Looking for feedback on a near miss that happened this past weekend

I think you've learned an important lesson that a little slack, plus rope stretch, plus the belayer getting pulled up, can often result in a longer fall than expected. Don't forget that.

Don't worry about soft catches on climbs that are less than vertical. Leaving more slack does not make a soft catch, it just makes a longer fall. Jumping makes a soft catch. Don't jump if your partner is anywhere near the ground (rule #1: keep your partner off the ground). Don't jump if your partner is tumbling down less than vertical terrain.

Based on your description, I probably would have walked up to the base of the climb and
-- noted the big runout between the 3rd and 4th bolts
-- noted that the climb was at my limit
-- noted that it was the end of the day and I was tired

Under these conditions, I'd certainly back off.

This may be more controversial, but you could have been a hero and jumped backwards down the hill/cliff behind you. Things happen really fast, so you have to plan that sort of reaction before the climber actually falls.

These comments are all excellent. I just want to add this: After 20 years of climbing, I just took a Rock Warriors Way falling clinic this summer, and I'm now a bit of a booster. I didn't realize that there were very specific skills you can practice to make falling safer. The typical practice whip in the gym doesn't cut it if you don't know the correct strategies. Since you and your friends are progressing together, I highly recommend seeking out one of these clinics.

Jonathan Awerbuch wrote: This may be more controversial, but you could have been a hero and jumped backwards down the hill/cliff behind you. Things happen really fast, so you have to plan that sort of reaction before the climber actually falls.

I don't think that's controversial at all. The belayer's job isn't to always give a soft catch but rather the best catch in a given scenario. If the choice is between a hard catch or a deck, pick the hard catch every time. This is also why practice catches, and catches along a varied spectrum of weight differences, are important for someone who is learning how to belay.

Be less overconfident.

Wow, a big thanks to everyone who has taken the time to provide such constructive and helpful feedback. There's some really great suggestions and takeaways here, and I sincerely appreciate it. We're definitely going work on building experience with less challenging climbs, improving muscle memory when belaying, assessing routes before getting on the wall, working on body positioning and incorporating so many other helpful suggestions that have been posted here. Up to this point, we had been very conservative with the sport climbing routes we chose, and this incident suggests that that is probably the best policy for us at this time. Also sorry for the slow reply, I keep hitting the spam filter since I have a new account and am posting "frequently". Doh! I ended up just making a second account because I had waited all day, and it still seemed to think I was posting spam because I was attempting to post too soon from a new account . . .

Anyway, it's hard to address everything that was brought up, but I have thoroughly read every comment and will continue to digest the wealth of information in them. I will try to address a few things that got brought up here:

Ska Ggs, you're exactly right. The crux was at the beginning, but it burnt him out by the time he got to the roof section. This is where more critical thinking may have come in handy. It would've been better to stop and hang at bolt 3, evaluate the spacing to the next bolt and think about the strength required to move through that roof and determine whether or not it seemed safe to proceed.

Alex R, you make a very good point, although I think I also worded the above description poorly. What happened was very confusing, and that confusion has also been carried into my description of the events unfortunately. I hadn't fed out the larger amount of slack you'd need to actually pull the rope up and place it in the draw but rather I meant I fed enough slack for him to move up to try clipping at waist height instead of around chest height where he was initially thinking of clipping. Attempting to clip at the waist also felt bad for him, so he asked me to take in the slack, thinking he'd be downclimbing or falling, but then he requested some slack when he felt I was pulling him off the wall. He tried downclimbing a little but fell pretty quickly after that and I attempted to take that slack back in as he was coming down, but I believe there was still some slack in the system when he fell. So there was a lot of back and forth with taking/giving slack as he tried to figure out what to do, what clipping position might work, or if he should just bail. We probably should've been more decisive here, and definitely should've evaluated this section more from the ground first. Thanks for providing that video, also. That along with many of the other comments here cleared up some of the confusion we had about what can cause someone to fall head-first.

Señor Arroz, I was standing close to the wall, and did not significantly come off the ground. I weigh about 10lbs less than the climber. That is a an interesting point about going direct in to the bolts and stick clipping up, and something we'll definitely consider in the future as an option for doing a more challenging route with less risk. I like the cheater draw!

Bryce, you're right, the route next to Get the Baby is a 5.5/5.8 depending on which way you finish, and to be close to Get the Baby you need to take the 5.8 finish, so I should've said you need to go up the 5.8 to retrieve the gear, although we had done the 5.8 version earlier in the day without issue. That's my bad for the misinformation there.

