Lost Art of French Free + Falling: A Climber's Gamble

To me, there is a distinction. A0/C1 involves aiders, while French free is the use of gear as handholds while still climbing in a natural style. One is much faster and more efficient than the other.

Alexander Blum wrote: To me, there is a distinction. A0/C1 involves aiders, while French free is the use of gear as handholds while still climbing in a natural style. One is much faster and more efficient than the other.

Yes yes, that’s all lovely, but I need to know how I can quickly compare it to MY favorite style to facilitate division and otherwise foster my own feelings of superiority

Healyje wrote: I've seen the write-ups of all the above accidents you've linked before and essentially every single one of them is a case of bad judgment around gear. 

You overlooked a key sentence of mine in the very section you quoted: "the greatest danger is every accident listed has some element of human error". So I agree with you, but the difference is I believe these errors could not be perceived or prevented.

The message from that list isn't that falls are a "roll of the dice", but rather that solid skills and judgment around gear placements are required. 

I disagree that skills can be quantified or judgement can be controlled with any certainty. How can a leader verify in the moment before taking a whip his judgement is perfectly sound? How does a leader know her skills are solid other than testing it with a fall? Even then, it proves such for that one and only instance. Hindsight is great but doesn't prevent injury from future falls.

only 10% were real artists with gear, another 25% were craftsmen, another 25% or so were competent, and the rest were nervous 

You say this was back in the day but with the surge of new trad climbers (myself included) I would venture that these numbers are still close. Which furthers my point that most climbers, 65% by your numbers, do not have the skills and judgement required to create perfect protection. I would further argue even the top 10% can't achieve perfection at every single moment on the rock. Human judgement can falter despite exceptional skills and years of experience.

The first two accidents I listed are climbers known by the community to have extensive experience and sound judgment, examples of the best and perhaps even better than your holiness. Your insinuation that these two climbers didn't have solid skills with placing gear is preposterous. Countless climbers will vouch that these two guys exercised the very best judgement possible on that day, yet they both hit the deck.

Led it 60-70 times without it and seven times this year before I blew that move, but then I was out of my frigging mind that day and should never have chosen to lead it.

Even you admittedly had a day of poor judgement that led to injury. Please answer this, did you know before getting on the climb that your judgement was off? Would you still have gone for it if you could have foresaw the outcome? Seems you had this thing wired and one day the dice rolled an unexpected way. Case in point of the gamble known as falling.

As Bryan pointed out you prefer to go for glory and that's all good, but such risks aren't mitigated or justified by fooling yourself or anyone else that falling can have a guaranteed outcome. Even with perfect gear the force of body hitting rock runs a high chance of injury. Anyone taking such risk should be aware of the gamble their taking.

bryans wrote: Yeah Joe I hear you the seat belt in my car can be fiddly so I just don't use it :) 

Best comment on this thread so far! [edit: except for perhaps mcarizona's falcon comment on the first page.]

I purpose a radical idea to vigorously stir the pot: If the predominant tactic of leaders was to prevent a fall rather than getting a clean free ascent, how many less climbing accidents and injuries would occur each year? If everyone stopped caring what others thought of them, would we care if an ascent was clean or not, or free or not, or if the ascent was even made? Truly take ego out of the equation and then tell me what remains important.

Andy W wrote: I purpose a radical idea to vigorously stir the pot: If the predominant tactic of leaders was to prevent a fall rather than getting a clean free ascent, how many less climbing accidents and injuries would occur each year? If everyone stopped caring what others thought of them, would we care if an ascent was clean or not, or free or not, or if the ascent was even made? Truly take ego out of the equation and then tell me what remains important.

This isn't really a radical idea. I'd say MOST trad climbers are climbing to prevent falls. Compare a day at even a popular single pitch trad place like Hidden Valley in J-Tree to what you see at a real SPORT crag. I don't witness a lot of people taking careless whips at any trad spot. At sport crags I see people whipping left and right, as they should.  And I'm not above pulling on gear if I need to do so to get through a tough spot. But I actually also believe that if you go into a climb thinking you're going to French Free it's likely to be a self-fulfilling prophesy. Better, IMO, to just choose routes that you can safely climb than go into every climb thinking you're likely to pull on gear. 

