11yr old climber falls at Smith Rocks

Shoot the hostage?

Bill Lawrywrote:

I have not done that. And I’m no guide.

So I kinda think if I had partners that I thought needed that, should they even be in situations where that is needed?

Now, I know we are talking about really young kids. But, again, do they really need to be in situations where that sort of baby sitting is necessary?

I guide and when I guide this is how we rappel together.

When I’m not guiding, I still do this with most everyone I climb with most of the time.

Besides being safer, it is FASTER.

It is more efficient for everyone to load up ATC’s all at once. We are all at the anchor together when it’s time to rappel. Might as well check my own setup including my partner(s). Might as well remove my PAS from the anchor. Might as well have everyone else do that too at the same time. Go on down, give slack, shout Rope Free or Off Rappel or whatever, and the next rappeler can begin descending the moment they feel slack. It’s super quick for the followers and no more faffing around up there. It seriously speeds up team descents and increases safety simultaneously. 

If you’ve never tried this technique, a key part of it is having everyone’s ATC mounted on an extension such as a single sling, a knotted double sling, half way up the PAS, etc. If you skip this step being stuck to a tensioned rope via the length of your belay loop really feels uncomfortable.

The biggest difference between guiding a stacked rappel and using one in my recreational climbing is how well everyone knows their part of the setup

What is a good argument for NOT pre-rigging AKA stacking rappels?

I think this thread has been pretty good overall with staying on topic and providing relevant educational discussion. I think everyone’s been pretty respectful and I appreciate you all. I hope we can continue to discuss rappelling safety here. 

Bill Lawrywrote:

So I kinda think if I had partners that I thought needed that, should they even be in situations where that is needed?

fwiw, there's other benefits. I almost always use an APER 6mm rap line for double rope raps, which obviously won't rap the same as my 8.8 or 9mm lead line, so it's nice if my partner prerigs to block the line so that it's a bit easier for me to rap without having to worry about the line running through the chains (otherwise I have to put more force on the APER strand so it doesn't run through the chains). Also an easy way to allow a partner to go down on a grigri first, though perhaps that's too obvious and I shouldn't mention it. Anyway, point is there ARE benefits, and not just for noobs. Alex points out several, and there's more that have yet to be mentioned.

I wouldn't advocate that a guide not have everyone load up for rappel at the same time.  It's a given that a regular turn-over of clients adds some risk when allowing any client to act independently.  I've frequently seen guides on duty avoiding letting their clients act independently.  It's understandable - also because the client is expecting the guide to take literal ownership of the day's activities and the safety of all in their execution. That is what the guide is there for. And as I said "...  I’m no guide."

What are good arguments for NOT pre-rigging / stacking rappels?

1. The transition from pulling to rapping is faster when one person is threading their rap device while the other is finishing the pull and / or coiling the remaining rope for its toss. Also, threading early is a good way to prevent the rope from creeping off of the center of the rope.
2. It is more reliable for me to be personally attached to the anchor next to me than to rely on the weight of a person rappelling for my security.
3. For someone who does not extend their rappel device, there is greater freedom of movement unstacked ... to perhaps catch a bite to eat or a drink or review beta for the next rappel or pee or put on a jacket.
4. I personally find everyone doing something critical at once and watching everyone else do it at the same time to actually be problematic.  Can give examples.

But we've diverted from my original point  which was:  "Redundancy is worth considering. But if it is always above all else, multi-pitch is not the place to be."  If not a guide, I'd think long and hard about regular multi-pitch with someone requiring this kind of redundancy each time. Admittedly, that's just me.

Bill Lawrywrote:

1. The transition from pulling to rapping is faster when one person is threading their rap device while the other is finishing the pull and / or coiling the remaining rope for its toss. Also, threading early is a good way to prevent the rope from creeping off of the center of the rope.
2. It is more reliable for me to be personally attached to the anchor next to me than to rely on the weight of a person rappelling for my security.
3. For someone who does not extend their rappel device, there is greater freedom of movement unstacked ... to perhaps catch a bite to eat or a drink or review beta for the next rappel or pee or put on a jacket.
4. I personally find everyone doing something critical at once and watching everyone else do it at the same time to actually be problematic.  Can give examples.

But we've diverted from my original point  which was:  "Redundancy is worth considering. But if it is always above all else, multi-pitch is not the place to be."  If not a guide, I'd think long and hard about regular multi-pitch with someone requiring this kind of redundancy each time. Admittedly, that's just me.

