What's wrong with this picture?

Screen grab from a youtube video.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lldx1Ie0c_0

Doesn't matter shouldn't fall ice climbing anyway

good question, what is wrong? please tell us  

Kai Larsonwrote:

Screen grab from a youtube video.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lldx1Ie0c_0

Is that a green ATC hiding behind that carabiner, I really can't even tell wtf is going on here 

The straightforward answer is that it is wrong. 

The realistic answer is that this style of setup are seen all the time in the mountain, and people live through it 99%.
Is it "by the book"? No.
For me the important thing when you do something like that is to KNOW you are doing it wrong (and your partner is cool with it).
If you re still ok with it then there is no law against recklessness, as long as there is no problem, of course...

M Jarmland wrote:

Are you saying this wasn't a mistake? That he did it to save time and energy because he knew the follower wasn't gonna fall?

Not saying that.
Saying that either it was a unintentional mistake of a guy that didn't know what he was doing or it was an intentional mistake a a guy who knew he was wrong but did it anyway...
It would be wrong in both cases but, to me, not the same kind of "wrong".

I have another example:
I see many mountain guides belaying clients on multipitch with a microtraxion (I ll not go into details about why). Is it design for that? of course not
What to think of a newbie at the crag belaying his mate with a microtraxion?
I think they are both wrong but one, more than the other.

So you're saying it either was or was not a mistake based on whether the guy knew what he was doing or not? Well yeah, I guess you've got all angles covered

T Legowrote:

So you're saying it either was or was not a mistake based on whether the guy knew what he was doing or not? Well yeah, I guess you've got all angles covered

Not what I said. I said it was a mistake in any case. I ll stop there. 

Edit:
In all fairness I just saw now that only the wire was clipped (coz someone mentionned it in a post below). My bad, should have looked more carefully. 

Fabien Mwrote:

Not saying that.
Saying that either it was a unintentional mistake of a guy that didn't know what he was doing or it was an intentional mistake a a guy who knew he was wrong but did it anyway...
It would be wrong in both cases but, to me, not the same kind of "wrong".

I have another example:
I see many mountain guides belaying clients on multipitch with a microtraxion (I ll not go into details about why). Is it design for that? of course not
What to think of a newbie at the crag belaying his mate with a microtraxion?
I think they are both wrong but one, more than the other.

Microtrax will hold body weight and then some. The ATC keeper wire? Not likely. OP's screengrab is a fatality waiting to happen.

Well, do we know how this was evaluated by the climbers? Sketchy anchors are kind of a part of the deal in the alpine but basic know-how of the physics involved with an ATC guide I would expect to be mandatory. 

They put this shot up on youtube so apparently were okay with it...

Edit: There we go. The old 'we all do dumb shit sometimes' argument. True though. 

Fabien Mwrote:

Not what I said. I said it was a mistake in any case. I ll stop there. 

Edit:
In all fairness I just saw now that only the wire was clipped (coz someone mentionned it in a post below). My bad, should have looked more carefully. 

Ok, well excuse my snark! I had assumed you noticed that the weight bearing connection was to the keeper wire, and were trying to justify THAT, heh. 

Nope. It's just plain wrong. There's no excuse for this one.

The fact that all the force of a fall would go onto the keeper loop is the most obvious and incredibly dangerous issue. For those who don't know, an ATC's keeper loop is only designed to hold the weight of an ATC, not to hold anywhere near the force of a fall.

But say the follower took a fall and the keeper loop magically held. Would there even be enough friction to hold the fall? In guide mode, you hang the device by the hole so that the device goes sideways. This increases the turns in the rope and increases the friction. The way it's used in the video, in order to catch a fall he would have to hold the brake end of the rope above the device to have a chance of catching the fall, which he clearly wasn't prepared to do.

Dave K wrote:

First glance: "That's not ideal, but it would still work"

Looking at it for a moment more: "Holy shit!"

We see what we want to see. It's lucky this is one of the times it didn't matter.

And thanks to the climbers who posted up. It's something we all need to remember.

This is alpine, which is challenging, and has more opportunities to get nailed. But? Single pitch cragging, I'm guessing, is where these mistakes slip through more often.

In this case? It's the equivalent of rigging a rappel and only catching one of the two strands in the ATC. Any testing at all of the rigging would help make this oops apparent.

The other thing that happens, is we don't listen when that glance seems off. Tired, complacent, thinking about pizza, whatever. That second or even third or fourth look still only takes seconds.

If it seems off, it probably is.

Best, Helen

If I arrived at a belay to find that shite, I don't think I'd be climbing with that person ever again.

If you look at that and say "Oh well, it happens. Apline amiright? Lol," your self-preservation instincts are miscalibrated.  

The biggest problem with it is that its not in Accidents in North American Climbing. JK! Something akin to this is in every edition... I'm glad the soloing partner lived without incident.

Kai Larsonwrote:

Screen grab from a youtube video.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lldx1Ie0c_0

Shouldn't Youtube be contacted and this video taken down?

Climber 4QualityCommunitywrote:

Shouldn't Youtube be contacted and this video taken down?

Maybe better to ask the guys that posted it to retitle "How to NOT alpine!" and put a skull&bone image across this section of the clip.

At risk of painting with too broad a brush, I generally would assume a team decked out in Go Pros is “just good enough to film themselves being stupid”  lol  

Watched most of the video. The screenshot is at 8:54.

There are other shots of further top belays. Clearly  (unless there's more stuff I'm not seeing), they know what they're doing, and from the discussion, this was a mistake.

Betcha anything, he fiddled with something else in the middle of setting up, and the brain decided it had completed the usual task in the usual way.

This isn't a noob mistake. To my eyes, its the much scarier type that anyone is capable of making. 

A question?

On popular climbs that will likely have other parties climbing? Are you better off staying a little closer, so you have the benefit of hearing "ice!"? I was struck by the courtesy George got, with that being repeated down to him, even "big ice" or "little ice". Or would you leave more distance and hope you see/hear it coming? 

This will never be me, ice cragger on top rope, at most, just curious.

H.