Andy W wrote: You overlooked a key sentence of mine in the very section you quoted: "the greatest danger is every accident listed has some element of human error". So I agree with you, but the difference is I believe these errors could not be perceived or prevented.

You are entirely mistaken if that's the case - each was totally preventable.

I disagree that skills can be quantified or judgement can be controlled with any certainty. How can a leader verify in the moment before taking a whip his judgement is perfectly sound? How does a leader know her skills are solid other than testing it with a fall? Even then, it proves such for that one and only instance. Hindsight is great but doesn't prevent injury from future falls.

Nonsense.

You say this was back in the day but with the surge of new trad climbers (myself included) I would venture that these numbers are still close. Which furthers my point that most climbers, 65% by your numbers, do not have the skills and judgement required to create perfect protection. I would further argue even the top 10% can't achieve perfection at every single moment on the rock. Human judgement can falter despite exceptional skills and years of experience.

Well, it depends on whether new climbers using gear instead of bolts are actually trad climbing or not.

As far as skills go compared to back in the day I'd say the percentage of people competent with gear is much worse today. With regard to your argument about artisans with gear I can't say much else other than you're wrong.

The first two accidents I listed are climbers known by the community to have extensive experience and sound judgment, examples of the best and perhaps even better than your holiness. Your insinuation that these two climbers didn't have solid skills with placing gear is preposterous. Countless climbers will vouch that these two guys exercised the very best judgement possible on that day, yet they both hit the deck.

Well, you'd and "The community" be entirely wrong and "the community" really isn't a particularly useful or accurate judge or skills with gear given over half "the community" is barely competent themselves. In each of the accidents, including the first two, there was either a clear lapse or judgment around the application of gear or a fundamental lack of understanding of the gear and its application or both - all were preventable.
 

Even you admittedly had a day of poor judgement that led to injury. Please answer this, did you know before getting on the climb that your judgement was off? Would you still have gone for it if you could have foresaw the outcome? Seems you had this thing wired and one day the dice rolled an unexpected way. Case in point of the gamble known as falling.

Definitely a lapse of judgment in terms of whether I should have gotten on a 5.11 R that day. But again, I was basically out of my mind and that was simply the wrong place to seek relief. Had it wired? Yeah, it's my route. But don't confuse a lapse in judgment around what to climb with my facility with gear once I leave the ground, one has nothing to do with the other.

As Bryan pointed out you prefer to go for glory and that's all good, but such risks aren't mitigated or justified by fooling yourself or anyone else that falling can have a guaranteed outcome. Even with perfect gear the force of body hitting rock runs a high chance of injury. Anyone taking such risk should be aware of the gamble their taking.

What I take away from your absolute paranoia around falling and take on FF is that, while you may be using gear, you are likely doing precious little actual trad climbing, but rather sport climbing on gear or sprad climbing.

Healyje wrote:Well, you'd and "The community" be entirely wrong and "the community" really isn't a particularly useful or accurate judge or skills with gear given over half "the community" is barely competent themselves. In each of the accidents, including the first two, there was either a clear lapse or judgment around the application of gear or a fundamental lack of understanding of the gear and its application or both - all were preventable.

So pretentious, and with zero factual data or even an anecdote to support any of your claims. The "community" I referenced are established and respected leaders, not some mouth-off on MP (you). To quote them directly, not that I think you'll care to comprehend my point:
Eldo Park Ranger: In this particular case, the very rare event of a carabiner unclipping from a sling happened not once but twice.
AAJ Editor: In Crill's case, where two separate placements came unclipped, extremely bad luck played a major role.
R&I Editor: This is an example of an accident that occurred despite the climber doing everything right.

Pray tell me, thou all so knowing, what exactly was so easily preventable in both cases. Use specifics. Prove you've actually spent time critically thinking about these and teach us something, if you think you know so much.

