How To Rescue a Free Soloist

Yoda Jedi Knightwrote:

Where does Bearded Cabbage fall in the insanity scale?

Not very?

How about rescuing a free soloist while free soloing. Sound crazy.  Sound stupid.  Probably both.  But, that's what I choose to attempt last year.  

I head up to the flat irons in Boulder late in the day with approach shoes and a headlamp.  It was late enough in the day that I knew I might finish in the dark.  I didn't expect to see anybody else.  Low and behold, as I approach the base I see a guy about 100 feet up, in a high step, shouting to his friend that is about 200 feet up.  I thought he was posing for the Gram or something.  Then I hear him yelling things like "I can't hold on any longer" and "I don't want to die".  He was stuck in the high step with full on Elvis.  He is going to peel off any minute.  His buddy (for lack of a better word) says he needs to go higher to escape the route, then he will go back to the base and come back up.  Time is of the essence.  Fuck!  What do I do?  No time to call for a rescue.  I didn't have my phone anyway.  

I carefully solo up behind him, speaking softly so I don't startle him, I say "I'm going to help you".  He keeps saying "I don't want to die".  His whole body is shaking.  

(More to come.  I have to go to work.)

Can’t wait for the finish…

so far, what I have is: there was a guy who is stuck and can’t move,  and seeing this, Greg quickly sneaks up behind him and starts whispering in his ear  ;)

Mark Pilatewrote:

Can’t wait for the finish…

so far, what I have is: there was a guy who is stuck and can’t move,  and seeing this, Greg quickly sneaks up behind him and starts whispering in his ear  ;)

So I said “hey man, those are some really cool Elvis moves.  I think I’m really falling for you. You wanna go on a date”?  He turned around and said “you look like a really good catch.  I feel like I’m head over heals for you”.

How has no one mentioned a crash pad?

Gumby Kingwrote:

How has no one mentioned a crash pad?

But dont stack them so nobody twists an ankle

Soloist rescued on the same route soloist died on a few months ago, El Cajon Mountain. Any details in how it was done?

Are we sure it's not that guy that was saying he wants to solo even though he knows his head isn't in the right place? I forget his name.

the key to rescuing a soloist is don't yell rope when you throw the rope down onto them.  you don't want to scare them.

Tradibanwrote:

Soloist rescued on the same route soloist died on a few months ago, El Cajon Mountain. Any details in how it was done?

That’s my IG story.

I was planning on making a post about the incident in the SoCal regional forum later today, but maybe it would be better here for visibility?

B Donovanwrote:

That’s my IG story.

I was planning on making a post about the incident in the SoCal regional forum later today, but maybe it would be better here for visibility?

Thank you for your service.

Knock it out wherever you would like, I definitely like to hear the story either way.

Copy pasta from the thread I posted in the SoCal forum : 

I am sharing my account of this incident yesterday because it really pissed me off, quite frankly affected my headspace the entire day out, and IMO is telling of a troubling shift in attitudes in climbing - specifically free soloing. Some of the incidents and accident reports that I’ve read here and elsewhere can be frustrating and or emotional even secondhand, but having been foisted into this rescue scenario yesterday by an irresponsible and unprepared soloist - internally spiraling over very possible “what ifs” or alternative outcomes - I’m feeling like I’ve been pushed over the line. Something significant need to change.

I’ll do my best to keep the account of event to the hard facts, but many of the smaller details are essential and unbelievable.

I meet my partner at the trailhead at 7:45. Late start but fewer cars at the pullout than I expected. Two vehicles other than ours, so we figured there could be a party at the wedge or down on mountaineers area. No surprise - it’s the weekend.

Making nice time on the hike, we cross the final drainage and turn north up the slope for the final part of the approach. At some point, my squinty sweaty eyes can make out a climber on p1 of Leonids. No surprise there. He seems to be at the awkward spot (maybe bolt 3-5ish) and he’s not moving. Having both have climbed Leonids a few times, my partner and I lightly joke about being stuck on at that little crux. Five or ten minutes later, checking on the climber, he’s still not moved. Oh well - we’ve all been there. As we draw nearer to the wedge, I’m starting to see things more clearly and I’m beginning to speculate that he’s unroped. Closer, I can now see that there’s no rope and nobody on the ground. Seems like at about that time he must have spotted/heard us and starts yelling down to us. “HEYYYY!!! Can you, uh, help me out???”.

First thing I yell back - “what the fuck are you doing up there, man?!” He replied something along the lines of not knowing and being in over his head.