A. I still do what you're describing even when pre-rigging the whole party before setting off.

B. Sure, this is why I often times will stay on my pas when pre-rigging.  At least all members of party can still check all the rap device setups before departing.  The tragedy that kicked off this thread where a climber was pre-rigged and on a pas and unclipped 3 lockers instead of 1 is a pretty rare outlier.

C. I've been extending my rap setup for many years as a default.  But I do think you still make a valid point here.  This is the only unavoidable downside I see in pre-rigging.  It can be hard, even with extended rap setups, to get 3 or more pre-rigged without being in an uncomfortable position at many rap stances.

D. I don't find that to be the case.  Methodical inspection of safety systems is always a must. We all pre-rig simultaneously. And then individually take 5-8 seconds to vocalize and pull test the rope being properly threaded, the biners being locked, and note the 3rd hand if it's in use- adding 20 seconds tops to each rap.

I don't think anyone is arguing that partner safety checks are "required redundancy".  I'm arguing its prudent redundancy, perhaps semantics. You just re-emphasized the idea that you are skeptical of someone using prudent safety measures, I don't see the logic.  For me it's not a crutch, its a way to minimize the life altering consequences of complacency.  And complacency is 100% unavoidable, AAC reports are chock full of "seasoned veterans" becoming complacent and falling. 

One could argue that basically all climbing systems are not "required" and are only "prudent" since free solo is a thing. What benefit does being a skeptic have in this situation?

But I recognize that every day and every route requires different choices.  If we were concerned with every second counting due to incoming t-storms we might decide as a party to forego pre-rigging. Or if the stance is a cluster for one reason of another we might determine it's reasonable to not pre-rig. In that situation I rely on a long enough pas to check my rap setup before going off the pas like you likely do, and thats a reasonably safe approach as well.

Holy thread drift, batman!
how did we get to 4 people on a multipitch rap anchor, from a kid rapping a single pitch anchor? There seems to be some contortions going on in order to buttress some sort of point, which is murky at best. 

Christian Heschwrote:

Holy thread drift, batman!
how did we get to 4 people on a multipitch rap anchor, from a kid rapping a single pitch anchor? There seems to be some contortions going on in order to buttress some sort of point, which is murky at best. 

Your question is how are various rappel techniques and their pros and cons relevant in a thread about a rappelling accident?

No, more about how bill seems to be drifting pretty far from the specifics of the precipitating situation in order to try and rebut your points (which I think are relatively sound). 

Christian Heschwrote:

No, more about how bill seems to be drifting pretty far from the specifics of the precipitating situation in order to try and rebut your points (which I think are relatively sound). 

It's the admittedly messy exchange of information between real life humanoids. 

That back and forth is usually far more informative than when people set out to be informative. Instead of a single point of info from a lectern, you have, wait for it....

A forum. 

Christian Heschwrote:

No, more about how bill seems to be drifting pretty far from the specifics of the precipitating situation in order to try and rebut your points (which I think are relatively sound). 

Dunno, Bill seems like he's got a way he likes to operate on the rock and he's just calmly explaining his reasoning.  A few of us proposed a way this accident may have been less likely to occur.  Bill said that he doesn't think that's the way to do it.  Given that this accident was an outlier situation, all outlier situations seem worthy of discussion.

I frequently get up in the mountains and move up the rock as two teams of 2.  And down the rock in one party of 4.  So I wouldn't even call your specific point an outlier.  

ok, I'll continue to contribute to the thread drift ;) 

It seems that the goal/topic of *this thread* is to establish how this fall could have been prevented. Several logical methods have been proposed. I fail to see what rapping multipitch in a party of 4 has to do with the subject of an unattended child on a single pitch rap anchor, as I've yet to see a tie in presented. Don't disagree Bill is discussing calmly, as are most all participants, which is nice (so kudos to all for that).

The thread has covered a lot of ground, but I think there is still a point worth making.  It is that beginners can do things that seem illogical and inconceivable to experienced climbers, and this is especially true when it comes to managing complicated (to a beginner) systems. I experienced this first-hand many years ago when I was guiding to support myself in grad school, and have at various times since heard stories of the same sort from working guides.  In all cases, (some just humorous and others becoming serious accidents), the novice did something the guide never conceived of as a possible action.  In all cases, the guide has provided instructions and training aimed at eliminating the kind of thing that happened anyway.