Definitely a lapse of judgment

A lapse in judgement is just that, it doesn't change based on what it's being applied to. If you admittedly lacked good judgement before leaving the ground, do you truly believe you had good judgement on the rock? Again I ask, could you see in that moment your judgement was poor? I would guess, as with most of us, you could not see your own poor judgement because you climbed anyways. That is the biggest danger: ourselves. Poor judgement can't be seen by the beholder because it takes solid judgement to assess it to be poor.

What I take away from your absolute paranoia around falling and take on FF is that, while you may be using gear, you are likely doing precious little actual trad climbing, but rather sport climbing on gear or sprad climbing.

What's the view like up there on yer high horse? I suspect the cloud of arrogance is too think to see thru so it doesn't matter. Nor do I care. I appreciated you furthering the discussion one step, but since you have failed to contribute anything tangible other than proving beyond a doubt how highly you think of yourself.

Señor Arroz wrote:This isn't really a radical idea.

I don' think you understand, or I didn't adequately convey, the full extent of what I'm suggesting. That is, every single fall is a gamble. Even falls on great gear (bolts) have inherent dangers that can lead to injury, namely body colliding with rock. Examples of sport climbing falling injuries:
hold broke, bolt pulled
carabiner unclips
rope caught under leg
pendulum
fatigue, failure to clip
long fall low angle too much slack
Similar to the first list of accidents I shared, they are all preventable but none due to gross negligence. Albeit rare, they are things that could happen to any of us. Thus, if every fall is a gamble with bodily harm, even if the odds are very slight, I'm suggesting we de-glorify falling across the board, teach all leaders to err towards preventing falls, and increase education about when it is safe to fall. If that is not so radical then why isn't it in learn-to-climb books or preached with every accident report? Maybe I missed that part of my training. I'm not saying we should eliminate falls, just significantly reduce them. I would be interested in seeing numbers on how many falls are taken vs how many injuries result (I don't have the resources). I'd also be interested to compare how many total climber injuries vs how many are cause by falling. Obviously lots of falls are taken every day without injury, but can anyone dispute that falling is the leading cause of climber injury?

I'd say MOST trad climbers are climbing to prevent falls. Compare a day at even a popular single pitch trad place like Hidden Valley in J-Tree to what you see at a real SPORT crag. I don't witness a lot of people taking careless whips at any trad spot. 

Are trad climbers just on routes way below their ability so as not to fall, or is everyone secretly pulling on gear? All I hear is constant preaching that it's perfectly safe to fall, just take the whip, it's not a real climb if you don't do it free, yet you claim trad climbers aren't out there taking lots of falls. These don't add up to me. How do you prevent taking falls other than climbing well below your ability or pulling on gear? I'm genuinely interested to add tricks to my hat.

Go into every climb thinking you're likely to pull on gear. 

I agree the above mindset is limiting. Change that to "go into every climb knowing you can efficiently pull on gear" and it's the opposite. It opens doors to routes otherwise out of reach. I'm admittedly a weak climber (I don't boulder enough), but I refuse to be limited in what I can experience based on my onsight ability. I live for long routes away from the crowds but many moderates have cattle trains; most 10c routes do not. I can confidently and safely get up something above my pay grade because I know how to fluidly seam tricks of aid within efficiency of free climbing. Just like rappelling, I practice often to stay proficient and efficient but I only use it when necessary and it's ideally anticipated.

Andy, I'm going to offer a different POV. By definition any sport with thousands of participants is going to have a certain statistically inevitable number of freak accidents. I'm sure there's a number of golfers who get killed by their own ball ricocheting off of trees, or eaten by alligators in FL. I know that there are a surprising number of skiers who die running into trees or snowboarders who die stuck in tree holes. Yet, statistically speaking, those are totally insignificant.

Same exact thing goes for accidents in which two carabiners mysteriously unhook.

The truth is that most of us aim to not fall but sometimes do. And more often than not, we've done a decent job with our gear and it works.

If I honestly thought falling on gear were a death wish I'd just choose another sport, or free solo, since the odds are the same.

Sure!  Pull on gear!  Just don't say you didn't, if you actually did!  I hate NOT seeing the top of the pitch at all, and I'm weak and get scared.  Climbing is a journey.  Go back stronger and more skilled, and SEND the damned thing!