“So you need us to bail you out? Is that what you’re saying?” Climber confirms.

We respond that we will rope up and bring him to the ground. We ask if he’s at a decent stance, not pumping out. Climber confirms. We drop our packs and start to tie in. I ask the climber if he was aware of the fatal accident on the exact same route by a young man just this past December - climber states that they are unaware.

I ask if he happens to have a harness in his pack, which he did - one that appeared brand new, next to his cell phone and some other bizarre climbing gear, like some metolius QDs from the 90s with a price tag from mammoth gear exchange still stuck on them… My partner ties in and leads the route up to where the climber was perched, clips a quickdraw just about their head and lowers down to him. Getting the awkwardly perched soloist into his harness wasn’t an easy maneuver, so my partner passed him some long runners to make a sumo harness of sorts. Climber has no idea what to do with runners. He does not know what a girth hitch is. Eventually he gets secured to my partner and is able to get into his harness, attach the duo via belay loops and lowered them to the ground.

Upon returning to the ground, I get a closer look at the climber. Short shorts, no shirt, no harness, no approach shoes on him. I ask “so what was your plan today? You weren’t going to rappel, so what was it?” He replied that he was going to “walk off”. Now, some who know the area *well* would tell you that it’s possible to reach the S Ridge from somewhere well above the top of the left wall routes, but he indicated that he would have ventured out right (east). No trail out that way. No shoes besides his climbing shoes. I told him there was no way down that way and he would have been bushwhacking for hours if he had gotten up there. It was very apparent that this was truly the first time that he had considered these any of these logistics. I am feeling like he must have had a very similar planning process to jumping on this 300’ 5.9 which he had never before climbed…

My partner issues some light admonishing in hopes of making this a lesson actually learned. I was nowhere near as compassionate. I’m not excited about the possibility of having to help with a body recovery, administer CPR, scoop your brains up, or even go up ~40’ and bring him down - it’s not the responsibility of others and default behaving like he did forces total strangers into unwanted scenarios. It is not cool. It’s not a thing that we enjoy doing. We *will* rescue you, but ideally wouldn’t have to. It is this kind of selfish mindset that other people would show up with a rope sooner or later and he’ll just entangle them into his shit show. Not ok with me.

Climber awkwardly tells us that he actually has to get going somewhere, he’s late for something. My partner asked him how long he had been hanging at that stance and he replied that it was so long he was embarrassed to admit. 30 minutes, an hour? But he’s late for something and it’s 9:30am. He really thought he was going to OS solo this route and get down to meet somebody for breakfast or something. He picks up his bag of things and takes off without saying much. It’s this wildly casual attitude that I really want to talk about.

I just can’t wrap my mind around really any decisions that this person made that day. I do not consider myself a soloist in any capacity, but soloing a route onsight - even if well below your fitness level - seems crazy. Getting something familiar dialed and going ropeless seems like another story, but I don’t want to open Pandora’s box for this debate. I have climbed Leonids four or five times - never really struggled anywhere on the route, always super fun, but I’ve never considered soloing this sustained type of sport route. Why in the world that people are attracted to solo it onsight, I’ll really never understand. But apparently it’s becoming an appealing thing to do.

My takeaway is this - I really can’t say if this climber from yesterday realized the true seriousness of his situation. We got him down lickety split - strangers came to the rescue like he thought they would - but that doesn’t make any of this ok or just another day out climbing - for him or for us. Another party later told us that they saw him on the trail on their way up and that he smiled, said hello and seemed normal. Not exactly the thousand yard stare that I’d expect from somebody who just faced down decking for the better part of an hour before being rescued by less than willing strangers. I do not know whether or not this will be a lesson learned, and I think that’s pretty troubling. I do not think that we should normalize having to bail out soloists or just shrugging it off when we read about another one of them taking the final fall.

Everything that I read about the soloist falling from Leonids in Demeber really frustrated, saddened and confused me. This scenario seems all too similar and it’s tough to deny that it’s a trend in the attitude towards soloing. Neither of these climbers were knowledgeable enough,  prepared or capable of soloing Leonids but they both felt like giving it a shot wasn’t going to have high consequences. One of them is no longer with us. I’m happy that the climber yesterday stayed where he was and didn’t continue upward - but that’s literally the only thing he did right that day. So many bad decisions.

Something needs to change before more lives are lost to this causal and lazy mindset.

B Donovanwrote:

The amount of things that caught you by surprise makes you look like the noob. There are a lot of people getting in over their head these days. Help out if you can or turn the other cheek and move on. Spare us the gigantic post.   Nobody reads more than a paragraph or two.

