Fatal accident at Tahquitz today

Pay attention to the weather, and quite simply, don’t be in an exposed place when it cuts loose. Storms don’t sneak up on anyone- people are too often oblivious to the signs. By 9 am that day, there was significant buildup over Idyllwild…by 10 or so, it was clear that a thunderstorm was likely very soon.

There is a long history at Tahquitz of people being objective driven, and not heeding pretty obvious weather signs.

Ian Lauerwrote:

 I can see the train of logic you're trying to follow, but I doubt the assertion that it would weaken the anchor, that defies the laws of physics. If the anchor material was being abraded by testing I could see this being true, but not purely due to loading it. It is the exact same logic as testing an aide piece, providing some proof that it held at a higher force than the one you intend to use it for. If materials magically failed at lower loads than they were tested at, there would be no point in proof testing climbing gear. Bounce testing an anchor as long as you have a sufficient backup should be totally fine.

Regardless, I don't disagree that you should just bring material to backup or replace worn that. 

It would be interesting to see experiments with cycling load testing on old material to confirm or deny though

Don’t ask Hownot2, they don’t know what shock loading is!

Bounce testing webbing is a different concept from bounce testing gear. With gear you are “setting” the piece or the testing “fryability” of a flake, different forces at play amigo.

Tradibanwrote:

Don’t ask Hownot2, they don’t know what shock loading is!

Bounce testing webbing is a different concept from bounce testing gear. With gear you are “setting” the piece or the testing “fryability” of a flake, different forces at play amigo.

We all agreed previously the best idea is to replace the tat if its questionable, so you're arguing just for the sake it

apogeewrote:

Storms don’t sneak up on anyone

Um... Storms can and do roll in from the "shadow" side of the mountain without any hints they are coming. This would be quite rare at Tahquitz, but not impossible. It's fairly common in the Sierras. 

Nonetheless, I agree that many people are oblivious and should be paying more attention to the weather developing around them. The signs were plainly evident on the day of this accident. 

Bill Lawrywrote:

…tl;dr? Just an idea about how the observed damage occurred….

Ok last swing at the dead horse here, as it has no bearing on any takeaways or lessons for others, but merely tries to flesh out a few details of what really happened in this specific tragedy  

Seems we are mostly in alignment except for one key aspect — The tossed down, majority of the rappel rope below Gavin and the device never came into play, and never snagged anything.  Of all the possibilities and uncertainties, this is the most firm.  You can verify it at home.   The rap clip in biners and bight would be sucked up tight to the device.  

The rockfall event was essentially concurrent with the climbers’ fall and anchor failure on one end or the other.  Only finer investigation could say whether rockfall precipitated Gavin’s overload on the anchor to failure, or the overload and failure initiated some rockfall, but it most likely all happened very quickly together in the immediate area of the tree.  

Ian Lauerwrote:

We all agreed previously the best idea is to replace the tat if its questionable, so you're arguing just for the sake it

I disagree. The supposed point of bounce testing is to make sure the tat is safe enough to rely on exclusively. If bounce testing weakens the webbing it is a very stupid thing to do. Or at the very least bounce testing doesn’t prove that the tat is sound rendering the practice useless.

If you have many raps ahead of you, you may want to rely on a minimal amount of gear, strip the anchor to the least, and keep that gear for a rap downstream.

Ergo, this is an important issue to flesh out.

Tradibanwrote:

I disagree. The supposed point of bounce testing is to make sure the tat is safe enough to rely on exclusively. If bounce testing weakens the webbing it is a very stupid thing to do.

You're postulating some sort of unspecified mechanism by which a bounce test would weaken the sling further. This isn't a car we're proposing to test-drive @10 000 rpm, the effect of which on the system is hard to evaluate afterward, even if no damages are obvious.

It's a simple sling, which can be inspected after the test. The mechanism by which it would weaken is strands breaking, which can be observed easily enough.

Mark Pilatewrote:

You can verify it at home.   The rap clip in biners and bight would be sucked up tight to the device.  

I can at home do a body-weight high-velocity FF2 on an ATC sans brake hand?!?! Now I’m questioning our friendship. :)

I’ll check around some. 

Bill Lawrywrote:

I can at home do a body-weight high-velocity FF2 on an ATC sans brake hand?!?! Now I’m questioning our friendship. :)

I’ll check around some. 

Lol.  This is how I win arguments.  Eliminate the other guy.  Haha 

On the Bounce test topic- I agree with Tradiban. test, but don’t bounce test. Test by using with minimal load as intended with a backup.

If the ultimate unknown strength is “X” and on every iteration of use the residual ultimate strength is X-y (y is a very small but real number) and as n—> gets larger ,(  X-y ) approaches zero.

When you “bounce test” to close or just below X, your “y” value is higher than a “realistic” test and you just needlessly made your “Real use” iteration ultimate unknown strength lower than if you didn’t bounce test.    

Greg Rwrote:

There have been a lot of mp discussions about the best way to build multi pitch anchors. This tragedy is great argument for having at least one cordelette in your kit. This story reinforces why webbing makes such poor rap anchors. With constant exposure to the sun, cord last many years longer as the core strength is preserved. I would suggest 6mm at a minimum. With the reduction in strength at the knot , 5mm comes in at about 3kn which is marginal for when a “surprise” increases the anticipated static load. 