There's a whole subset of these accidents that involve the novice disconnecting from anchors. In a number of cases, they untied from the rope in order to manage tangles.  There was a recent report, I think on MP, in which a novice rappeller, left to themselves, unclipped from the rappel device, leaving it on the rap lines, and somehow managed to descend using only the backup prusik---this could easily have been a fatality.

The kinds of things folks do in these situations are so far outside the experience and expectations of an experienced guide, mentor, or companion, that it may be impossible to forestall with explicit instructions.  What is obvious to the experienced person isn't necessarily obvious to a beginner.  It does no one any good to characterize such mistakes as dumb unless we are prepared to admit that there are two dummies involved, the other one being the instructor.

Now add to this various types of instructional styles that might not be optimal. Long and detailed explanations, especially when given in situations that might be stressful for the learner, can go in one ear and out the other. Even when heard, the lecture may not be understood if it is experienced as a catachismic ritual uncoupled from the reasoning that lead to its formulation. The person offering instruction may demonstrate everything without giving the learner an opportunity to carry out the steps themselves. More subtly, the teacher might immediately intervene when the learner starts to do something wrong, prodding and poking the learner on the correct path, which might diminish the learner's ability to navigate the situation on their own. (Of course, you can't stand by and watch the learner plunge to their death---the point is to find a good way to allow the learner to do all the processes and make all the decisions in a way that is safe even if possibly fatal errors are made.)

The tragedy with the eleven-year-old boy seems to me to be a case in point, but I want to emphasize that the fundamental issue is not his age but rather his relative inexperience.  Who could possibly anticipate that he would undo the entire anchor rather than just unclipping his tether?  This is exactly the type of thing I'm talking about.  (It was unfortunate that the anchor was not some in-situ arrangement but was constructed with the intention of being removed later, so that it was possible and easy to unclip everything.  In this situation, a person who had, in other situations, been admonished not to leave gear behind might conclude that everything had to be removed.)  

So things like this happen and experienced people can't necessarily anticipate what learners might do.  This means the discussions here about technical ways of rigging things so that this doesn't happen, useful and valuable as they are, may also be missing a critical issue.  Most systems we use can be defeated.  We just don't imagine that some of the actions needed to defeat the system will ever occur, and experience shows we can be tragically wrong in those assumptions. An instructor might say, "when you're ready to go, unclip and start rapping."  Of course, they mean unclip the tether, not unclip everything, and they understandably think that "unclip" couldn't possibly be interpreted to mean "unclip everything." But maybe it can be and will be.

So what to do?  In general, if you want to teach someone a climbing procedure, you have to give them opportunities to carry out the steps themselves in perfect safety and without any intervention from the instructor until the procedure is complete. The teacher says, "show me how you are going to do this," and then bites their lip if something suboptimal or downright wrong starts to happen, only sharing those observations at the conclusion of the exercise. ("Dude, you just died.")  In the case of rappelling, you first practice the setup and take-off on the ground. (I almost want to carry this out once at night by headlamp light while spraying the learner with a garden hose.) Once having successfully navigated ground schooI, I think novices should be belayed for at least a few initial experiences. A real belay, not a fireman's belay, which won't get the rappeller out of certain kinds of jams and leaves them up at the start alone where they may not be thinking the way we expect.  This requires some rappel practice done separately from a multipitch climb, where the experienced person should usually go first.  It means not leaving an inexperienced person alone at a stance until the instructor has a good sense that nothing (like unclipping from the rap device) is going to happen.

I don't think this type of careful instruction happens very often, especially when the instructors aren't guides and have neither thought about nor been trained to anticipate beginner problems. And of course, beginning rappellers are not, for example, raining down to their deaths in droves from this claimed lack of appropriate attention. Bad things have to conspire to create a tragedy, and it is only a rare confluence that produces a terrible outcome. This has the unfortunate effect of allowing suboptimal approaches to perpetuate, and then we're all shocked that such a thing could ever happen.

rgoldwrote:

In this situation, a person who had, in other situations, been admonished not to leave gear behind might conclude that everything had to be removed. 

In general, if you want to teach someone a climbing procedure, you have to give them opportunities to carry out the steps themselves in perfect safety and without any intervention from the instructor until the procedure is complete. 

