What's the sketchiest thing you've seen while climbing?

Inspired by this related thread (What are your sketchiest moments climbing?), what's the sketchiest thing you've SEEN while climbing (as opposed to having done yourself)? Might be something done by others, might be something natural (rockfall, etc.).

I'm primarily a gym climber (boo, hiss...) so my story comes from there.

During a particularly busy evening, there was at least one birthday party, and scores of non-climbers wishing to try rock climbing. The front desk was momentarily overwhelmed and newbies were grouped together to await orientation.

A father-daughter duo decided that they had waited long enough, escaped the orientation group, and attempted to access a top rope route. By the time my partner and I noticed, the girl had gotten about four feet off the ground. The father had clipped the grigri to her harness, and was loosely holding the climber end of the rope.

Not quite sure what the father's plan was in the event of a fall, but the lack of self-preservation (kin-preservation?) was astounding.

Birthday party for young boy at gym. I was helping out. Noticed some boys were missing. Found them in the weight room upstairs attempting bench presses with dangerously heavy weights. 

I saw a climbing coach at a gym go hands free on a GriGri!  

J Lwrote:

Inspired by this related thread (What are your sketchiest moments climbing?), what's the sketchiest thing you've SEEN while climbing (as opposed to having done yourself)? Might be something done by others, might be something natural (rockfall, etc.).

I'm primarily a gym climber (boo, hiss...) so my story comes from there.

During a particularly busy evening, there was at least one birthday party, and scores of non-climbers wishing to try rock climbing. The front desk was momentarily overwhelmed and newbies were grouped together to await orientation.

A father-daughter duo decided that they had waited long enough, escaped the orientation group, and attempted to access a top rope route. By the time my partner and I noticed, the girl had gotten about four feet off the ground. The father had clipped the grigri to her harness, and was loosely holding the climber end of the rope.

Not quite sure what the father's plan was in the event of a fall, but the lack of self-preservation (kin-preservation?) was astounding.

Too many gym incidents to even list.

Outdoors it’s all those free soloists climbing above people.

Dude took the hard way to a high first clip on a sport route because it looked more fun. Instead of a chill clip from a jug he was trying to make a massive reach with mediocre hands and terrible feet and was pumping out and getting Elvis leg 20' above large and sharp obstacles. Thought I was gonna watch a man break his ankles or legs for sure. Fortunately dude bro made the clip. 

Castle Rock in the Santa Cruz mountains is a constant shit show of new to outdoors gym climbers making all sorts of mistakes. Rapping off of sharp hangers and getting to the top not knowing how to clean an anchor were frequent occurrences back when that was my home crag. 

I routinely rap on ropes without knots in the ends.

Watched a guy rapping off the Open Book rap with a too-short rope. Was dangling in mid air 30’ off the deck trying to winch his way up the rope (obviously unsuccessfully), without any kind of ascender.

Tahquitz is good for this kind of drama.

One time I was belaying and a bug landed on my neck so I swatted at it and took my hand off the brake strand of the grigri, my life flashed before my eyes, crazy stuff bro stay safe out there

I overheard a climber saying he forgot his climbing rope back at his house one day while climbing in Eldo, stupid homeowners..

My feet.

I was at the gym and a guy with a newbie gf comes in and they start on some auto belays.  He wanders off and his gf ties into a non-auto belay top rope and starts climbing, 100% off belay and not realizing the crucial difference!  

This one is awesome.  You can look the route up for context.  I was somewhere that I know better than to go at this point, but I digress.  The route is The Decameron at NRG.  The route goes up one wall near a broken dihedral, and then you have to do a traverse on pretty thin holds.  Goes at mid 5.10.  I watched the typical group that has one guy that can lead and the rest that are there to ride top ropes.  So Mr. leader guy goes up halfway, hits the crux, then bails.  That's like 5 or 6 bolts up.   He then proceeds to instruct someone in his party to tie into the follower end of the rope, and UNCLIP the draws as he goes up.  So picture this:  Crux quickdraw is now backclipped, and this guy is unclipping every previous quickdraw up to that point where he'll then likely fall on a single backclipped draw on a traverse.  My climbing partner and I tried to talk some sense into the group leader and let him know that danger was already there and injury or death might be imminent.  The guy has the nerve to argue with us.  Luckily, the fledgling climber didn't get all the way to the backclipped draw heard our conversation and demanded to be lowered off at that point.  I shudder to think what would have or could have occurred if we hadn't said anything.  I have roughly a couple dozen accounts that are similar to this, but this one is the most obviously egregious one I can think of.

FrankPSwrote:

I routinely rap off of ropes without knots in the ends.

Sir I wish to inform you that after my many hours of YouTube research, I have come to the conclusion that yer gonna die.