Señor Arroz wrote: Andy, I'm going to offer a different POV.

I appreciate your alternate perspective and willingness to continue the discussion. As a lifelong tree snowboarder, in bound as a kid and now in the backcountry, that illustrates your point well about obscure statistics. And I will agree that biners unclipping are equally obscure. However climbers becoming injured from falling is not rare. It's like football players sustaining long term damage from repeated concussions -- players don't want to believe it but repeated documented cases correlate directly to injury. Now I didn't suggest the risks are anything close to a death wish, but just a sprained ankle can put someone out for weeks and incur hefty physical, mental, and financial costs. Or a compound fracture from a simple fall into the center of crash pads (link to MP thread, I hope he's healing well). Falling can really hurt!

And you left these questions unaddressed:
Are [most] trad climbers just on routes way below their ability so as not to fall, or is everyone secretly pulling on gear?
How do you prevent taking falls? Climbing far below my ability isn't challenging, so I'd rather pull on gear if those are my only two options to prevent whips. Downclimbing is always a good option too.
Can you dispute that falling is the leading cause of climber injury? If so, then what is?

The real art of french freeclimbing is not letting the belayer know that you are yarding on gear.

mcarizona wrote: climber 1 "this sure is a tough move..,  Say is that a falcon? out there?"

climber 2 (looks out for a bird) "oh you made the ledge... good move."

Andy W wrote:
Can you dispute that falling is the leading cause of climber injury? If so, then what is?

To be sure, I don't think this is true. The leading cause of climber injury is overuse. Fingers, elbows and schoulders are failing left and right, a lot of climbers going from one injury to the next. Injury from falling is actually pretty rare compared to that.

Kees van der Heiden wrote:To be sure, I don't think this is true. The leading cause of climber injury is overuse.

Awesome, thank you for contributing to the discussion! This is a common cause of injury I had overlooked. I just took a brief look at every thread on the first page of MP's injury forum to do some counting. I admit this is a diluted pool to sample from but it's a start and seems to support your claim. Here's the count:

Falling: 6
Overuse: 8
Rappelling or Lowering error: 1
Other sport: 2
Remainder: didn't specify cause of injury, injury wasn't sport related, wasn't related to injury, or I misread

So overuse is certainly a leading cause of injury, but falling appears to be close behind and perhaps not as rare as you and others suggest. Again, these numbers are NOT conclusive (anyone have a good resource to obtain such?). In considering this, I would like to know how many overuse injuries are from training/gyms vs outdoor climbing. If we isolate just outdoor climbing, does that change the leading cause? If we distinguish further to only injuries of leaders, then does falling become the prevailing cause? I'm very open to discussion as I am no expert. Are there people out there who study climbing injury and accidents to provide any authority on this topic?

If you read the published Accidents in North American Climbing, the leading cause of major, accute injury and death seems to be rappelling errors.

But those reports seem to focus on the worst cases of injury where rescue or recovery is needed. I do know several climbers personally who have been injured in falls so anecdotally that is more common to me personally. Ironically falls on 4th class terrain seem to have increased dramatically. 

Andy W wrote: So pretentious, and with zero factual data or even an anecdote to support any of your claims. The "community" I referenced are established and respected leaders, not some mouth-off on MP (you). To quote them directly, not that I think you'll care to comprehend my point:
Eldo Park Ranger: In this particular case, the very rare event of a carabiner unclipping from a sling happened not once but twice.
AAJ Editor: In Crill's case, where two separate placements came unclipped, extremely bad luck played a major role.
R&I Editor: This is an example of an accident that occurred despite the climber doing everything right.

Nothing whatsoever about being an Eldo Park Ranger, AAJ Editor, or R&I Editor necessarily make them experts or even good with pro themselves. I've known plenty of climbing rangers and writers (and throw in a boatload of AMGA-certified guides and SAR folks) who were barely more than competent with pro themselves.

Pray tell me, thou all so knowing, what exactly was so easily preventable in both cases. Use specifics. Prove you've actually spent time critically thinking about these and teach us something, if you think you know so much.

Happy to...