Unfortunately "rgold" wisdom is usually lost on our attention deficit youth with his lack of brevity and since no one will listen to me because, well, you know, I will play editor with bold text.

rgoldwrote:

I don't think this type of careful instruction happens very often, especially when the instructors aren't guides and have neither thought about nor been trained to anticipate beginner problems. And of course, beginning rappellers are not, for example, raining down to their deaths in droves from this claimed lack of appropriate attention. Bad things have to conspire to create a tragedy, and it is only a rare confluence that produces a terrible outcome. This has the unfortunate effect of allowing suboptimal approaches to perpetuate, and then we're all shocked that such a thing could ever happen.

There are many good points that Rich made, as always, but this paragraph is definitely worth reading a few times.

Yup. As usual put a stamp on this one.

Alex Fletcherwrote:

I am a big supporter of clip in hardware and making it as easy as possible to clean an anchor for community safety. 

It is the leaders responsibility to help ensure follower safety. When possible I pre clean the anchor as in the below photo so the last climber simply takes my carabiner with them and lowers down.

I consider this even safer than mussy hook anchors when sending up an inexperienced follower to clean the anchor.

Everyone makes mistakes sometimes. Best wishes to the fallen climber. 

Nice idea.  I would put a carabiner on each chain, in order to minimize likelihood of shock load and failure of  anchor, although I admit that such a scenario is unlikely. 

rgoldwrote:

There's a whole subset of these accidents that involve the novice disconnecting from anchors.[...]

The kinds of things folks do in these situations are so far outside the experience and expectations of an experienced guide, mentor, or companion, that it may be impossible to forestall with explicit instructions.  What is obvious to the experienced person isn't necessarily obvious to a beginner.  It does no one any good to characterize such mistakes as dumb unless we are prepared to admit that there are two dummies involved, the other one being the instructor.

Rgold makes so many good points, as usual.

The accident in this thread brought up a memory of when my wife and I took my brother in law (who was, and still is, a grown-ass man) climbing for his first time. I led a 5.7 sport pitch and clipped opposite and opposed quickraws the bolts as a toprope anchor.

I didn't clean the lead draws when lowering (maybe a mistake). We helped him tie in and instructed him to unclip those quickdraws as he came to them. Everything proceeded smoothly until he got to the anchor. I took him tight and got ready to lower. Then I heard a series of grunts as he called down, "I can't get these last two to unclip!"

It never occurred to me that someone would unclip the anchor. But maybe I should have been more attuned to this type of mistake from super-novice climbers.

In the end, we shouted up at him to let go, and all was well.

This accident and the thread following have given me a lot to think about as my kids get older and I think about introducing them (and their friends?) to the sport in a few years.

Nkane 1wrote:

Everything proceeded smoothly until he got to the anchor. I took him tight and got ready to lower. Then I heard a series of grunts as he called down, "I can't get these last two to unclip!"

A relative of mine did the same thing: new to climbing, first time following a sport route, so unclipping … almost everything before a couple of us shouted “No!”

As noted, rgold included a point about purposeful training which, for me, helped crystalize some of my earlier comments about whether someone “should” be on multi-pitch in general. If anyone was following those and is good with a little more …

Competent rap instruction sometimes (ideally) takes the new person very gradually through removal of safety layers: no longer using an independent belay rope, no longer using a load releasable rap line (or other escape method), no longer supervised, and maybe more. 

Of course, some can - and do - choose to stop anywhere along the way in that progression of relaxing backup / safety measures.  And the limitations of retaining layers are real and only need to be accounted for: allow extra time to rig that backup belay, accept that someone cannot solo thread a rap device and rap, limit climb objectives, etc. 

Of course, there are ways / techniques / systems to mitigate the impact of whatever limitation. And for some climbing venues / choices, it simply does not matter - will hardly be noticed. Still, for others, they will be.

Note: To be perhaps sound a little contrary with RGold, I do question the wisdom of a pre-teen operating solo in these kinds of circumstances - regardless of training.  The vast majority simply don’t have mature enough brains to reliably apply reason and to reliably make good judgments. And, in a few short years with increased maturity, climbing may not even hold any interest. 

Bill Lawrywrote:

 I do question the wisdom of a pre-teen operating solo in these kinds of circumstances - regardless of training.  The vast majority simply don’t have mature enough brains to reliably apply reason and to reliably make good judgments. And, in a few short years with increased maturity, climbing may not even hold any interest. 

Yes, I think this makes sense; I have similar reservations.  It seems from what I've read that some pre-teens might be up to the task, but I agree that it is likely that many really are not, even with good training. In what I wrote I wanted to keep the focus on inexperience rather than age (and also stay out of the more fraught arguments about appropriate parenting).