Pointing-and-Calling: A method to promote safe climbing?

pointing can be a good way to draw attention, when I am in a major epic I often start pointing while checking safety chain, it feels more certain than just looking

From a teaching perspective, I think one of the problems is that learners are rarely presented with the faulty choices---they only get to see the right ways.  If I was teaching these things to someone, I'd find a safe situation and then continually botch some part of the set up and ask them, each time, if they are good to go. I think that if all you've ever seen is how things should be, you are less likely to spot when they aren't right.

I think there is also the danger of assidously guarding against things that aren't the ones that are going to get you.  For instance, it seems to me that there are three primary sources of rappel accidents. 1. Loss of control. 2. Rapping off one or both ends. 3. Failure to properly install the rope in the device.  I don't think Andrew's point/call list adequately addresses any of these.  (The first one can't be checked at the moment of rappelling and is usually related to the device being inadequate for the ropes in question, something that should have been evaluated before a critical rappel.)

Rappelling isn't airplane piloting or open-heart surgery.  There aren't scores of details to check.  By far the major problem is a loss of basic situational awareness---think how someone manages to rap off the end of uneven rappel lines.  If check lists and call-outs help to maintain that situational awareness (most especially after the checklist has been completed) then they are a good thing.  If the completion of the check list leads to an unjustified complacency, then it is a bad thing.  This boils down to how each individual manages their awareness levels and there may not be a one size fits all solution.

rgold wrote:   This boils down to how each individual manages their awareness levels and there may not be a one size fits all solution.

Truth!

patto wrote:

Which is one way of doing things and it is very good in a controlled environment with a comprehensive list.  AKA sitting down before take off.

At the other extreme is rote learning appropriate for a whitewater kayaker making rapid decisions down serious white water?  Or a climber in a hostile alpine environment trying to decide on the safest decent route.  Lots of things can't be boiled down to checklists and rote learning.

In climbing there really aren't too many systems remember.  Though if you want a list, mine is pretty short:
-What is keeping me safe?
-What is keeping my partner safe?
-Is my current action going to affect that?

That can cover pretty much the bulk of it when you are moving around on a cliff.  Of course there is plenty more like what is the weather doing, how late in the day it is etc...  But for the here and now cliff face stuff that is pretty much the logic I use.

Airplane pilots use checklists even in extremely dangerous, fluid situations. They are one of the primary factors in how safe aviation is today, from civilian pilots to military test pilots. Checklists were an important part of the successful ditching of Flight 1549 into the Hudson. Almost any decision can be boiled down a checklist, although making good ones can be exceedingly difficult. Many people in this thread are conflating checklists with "rote learning". This could not be further from the truth - good checklists encourage active analysis and critical thinking.

 I disagree that checklists are no good in fluid situations; climbing moves much more slowly than your example of whitewater kayaking, and emergency situations/difficult choices are times to slow down and make careful decisions, not rely on seat of the pants intuition. FWIW, I agree that climbing is much less complicated than flying a modern aircraft. You actually provide a pretty good checklist in the quoted post above.

I had a brief look at some of the operating room and aviation checklists.  A non-scientific impression is that operating room lists have around fifty items and aviation lists more like 100, and that doesn't include the fact that there are entirely separate emergency-procedure aviation lists.  It isn't hard to see, given the number of details that have to be attended to, that such lists can result in better outcomes.  But climbers are not going to be carrying a clipboard with fifty or a hundred check boxes.  Probably the closest they can get to a repeatable check list is some mnemonic device consisting, I would think, of fewer then ten letters, something which probably isn't going to cover all (or even any) the critical bases---as we see with Andrew's list---but which runs the risk of engendering an attitude that things are now safe. Moreover, I suspect that check lists work best when there is a list of specific actions that need to be taken, but are going to be less effective when one has to recognize that something is configured properly, because of our experimentally-established tendency to see what we expect rather than what is.

As I said previously, I think the biggest problem is not getting some large list of rather unconnected details right, it is more a question of being fully attentive to the situation at hand, and that is a mental state that has to persist after the checks are completed.  In this regard, I feel we have an entire culture of distracted complacency working against us, a combination of automatic gear solutions that take over some of the necessary climber actions and the growing social aspects of the sport, especially in gyms, that do almost everything possible to lessen any sense of seriousness of the enterprise. As the real dangers occupy an ever more peripheral aspect of our horizons, the chance increases that we will do something as incredibly stupid as not noticing an approaching end of the ropes while rappelling.

If pointing and calling or mnemonic checklists manage to generate a persistent level of high awareness, then they are a good thing.  Perhaps they are a start, at least for some people, but I seriously doubt they are particularly close to an effective answer.  I periodically wonder how to put more fear back into climbing, as I think that would drive attentiveness.  But I have no idea how to do that, and given that it would be bad for business, it doesn't seem likely.

