced to spend an unplanned night on a route, often due to poor planning, with a member of the royal family.

pat a wrote:

simplyput wrote:

You're proud of raising a racist child?

whoah buddy watch it with the microagressions

Fun thread sidetracked by knee-jerk cry of racism over harmless reference to Chinese. 

And sidetracked by me commenting.on aforementioned sidetracking!

I didn't become racist until I was at least 20 years old and got sick of different races bitching about people being racist... Every year i find myself more racist and proud to be it because of being sick of people bitching.

FrankPS wrote:

Fun thread sidetracked by knee-jerk cry of racism over harmless reference to Chinese. 

And sidetracked by me commenting.on aforementioned sidetracking!

If I sidetrack your sidetrack, does that put us back on track, or even worse off?