Greg Dwrote:

The amount of things that caught you by surprise makes you look like the noob. There are a lot of people getting in over their head these days. Help out if you can or turn the other cheek and move on. Spare us the gigantic post.   Nobody reads more than a paragraph or two.

I bet you’re a ton of fun on Facebook. 

Greg Dwrote:

The amount of things that caught you by surprise makes you look like the noob. There are a lot of people getting in over their head these days. Help out if you can or turn the other cheek and move on. Spare us the gigantic post.   Nobody reads more than a paragraph or two. 

And this response makes you look like an [redacted].

Greg Dwrote:

The amount of things that caught you by surprise makes you look like the noob. There are a lot of people getting in over their head these days. Help out if you can or turn the other cheek and move on. Spare us the gigantic post.   Nobody reads more than a paragraph or two. 

says the guy who quoted the entire post, rather than the one or two sentences that would have buttressed his point (not that he really had one). One of my biggest pet peeves is quoting the entire long post, instead of selecting what you're actually taking issue with. Don't be so lazy.

the fact that a stupid thing is becoming more prevalent does not change the fact that it shouldn't be prevalent at all... and hopefully the OP's (justifiable) rant will help galvanize more people to think twice about making such foolish choices.

I read the whole thing!  I found it interesting.  Thanks!

I have no patience for people who don't have the patience top actually read anything.  It's the twitter effect.  

I wonder if he really was trying to solo or if something else was going on with him and he was trying to kill himself and changed his mind decided to live.. 

B Donovanwrote:

Copy pasta from the thread I posted in the SoCal forum : 

I am sharing my account of this incident yesterday because it really pissed me off, quite frankly affected my headspace the entire day out, and IMO is telling of a troubling shift in attitudes in climbing - specifically free soloing. Some of the incidents and accident reports that I’ve read here and elsewhere can be frustrating and or emotional even secondhand, but having been foisted into this rescue scenario yesterday by an irresponsible and unprepared soloist - internally spiraling over very possible “what ifs” or alternative outcomes - I’m feeling like I’ve been pushed over the line. Something significant need to change.

I’ll do my best to keep the account of event to the hard facts, but many of the smaller details are essential and unbelievable.

I meet my partner at the trailhead at 7:45. Late start but fewer cars at the pullout than I expected. Two vehicles other than ours, so we figured there could be a party at the wedge or down on mountaineers area. No surprise - it’s the weekend.

Making nice time on the hike, we cross the final drainage and turn north up the slope for the final part of the approach. At some point, my squinty sweaty eyes can make out a climber on p1 of Leonids. No surprise there. He seems to be at the awkward spot (maybe bolt 3-5ish) and he’s not moving. Having both have climbed Leonids a few times, my partner and I lightly joke about being stuck on at that little crux. Five or ten minutes later, checking on the climber, he’s still not moved. Oh well - we’ve all been there. As we draw nearer to the wedge, I’m starting to see things more clearly and I’m beginning to speculate that he’s unroped. Closer, I can now see that there’s no rope and nobody on the ground. Seems like at about that time he must have spotted/heard us and starts yelling down to us. “HEYYYY!!! Can you, uh, help me out???”.

First thing I yell back - “what the fuck are you doing up there, man?!” He replied something along the lines of not knowing and being in over his head.

“So you need us to bail you out? Is that what you’re saying?” Climber confirms.

We respond that we will rope up and bring him to the ground. We ask if he’s at a decent stance, not pumping out. Climber confirms. We drop our packs and start to tie in. I ask the climber if he was aware of the fatal accident on the exact same route by a young man just this past December - climber states that they are unaware.

I ask if he happens to have a harness in his pack, which he did - one that appeared brand new, next to his cell phone and some other bizarre climbing gear, like some metolius QDs from the 90s with a price tag from mammoth gear exchange still stuck on them… My partner ties in and leads the route up to where the climber was perched, clips a quickdraw just about their head and lowers down to him. Getting the awkwardly perched soloist into his harness wasn’t an easy maneuver, so my partner passed him some long runners to make a sumo harness of sorts. Climber has no idea what to do with runners. He does not know what a girth hitch is. Eventually he gets secured to my partner and is able to get into his harness, attach the duo via belay loops and lowered them to the ground.