Mike, this is a really smart idea. We'll do this from now on!

Lena, thanks for the suggestion. We'll make sure to check for any fit issues before going climbing again.

Adrienne, good point about the risk of de-gloving. I always try to be intentional with how I clip my draws for this reason, and it makes sense to extend this caution to grabbing the dogbone.

Harumpfster, you make some really good suggestions about being in control of your body positioning. I think this is something worth taking time to work on, as it sounds like a good way to help mitigate some of the risk involved in falling.

Jonathan and Steve, I actually considered after the fact that jumping down the hill/cliff may have been a safer option, but I thought maybe I was just having crazy thoughts. Hearing someone else suggest it makes me think it's not such a bad idea, given the circumstances (though it was very steep, it wasn't a totally sheer drop and I likely wouldn't have sustained an injury that would've been comparable to what might happen to a person decking).

Victor, I never knew they offered such classes. We would definitely be interested in something like that and will be sure to look and see if there's anything offered in our area.

Christian, yeah, noted.

Thanks again for all the suggestions, everyone. After Sunday night I was feeling like maybe we should hang up our harnesses for good, but I think after reading all the feedback, we have a better understanding of the risks involved and how some of those risks can be mitigated going forward. I hope we can move on from this and be better, safer climbers.  

Thanks, Jaren. I'm already starting to feel a bit better about things. I've always tried to be so careful, and have taken many classes with guides, (two on sport climbing alone, one indoors and one outdoors). I top-roped outside for two years before even trying sport climbing! It sucks knowing you still might not make the best judgement calls, and then of course, as many have pointed out, climbing is just inherently dangerous as well. But I've so enjoyed climbing outdoors, and I really want to continue, but I also want to be safe. I think the help from everyone here can help me do that as much as it is possible to do so in a sport like climbing. Thanks again :] And with that, goodnight for now! 

Jo K wrote: 
Bryce, you're right, the route next to Get the Baby is a 5.5/5.8 depending on which way you finish, and to be close to Get the Baby you need to take the 5.8 finish, so I should've said you need to go up the 5.8 to retrieve the gear, although we had done the 5.8 version earlier in the day without issue. That's my bad for the misinformation there.

Did you end up doing this and getting your gear back? Even if you do the direct finish there is still another route in between the two (a 5.8 corner/small roof). I don't remember them being particularly close together. Anyways, I think others have had lots of great advice that you are digesting well and I'm glad to hear that you are feeling a little less shaken.

Jo K wrote: Hey all,

This is my first post, and I wasn't sure exactly where to put it, but I figured I couldn't go wrong putting it up in the "General" section. Anyway, as the title suggests, my partner and I had a near miss this past weekend, and I've been replaying the incident in my mind over and over again trying to figure out what went wrong, where bad judgement calls were made, and what we can do to ensure something like this never happens again. I thought it might be a good idea to get some feedback from climbers who are more experienced. So anyway, here we go:

My climbing crew consists of my partner and I, plus two of our friends. We are usually top-rope climbers, but recently we've been getting into sport climbing. We've taken some classes on sport climbing, practiced sport climbing and lead belaying in the gym, and gone sport climbing on our own outside a couple of times before without incident -- that is until this weekend. The day was going fine, and we had done some routes that were below our usual TR grade, no issues. It's getting close to time to go, and our friends are just starting the route we had just finished. We've got a bit of time to kill while they do their route, but we had climbed everything in the area at-or-below our usual sport grades, and we didn't have enough time left to move to a new area. So my partner eyes up a 10a route next to us, which I'd say is right at the grade he typically TRs at, but we figure it's worth a try. The rules say there's no topping out here (it's very chossy), so if he wants to do the route, he has to lead it. We've got one of those Squid stick-clips that lets you pull quickdraws back off the wall, and the route right next to the 10a is a 5.5, so we know we can get our gear back using the Squid from the 5.5 even if he can't finish. We stick clip the first bolt of the 10a and he gives it a go. He makes it through the first three clips with a bit of difficulty, and then gets to the fourth clip. So on this route, the first three clips are all spaced closely together, then between the third and fourth it's a bit more run out. The fourth bolt is also right under the roof, making it very difficult to clip. I can see he's struggling as he's clinging to the roof, and he communicates to me that he's not sure if he is going to be able to make the fourth clip. I had fed out slack for him to make the clip and being that he's right at the bolt, if he falls now, he's going to fall fairly far. Thinking he's going to fall, he asks me to take, so I do. Then he asks me for slack, (which I thought was because he was going to try to clip again, although later he told me it was because I had taken in too much slack, and he felt like I was pulling him off the wall). After some time of him going back and fourth about whether he's falling or clipping, he now says he's going to fall, so I try to bring in some of the slack I had just fed out, and then he falls. So he falls from the fourth bolt of a 4-bolt 40 ft route with the first 3 bolts clipped. I know 100% that his foot was not underneath the rope, because I always watch my climber when I'm belaying and tell them if they're doing that to fix it, but when I catch him, he's flipped head-first with his head maybe less than a foot from the ground. We're wearing helmets of course, but I'm still very freaked out thinking about the possible head/neck/spine injuries that could've happened, and I never want something like that to happen again. That was way too close to a ground fall, and a head-first ground fall at that. Judging how far he was above his last clip before he fell, the distance he fell seemed about right, maybe a little bit further, which I assume was from the bit of slack and the rope stretch. I'm still a bit puzzled as to how he ended up upside-down, though. He was instructed never to try to grab the rope when falling, and to just let himself fall, so that's what he did, but he said he could feel himself rotating backwards as he fell. He said his thoughts were "Ok, I'm falling . . . ok, I'm falling pretty far, I feel a bit unbalanced . . . ok, I'm upside-down . . . oh . . . I got pretty close to the floor."  Oddly, I don't remember really being sucked up the wall when I caught him, but I may just be mis-remembering. Usually when I catch him on a lead fall, I go up the wall a bit, as I'm maybe 10 lbs lighter than him, but truthfully I haven't caught him on that many lead falls. We're trying to figure out what went wrong and I have some hypotheses that I'll share here, but I'd love some feedback, as I think we need to re-evaluate our judgement before we go climbing again. Here's what I think may have went wrong:

1. Maybe we shouldn't have done a route at that grade to begin with? Being mostly TR climbers, we're used to choosing challenging routes outside, because on TR, if you're setting up your systems correctly, there's not really additional risk to trying something at or above your limit. But perhaps we should be much more conservative when climbing sport.
2. Maybe we should've studied the route more closely before beginning it. This is a new climbing area, and the one-and-only comment on this route on Mountain Project basically says "I question why they put the fourth bolt right under the roof. Placing it a bit lower on the face would not have disrupted the sequence and made the climb safer." Perhaps if we had looked more carefully at this route, especially since it was at the climber's limit, we would've noticed that this bolt placement would make clipping the fourth bolt difficult, and make the route less safe.
3. I think I could've done better belaying. Obviously, the fact my partner said later that he felt like I was pulling him off the wall was bad. Did he fall backwards because I didn't give him a soft catch? Maybe by taking in too much slack, I didn't allow for a soft catch, and that's what made my partner fall backward? I didn't "hop" into the fall either. However, he said he was falling backwards before the rope caught him, so I'm not sure if this would've changed things. Maybe if I had given him more slack his head would've hit the ground? This is the part I feel most unsure of, what I should've done differently as a belayer. I want to be the best, safest belayer I can be, but I feel like I failed here and may have made a bad judgement that could've seriously injured my climber. I wish someone more experienced had been there to tell me if I had done something wrong. I feel like there was a bit of confusion at that fourth bolt when he was figuring out if he was going to try to make the clip or not, and I wonder how this could've been handled better.

Well, at the end of the day, no one got hurt, and we got all our draws back, so I was extremely grateful for that. I would really like to continue sport climbing, but I'm having a spiritual crisis now, and I feel we shouldn't go again until we can learn to make better judgements. Any feedback on how we can be better and safer would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

All I can tell from this is that brevity is not your strong point.

Shit happens, don't worry about it.

Harumpfster Boondoggle wrote: 
These sorts of "end of the day going for it" misadventures are all too common.

+1 on "end of the day" as a possible factor.  Awareness that you don't have a ton of time to waste can encourage risk taking.  I know it did for me once.

Not sure if anyone pointed this out, but the fact that you took the time to well-consider the situation, and then took the step of writing it all down and requesting feedback/advice, says a lot about you as a safe climber. Every fall that doesn't end in injury is a gift, and many would mistakenly take it for granted that things would turn out the same way if repeated.