I mentioned talking to myself before.  The first thing I always say, is "Pay attention, stupid!"  I also mentioned testing the system when that is possible.  Something else I try to do might be called "overbuilding."  No, I don't mean some attempt at over-redundancy that consumes half and hour and half the gear.  Here is an example: as a half-rope user, I always have two ropes to rap with.  At the Gunks, you can almost always manage with just one rope.  Most of the time, I use two anyway.  Yes, because there is a knot there is a relatively small chance that it will get hung up.  Against that deficit is that (1) there is no longer any question that my ropes are anchored at the middle of the total system, and (2) they are so much longer than they need to be that they can absorb all kinds of unanticipated adverse changes and still function normally.  This is a trade-off I'm happy to make.  Even so, I make a point of rappelling with my body sideways rather than facing the wall, because that position makes looking down where the rope ends are natural and constant. (Unfortunately, the sideways position needs foot contact with the wall, so can't be used when free-hanging.)

Another example is the use (sotto voce here; don't really want to wake up all the PAS haters) of an installed tether.  I never use it as the primary connection to a belay anchor, but almost always have it clipped separately to one of the anchor pieces.  This means I not only have to unclip my rope from the anchor, I also have to unclip the tether.  Two operations, rather than one, before I am potentially unattached to anything, giving a possibly distracted brain a second chance to ask WTF I think I'm doing.

Finally, I think Patto's three questions make a lot of sense, and that because they are very different from attempts to enumerate specific minutiae.  His questions are not checks at all, rather, they are an invitation to situational analysis, and so are attention-creating invocations in a way specific item checks are not.

rgold wrote: From a teaching perspective, I think one of the problems is that learners are rarely presented with the faulty choices---they only get to see the right ways.  If I was teaching these things to someone, I'd find a safe situation and then continually botch some part of the set up and ask them, each time, if they are good to go. I think that if all you've ever seen is how things should be, you are less likely to spot when they aren't right.

Some years ago I had an instructor who would slyly tell a "client" to do things like tie in wrong, or not thread their device properly. This was in the process of guide training, and the person acting as the newbie/client was another guide (or guide-in-training), so in the absence of such slyness everything would be done properly. The goal of course was to see if the "guide" would catch the error. At the time I thought the move was creative, snarky, and perhaps even a tad malicious. But I now see it as an extremely useful adjunct to the exercise. As RG says, too often we see what we expect to see, and tossing a real problem in there is hugely valuable.   I think of that early training every time I catch a real novice mis-tying their knot or setting up the belay/rap incorrectly.

t.farrell wrote: 

And I could argue that same mentality is how people rap off the ends of their ropes.

Could you?  How are you going to rap off the end of the rope if you maintain my approach and situational awareness?

-What is keeping me safe?
-What is keeping my partner safe?
-Is my current action going to affect that?

When I'm on rappel.  The two main things keeping me safe is control of that rappel and knowing where I am heading (aka how much rope I have left, where I am going to stop).  Further to the point this simple thought provoking process is readily applicable as new situations arises.  Situations that you don't have a checklist for.  

rgold wrote:
Finally, I think Patto's three questions make a lot of sense, and that because they are very different from attempts to enumerate specific minutiae.  His questions are not checks at all, rather, they are an invitation to situational analysis, and so are attention-creating invocations in a way specific item checks are not.

Thanks.  And while some might see it as a checklist, I think your description describes it more elegantly than I could.

rgold wrote: 
As I said previously, I think the biggest problem is not getting some large list of rather unconnected details right, it is more a question of being fully attentive to the situation at hand, and that is a mental state that has to persist after the checks are completed.  In this regard, I feel we have an entire culture of distracted complacency working against us, a combination of automatic gear solutions that take over some of the necessary climber actions and the growing social aspects of the sport, especially in gyms, that do almost everything possible to lessen any sense of seriousness of the enterprise. 

Once again, rgold crystalizes the struggle to define the seminal difference in climbing experiences, now and then. 

I hate coming off as an old fogey, but ditch the effing phones already. Unless you are a surgeon waiting for a call that there is a heart available for transplant, there isn't anything more important that being IN THE PRESENT while climbing. Does it take a death you may have cause by inattentiveness to make you realize the consequences of being distracted? (Look at all the car wrecks). Phones definitely are a part of that.

The social aspect of the sport, is in part, the reason climbing has exploded in popularity. My wife won't climb trad in some remote canyon, but she likes sitting around and chatting while sport climbing. Drives me crazy to see my belayer having a full on conversation while all I want is, SLACK for clipping and a TAKE for lowering. A GriGri can't replace a good belayer. 