Greg, thank you.  My post was not explicit enough to be fully understood.  I would never use one piece of 5mm cord as a single, non-redundant, rappel anchor.

Just us having this exchange will hopefully encourage people to think about what type and how much of backup "leaver" material they want to carry, if any. If they don't understand they have to educate themselves.  As others have stated, it is easy enough to leave your own sewn runners and carabiners.  I will do that as circumstances warrant.  Two years ago, I left a (30 year old) #4 camelot as a backup to a small tree during an unplanned descent due to illness.  Leave whatever you need to have a safe rap anchor.  Things can be replaced.  

Tradibanwrote:

Don’t ask Hownot2, they don’t know what shock loading is!

Is this a joke?
Cause the big ass drop tower that's built and operational would say differently. Haters gon' hate I guess.

Greg Rwrote:

There have been a lot of mp discussions about the best way to build multi pitch anchors. This tragedy is great argument for having at least one cordelette in your kit. This story reinforces why webbing makes such poor rap anchors. With constant exposure to the sun, cord last many years longer as the core strength is preserved. I would suggest 6mm at a minimum. With the reduction in strength at the knot , 5mm comes in at about 3kn which is marginal for when a “surprise” increases the anticipated static load. J

There are 5-5.5mm cords that are much stronger than 3kn when knotted.
an example: Blue water titan cord at 13kn before knots. Thats stronger than their 7mm accessory cord and a hair weaker than the 8mm.

Its great for threading around stuff since its kinda stiff and takes abrasion well since its HMPE. 

A better plan would have been to have a plan of what to do if the darkened clouds, which were evident long before the rain came, started raining. They should have waited out the storm, repelling is a high risk thing but they had plenty of discretionary time and doing it in a hail storm added to the risk.  They should have revised their preplan and went through their options.  They could have had alpine draws, they could have burned cams and stoppers, they could have used the tree, but they shouldn't have trusted their lives to a non-redundant piece of webbing that they didn't know the history of.  

This was 100% preventable.  Accidents in North American Climbing and the incident in Joshua Tree have this same scenario.  Tahquitz is a real alpine rock and you need a complete skill set to be there.  If your systems have holes, if your self-rescue has holes, if your risk management has holes, if your weather forecasting has holes, any one of them can be the link in the accident chain that leads to a bad outcome.  And just because you get away with something, like not putting a knot at the end of a reppel line, doesn't mean you will always get away with it, because if you add a link, like being tired or adding a distraction, it may be the link in the accident chain that kills you or your partner.  About every other week we hear the rescue helicopter fly over in the summer and most of the time it could have been prevented.  

If you are going to come up here you need to be a complete climber.  Some of the best books are the old books.  Royal Robbins' Basic Rockcraft and Advanced Rockcraft are still relevant to alpine climbing.  How many times have I seen a person place a cam right by a perfect horn?  Could you reppel if you only had the rope?  Or belay?  Do you read Accidents in North American Climbing and think how you would have prevented the scenarios from becoming a accident.  Are your plans realistic or complicated, very specific, hypotheticals, that would probably not apply to the real world. 

Gordon Graham: Predictable is Preventable.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NgQ5gOPZFoQ

https://www.amazon.com/Self-Rescue-How-Climb-David-Fasulo/dp/0762755334

On multi pitch I bring the fully-rated chalk bag belt and some quicklinks/rap rings. Back country/bigger objectives, I incorporate tied webbing runners, maybe some more webbing in my hydration pack.

That’s all well and good, but like others I think what happened here is indicative of other factors. We should all know not to hang it out on one unverified piece of webbing. Crap happens under extenuating circumstances though, hopefully these recent accidents get us out of trusting some tat just because it’s there and must have been trustworthy for somebody else at some time.

We’ve all probably gotten by on some bullshit before, we honor these folks by trying to minimize it in the future. RIP.

I'm not second guessing the deceased. I've sure bailed off some suspect things in my time. But their loss is a good reminder not to do that moving forward. Tat on trees is always tempting but especially suspect on Tahquitz  because something else lives in and around those trees -- rodents. 

A single piece of tat tells me it's not the typical rap station.

philip bonewrote:

A single piece of tat tells me it's not the typical rap station.

The normal way off Tahquitz is a walk off that was one more pitch up and over the top. But given their exposure to lightning and the pouring rain it's not unreasonable to bail by rapping. 

philip bonewrote:

A single piece of tat tells me it's not the typical rap station.

It wasn’t the location of the rap but the reliance of poor fixed anchors that caused the accidents.

We are rock climbers, we Rappell all the time. Needs to be off safe anchors. I’ve done some pretty sketch raps in my life, all could have been avoided by leaving more gear. Live and learn.

Tradiban wrote:

“Micro-tears” are invisible to the naked eye, but it’s more akin to a stretching of the fibers.

Tradiban, you have zero evidence for this mechanism and haven't backed it up with anything but your e-peen. But continue to postulate on it