Yer gonna die myths

Yoda Jedi Knightwrote:

What did they recommend instead?

Going through both tie in points. 

Ari Stonerwrote:

gate flutter happened to my friend this season and he nearly decked from the top of a route 

If this is true: 

1. He fucked up if 1 piece unclipping made him almost deck from the top of a pitch.

2. It was likely more of a back-clip or it being snagged or pinned in a weird way than gate flutter. Gate flutter is when the carabiner is slammed against something and the mass of the gate causes it to vibrate open and closed (ever so slightly). It can cause broken carabiners but rarely if ever should unclip them.

Willing to be proven wrong about this but my comment was more about the YGD of solid gates on the rope side of biners of quickdraws. People seem to always attribute gear unclipping to gate flutter and I'm not sure why that is.

John Sigmonwrote:

Had two different amga rock guides scold me for girth hitching a tether to my belay loop because it “wasnt redundant”   

Always love people who don't realize that the belay loop is usually actually 2 redundant slings. 

Connor Dobsonwrote:

If this is true: 

1. He fucked up if 1 piece unclipping made him almost deck from the top of a pitch.

2. It was likely more of a back-clip or it being snagged or pinned in a weird way than gate flutter. Gate flutter is when the carabiner is slammed against something and the mass of the gate causes it to vibrate open and closed (ever so slightly). It can cause broken carabiners but rarely if ever should unclip them.

Willing to be proven wrong about this but my comment was more about the YGD of solid gates on the rope side of biners of quickdraws. People seem to always attribute gear unclipping to gate flutter and I'm not sure why that is.

I think it's just a matter of putting your gates toward the side you fall from. so not doing that is something you can do to protect yourself. this also comes up almost every year in Accidents in North American Climbing. It is definitely a real thing that leads to accidents

Connor Dobsonwrote:

Always love people who don't realize that the belay loop is usually actually 2 redundant slings. 

How many slings was that tether tho. 

Non-stainless bolts

Steve Williamswrote:

We're all gonna die.

This is the biggest myth in this thread. I'm gonna live forever 

Dan Dwrote:

This is the biggest myth in this thread. I'm gonna live forever 

FAME!

Jason Zevenbergenwrote:

Unused, properly stored soft goods older than 5 years.

At what point does this become true? I feel like on a long mixed route it's probably fine to use 30 year old gear, right?

Ari Stonerwrote:

I think it's just a matter of putting your gates toward the side you fall from. so not doing that is something you can do to protect yourself. this also comes up almost every year in Accidents in North American Climbing. It is definitely a real thing that leads to accidents

To not sort of derail this thread, I created one here about gate flutter.

I'm tempted to be with Connor on this one - I don't see how an open gate from gate flutter could lead to the rope unclipping. I mean sure, it's attributed to that in some accident report. But how can one differentiate between "gate flutter caused the rope to unclip" and "bad clip/weird rope twist caused the rope to unclip"? As far as I can tell, we can't.

If you clip the bolt-side carabiner on a quickdraw into the rope, YGD from micro-abrasions 

John Sigmonwrote:

Had two different amga rock guides scold me for girth hitching a tether to my belay loop because it “wasnt redundant”   

Ha! That's pretty bizarre because on an AMGA rock guide course I took the lead guide for the course made fun of someone for not fully trusting their belay loop in a similar scenario... 

Were these guys SPIs or full blown certified? I would bet the former.

Knots DO reduce the MBS of applicable soft materials.  This is not a myth. Whether or not that means YGD depends on a bunch of other stuff. 

Arthur Wwrote:

Knots DO reduce the MBS of applicable soft materials.  This is not a myth.

You probably won't listen to what I'm about to say, but lots of people (including me) need to hear this regularly, so I'm going to just put it out there:

Correcting people pedantically doesn't make you look smarter.

The myth isn't that knots reduce MBS. The myth is that knots reducing MBS matters. If a 20kN MBS gets reduced to 10kN, that's still more than enough for almost anything we do regularly in climbing.

I'm not saying you're stupid. I'm sure you are smart enough to figure out what the person you were responding to meant, but you probably saw the opportunity to correct someone and jumped in without thinking it through fully. That's a very understandable mistake: I do that all the time. But it's a negative personality trait that I'm trying to work on. Instead of looking for places where people are wrong to correct them, I'm trying to understand people and look for where they might be right.

I realize I'm sort of jumping in to correct you here. ;) But I hope it helps.

Kevin DeWeese wrote:

Y'all really working hard to ruin what was starting out as a fun thread. 

Yes, but let me insert a paragraph of unnecessary distinction sprinkled with some pedantry because I like unsolicited turds floating around in my forum punch bowls.  :-D

John Sigmonwrote:

Had two different amga rock guides scold me for girth hitching a tether to my belay loop because it “wasnt redundant”   

Did one of them tell you not to yell "rope" before you pull one from an anchor to retrieve it?   

TRS with a microtrax will desheath your rope, with a rollnlock will cut your rope straight through. I guess the only safe way is to tend a clove hitch.

Returning to the point of this thread:

Cross-loading causing a carabiner to break. The UIAA standard for carabiner minor axis strength is 7kN, which is stronger than a lot of the trad gear I've taken lots of falls on.

The bigger concern with cross-loading is that the gate might open.

James Arnoldwrote:

Ha! That's pretty bizarre because on an AMGA rock guide course I took the lead guide for the course made fun of someone for not fully trusting their belay loop in a similar scenario... 

Were these guys SPIs or full blown certified? I would bet the former.

I think the guide's comment reflects current "AMGA practice" to GH through the hard points, nothing more. It may all be based on an over-reaction to Todd S's accident, but we all know how relevant THAT is to normal practices.

Kevin DeWeese wrote:

YGD myths aren't things that absolutely can't happen, they're things that probably won't happen but people treat  them like they leave piles of bodies in their wake

Yeah, but YGD myths aren't things that absolutely can't happen, they're things that probably won't happen but people treat  them like they leave piles of bodies in their wake