I will say, Buck, that I did my best to make my observations about inattention inclusive rather than us-against-them.  I sometimes chat with others in the gym while belaying too, even though I heartily disapprove of the practice (and really don't do it once I get outside).  The whole enveloping environment (phones are a part but not everything), and the societal elevation of multitasking as an ideal rather than something often detrimental to the tasks at hand, tends to minimize climbing dangers and pushes them from the forefront of consciousness.  What happens is a desensitization to fear, which makes it easier to tolerate and overlook risky behaviors, and I'm not persuaded that there is some kind of age divide with a protected elder class.  We are all subject to these influences.

Nowadays, when someone in the gym speaks to me about transitioning to outdoor climbing, I always ask them if they appreciate the associated risks they will be embracing.  But the ensuing discussion is hypothetical; the desensitization process has already begun.  Same thing with leading trad.  Some people think it is just some "next step" akin to going from top roping 5.10 to toproping 5.11, and there is a lot of encouragement for that attitude, encouragement that skips over all the extra risks that are part of the bargain.

I think us vs them tribalism is counterproductive to fun...at its heart anyway.

Of course older people get distracted as well. But all of my traddie friends know when they need to be "on task" and when looking at a text is OK. It may be that until one, young or old, experiences consequences, it is all just academic.

I personally knew people that died from bad decisions. You probably do too. We try and learn from other's mistakes, but we need life experience to make that possible.

You could start randomly doing safety test on people's setups. Find random anchors and cut half of it off to make sure it still holds properly. If it fails than clearly they set something up wrong and will realize how bad their mistake is. I am sure they will not repeat it.

ViperScale . wrote: You could start randomly doing safety test on people's setups. Find random anchors and cut half of it off to make sure it still holds properly. If it fails than clearly they set something up wrong and will realize how bad their mistake is. I am sure they will not repeat it.

Happened to me once...did a full days TR session only to find 1/2 of my anchor "liberated" when I went to break it down. I guess it was strong enough.

rgold wrote:  Moreover, I suspect that check lists work best when there is a list of specific actions that need to be taken, but are going to be less effective when one has to recognize that something is configured properly, because of our experimentally-established tendency to see what we expect rather than what is.

It's not clear why you would think that this wouldn't also be applicable to aviation or surgical environments?

Of course it also applies to those environments; I never said that it didn't.  I just suspect that configuration gotcha's form a large proportion of safety concerns for climbers.

There is huge difference in between aviation and climbing. One has to pass exams to become a pilot. In aviation there is something behind those check lists. Education, and training, and understanding to name a few. In rock climbing those check lists could be at any point of the whole spectrum from safe to dangerous and from fun to annoying depending on a particular climber's background.

Healyje wrote: I've been lead rope-soloing extensively for four decades and so always do my own check. After so many years of it, I'm really not certain at this point if it matters at all how you check everything so much that you do check and check every single time because climbing and gravity are utterly unforgiving to mistakes and omissions.

I agree and want to add that if you are a social climber who climbs with other people you should have even better odds. That is if you know how to make friends/partners.

Mobes Mobesely wrote:

I agree and want to add that if you are a social climber who climbs with other people you should have even better odds. That is if you know how to make friends/partners.

It may increase your odds, but then I've seen a lot of distracted behavior where the checks were so cursory and rote while otherwise conversing such that a mistake could easily slip through.

P.S. I have lots of friends and partners, I just like climbing solo a significant amount of the time as it's both quite sublime and up to a third faster than climbing with a partner.

Good Morning Joe, your, rope solo lead style is inspirational (& For those who have tried it,I bet you almost never let go!) but it is not a good fit in today's gym fueled climbing scene. The current, constant stream of chi-chat and on goings -  like screaming, climbing( & on & off,B) has made the once relatively quite and meditative cliffs here on the lesser coast, un-bearable. A visit to  the Gunks is made 3x as stress-full do to the whole  _Yell Louder, to be sure to heard over the din_ thing.   Then, after 50 years of a strongly adhered to (climber enforced) No Bolting ethic, "they" add idiot  bolted anchors,that immediately became  Top rope stations, so now you  get the out door gym Shtshow.
The need for self reliance, teaching that Gravity sucks,constantly  & to always check your systems is an integral part of survival, as much in climbing as in life.

Healyje wrote:
It may increase your odds, but then I've seen a lot of distracted behavior where the checks were so cursory and rote while otherwise conversing such that a mistake could easily slip through.

P.S. I have lots of friends and partners, I just like climbing solo a significant amount of the time as it's both quite sublime and up to a third faster than climbing with a partner.

Tomorrow I took the day off to go rope soloing for the first time. Inspired by people like Joe. My reasons are so I don't have to depend on getting a partner for any given day to go climbing. It feels really liberating. Not that I don't enjoy climbing with people, but I don't want to be limited to when and where I can climb by other peoples schedules. 

I guess I will have to find a check system that works for me. I have the theory down already, just need to put it into practice. I'll be climbing routes I have already climbed many times.

My check system=don't die today, over and over. Rinse. Repeat.