Upon returning to the ground, I get a closer look at the climber. Short shorts, no shirt, no harness, no approach shoes on him. I ask “so what was your plan today? You weren’t going to rappel, so what was it?” He replied that he was going to “walk off”. Now, some who know the area *well* would tell you that it’s possible to reach the S Ridge from somewhere well above the top of the left wall routes, but he indicated that he would have ventured out right (east). No trail out that way. No shoes besides his climbing shoes. I told him there was no way down that way and he would have been bushwhacking for hours if he had gotten up there. It was very apparent that this was truly the first time that he had considered these any of these logistics. I am feeling like he must have had a very similar planning process to jumping on this 300’ 5.9 which he had never before climbed…

My partner issues some light admonishing in hopes of making this a lesson actually learned. I was nowhere near as compassionate. I’m not excited about the possibility of having to help with a body recovery, administer CPR, scoop your brains up, or even go up ~40’ and bring him down - it’s not the responsibility of others and default behaving like he did forces total strangers into unwanted scenarios. It is not cool. It’s not a thing that we enjoy doing. We *will* rescue you, but ideally wouldn’t have to. It is this kind of selfish mindset that other people would show up with a rope sooner or later and he’ll just entangle them into his shit show. Not ok with me.

Climber awkwardly tells us that he actually has to get going somewhere, he’s late for something. My partner asked him how long he had been hanging at that stance and he replied that it was so long he was embarrassed to admit. 30 minutes, an hour? But he’s late for something and it’s 9:30am. He really thought he was going to OS solo this route and get down to meet somebody for breakfast or something. He picks up his bag of things and takes off without saying much. It’s this wildly casual attitude that I really want to talk about.

I just can’t wrap my mind around really any decisions that this person made that day. I do not consider myself a soloist in any capacity, but soloing a route onsight - even if well below your fitness level - seems crazy. Getting something familiar dialed and going ropeless seems like another story, but I don’t want to open Pandora’s box for this debate. I have climbed Leonids four or five times - never really struggled anywhere on the route, always super fun, but I’ve never considered soloing this sustained type of sport route. Why in the world that people are attracted to solo it onsight, I’ll really never understand. But apparently it’s becoming an appealing thing to do.

My takeaway is this - I really can’t say if this climber from yesterday realized the true seriousness of his situation. We got him down lickety split - strangers came to the rescue like he thought they would - but that doesn’t make any of this ok or just another day out climbing - for him or for us. Another party later told us that they saw him on the trail on their way up and that he smiled, said hello and seemed normal. Not exactly the thousand yard stare that I’d expect from somebody who just faced down decking for the better part of an hour before being rescued by less than willing strangers. I do not know whether or not this will be a lesson learned, and I think that’s pretty troubling. I do not think that we should normalize having to bail out soloists or just shrugging it off when we read about another one of them taking the final fall.

Everything that I read about the soloist falling from Leonids in Demeber really frustrated, saddened and confused me. This scenario seems all too similar and it’s tough to deny that it’s a trend in the attitude towards soloing. Neither of these climbers were knowledgeable enough,  prepared or capable of soloing Leonids but they both felt like giving it a shot wasn’t going to have high consequences. One of them is no longer with us. I’m happy that the climber yesterday stayed where he was and didn’t continue upward - but that’s literally the only thing he did right that day. So many bad decisions.

Something needs to change before more lives are lost to this causal and lazy mindset.

I have seen this young mans attitude in the gym but never did I really think it would find its way outdoors….soloing.

In general I think people just don’t take climbing seriously enough, it aint bowling and there’s a thousand ways to die.

Climbing is actively experiencing the “mainstream effect”, being dumbed down for mass consumption. I would very much like to know where this young man’s motivations came from.

Greg Dwrote:

The amount of things that caught you by surprise makes you look like the noob. There are a lot of people getting in over their head these days. Help out if you can or turn the other cheek and move on. Spare us the gigantic post.   Nobody reads more than a paragraph or two. 

Agree, “Gigantic” remark, etc., aside.

But, from the outset, this has been the chest-thumping shade-throwing rescuers’ party right here.

Really, the risk-reward balancing act has been and always will be around. Just watched a short flick of a leopard that had been treed by a large group of wildebeests, the largest of which would occasionally stand up tall against the trunk to threaten the leopard.  Probably most who watch - me too - are thinking “Stay put. Take a nap. And they’ll wander off.” Neigh. The leopard waits for the right moment, jumps into the group, seizes a wee one, and climbs back in the tree with it - apparently unscathed,

Denying someone this balancing act is denying yourself. And the time spent chest-thumping and shade-throwing would be better spent in thoughts of empathy and, if you must, peddling your fears about humanity to grade schoolers.