[Highly experienced climber, two pieces pull, two biners unclip, ground fall, other climbers verify did nearly everything right]:

'Nearly' being the key word here. I can look at his rack and by his choice of short draws alone I can tell he underestimated the ability of bad/strange things happening to placements and biners in falls. And he knew this route entailed diagonal sections and it's absolutely no coincidence the biners which came unclipped were the ones either on the diagonal or where the diagonal terminated. Both the R&I and AAC analyses explicitly fail to account for this (instead chalking it up to chance) or to emphasize the deleterious effects on the system, individual placements, and particularly extended rope-end biners such diagonal runs and changes in direction can entail. Bottom line is that in such instances you should either use microlockers or double and oppose the rope-end biner[s] at the start and finish of diagonal runs. A second lesson, though one of choice / judgment (in both this and the second accident) and not a cause of the accident is that tackling hard routes with marginal pro within close proximity to the ground or a ledge is inherently dangerous and require much greater care with regard to protecting them.

[Very experienced climber and guide, well rehearsed placements, four pieces pull, ground fall, last two were "bomber" setup as mini anchor]:

In this case the issue is, as only speculated in the AAC analysis, inappropriate gear selection for the route. The stiff stems were inappropriate for the side-by-side horizontal placements and really inappropriate for the two placements in the shallow crack above. You have to have flexible stems for horizontal cam placements, particularly when you know the gear above will be marginal. And any expectation cams in shallow placements with the stems sticking straight out from the wall will hold is way more mistaken than simply wishful thinking. Cams in such placements (even flexible-stem cams) will pretty much always lever out as opposed to rotating down and, even if the cracks were deeper, anytime you put cam lobes in motion such as when cams have to rotate down to the direction of fall, you're now gambling that they will somehow stop moving and regrip the rock.  So in this case, given they were headpointing on TR and knew the placements, they needed to get cams with flexible stems for the horizontal and narrower-head cams for the crack above which could have been oriented in the direction of the fall. Bottom line is you never want the cam stems sticking straight out from the wall in a fall which means never place them that way to begin with and sling them appropriately so that when you either climb past them or in a fall on a higher piece they don't rotate to the horizontal. And, as with the above accident, climbing hard, dicey, and marginally protected routes close to the ground is inherently dangerous.

A lapse in judgement is just that, it doesn't change based on what it's being applied to. If you admittedly lacked good judgement before leaving the ground, do you truly believe you had good judgement on the rock? Again I ask, could you see in that moment your judgement was poor? I would guess, as with most of us, you could not see your own poor judgement because you climbed anyways. That is the biggest danger: ourselves. Poor judgement can't be seen by the beholder because it takes solid judgement to assess it to be poor.

Again, don't mistake my lapse in judgment about what I chose to climb with my facility with gear when I climb. They are two very, very different things.

What's the view like up there on yer high horse? 

Well, yeah the view from 44 years of trad climbing is a bit different than your's or most folks and sadder than it's ever been with regard to people understanding the nuances of trad protection, even somewhat horrific at times in terms of watching people attempt to cross over from sport to trad by sport climbing on gear as opposed to actually trad climbing. But summing it up, you my friend, have a perversely paranoid take on falling such that I'm almost surprised you climb at all let alone sprad climb.

P.S. I do mentor three or four crossovers a year and spend a lot of time discussing 'the overall system', appropriate slinging, and demonstrating the many nuances involved with gear placements.

God I love the "I've been climbing for xxx years and you sir are a moron" replies.

How many years does it take of climbing to break out that specific reply? Rgold, goldsmith, healy and tut have all used it in the last 24 hours. I think it's worth a new thread, maybe a blog or podcast!

Ignorance before age, by all means it's definitely the way to go...

All sports have a risc for injury. Climbing, even when falling, isn't that bad when compared to rugby or soccer or some of these. (The potential for major mishaps is always there of course, more then in soccer).

When you choose to participate in a sport, you'll have to accept this risc. Try as you might to reduce it of course, but still, never quite zero. And every sport has its rules, official or not, like not hanging on gear when engaging in the sport of free climbing. As soon as you hang on gear, you didn't succeed that day. Nothing wrong with A0 climbs of course, but it's not free climbing.