Despite 95% of my climbing being outside, I haven't seen much that was super sketchy.  In the gym though, yeah.  I saw two college girls top roping and when the belayer was lowering the climber, the belayer held the grigri lever wide open with no hand on the brake strand. Climber proceeds to drop, rapidly. Me and anyone else watching immediately yelled, "take your hand off the grigri!" to which she couldn't compute what we meant.  Thankfully a staff member was close enough to literally sprint over and forcibly take her hand off the grigri which of course caused it to stop the lower and the climber was maybe 8 feet off the deck at that point by the time the rope had stretched and recovered.  Staff member proceeded to take them both out of the gym.

Swan slab (of course). I was scrambling around while trying to avoid the crowds. After a few laps I'm ready to leave, so I hop on my bike. But I notice a shit show in the making, so I stay for some entertainment. I'm sitting back and watching a party on Swan Slab Gulley. After all have TR'd the first pitch, the leader goes back up to clean. To my surprise, she throws the rope down instead of rappelling and then begins to downclimb the pitch. I figured she must be solid but immediately starts shaking and asking for advice on feet/hands. She makes it mostly halfway down when I noticed another party (father belaying a teenage daughter) to the left TR on Grant's crack. I saw them earlier doing a TR off a tree left of Oak Tree with zero gear, so I was surprised to see their rope on Grant's crack. I have no idea how they got it up there, but it's directly througu the rap rings and she's having trouble getting up. As she gets up to the anchor she yells "on belay" and so the dad yells back "off belay" and procedes to take his gri gri off. I quickly run over and let him know that she isn't on the anchor and wants to be lowered. He says thanks and I think about how close that was. I get on my bike to ride away and I hear the daughter yell On Belay again and the Dad starts to take off the gri gri. I honestly thought I was a part of a bit. I run back over as the girl starts to lean back off the anchor and I throw a hip belay on. The dad seems surprised/ confused that im back and I yell at him to put the gri gri back on. He clearly has no idea how to lower so I show him and keep the hip belay as a back up. As the daughter gets down I let them know what almost happened and they seemed totally unphased. I had so much adrenaline that I had to get the hell out of there. Swan Slab man...

Was climbing multipitch with a buddy in upper dream canyon and I was leading. Arrived at an anchor with a guy who was belaying up his second. His second is about halfway up the pitch and I look over to see his grigri side plate completely not clipped in (just the main hole on the grigri, no side plate hole). I point it out to him and he says "yea I know but I can't fix it now". And just holds the side plate in place while his second climbs through the crux. Horrifying to watch.

Years ago I watched a group top-roping of a single piton below the roof on Disneyland in the Gunks. There was also a traverse to get to that piton. We were pretty beginner ourselves but still commented on the questionable safety of what they were doing. They did not want to hear about it. 

Looking down from a route in Yosemite Valley at the holiday weekend gridlock on the loop.

Double Jwrote:

I saw a climbing coach at a gym go hands free on a GriGri!  

Ive been reading about lots of sketchy 'coaches' lately. One coach on reddit admitted they accidentally free soloed an auto belay because they straight up forgot to clip in...

Saw some marine type dudes setting up TRs on Lizards mouth in SB.  Dude didn't know how to belay as the more experienced person was climbing up high into the get injured zone, was just pulling rope through the belay device and making a big pile of rope on the ground. Not even the remotest belay existed.  We headed over and fixed that before someone leaned back and decked. 

At smith rock, saw some new, younger climbers leading an 80' 5.10 sport route with 3 quick draws, total. Only noticed them when they were about 50' up when I wondered why the leader was sketchily climbing down and removing the lowest draw, and once removed, was only in on 1 draw a long way off the ground as they climbed above their lone pro piece.. I think he was back cleaning the lower one for every 1 he placed and saving the last for a top anchor?  maybe that sort of would work, but it didn't seem super smart. I walked over, told them to stop climbing for a bit, and gave them 6 of my QDs to keep and use before someone died in front of me. 

Getting passed by the Huber brothers (back in the day) on Central Pillar of Frenzy as I was on lead several pitches up was also sketchy.  I am not used to getting passed by other trad leaders, and followers, while on a crack climb lead.  Yeah, they are obviously solid, but they only had 1 protection cam in total, and I sure as hell would not trust that I wouldn't  freak out and fall onto their unprotected heads as they climbed below and around me.  They didn't even talk to me and tell me what they were doing, just climbed on by about 100' apart. That was high pressure for about 5 minutes.  

Every sketchy incident I've witnessed was in my first year climbing outdoors, all at the RRG, all of them at Muir Valley of course. 

First incident, we're meeting up with some friends who've been climbing at Bruise Bros and just as we get there, some dude panics, puts his finger in the bolt hole, falls, and amputates it. To make matters worse, he's there on spring break with his college group and they're his ride home, so after returning from the hospital he just sits in the basement at Miguel's for the rest of the week while his friends are all out climbing.

Second incident, a day later, I'm belaying my partner and someone's about 15-20' up the trad route to our right. He fails to pull the roof move, pulls the gear, and decks, then rolls down into the forest behind the belay stance. In this case he was miraculously unharmed but that was the last day I ever climbed at Muir Valley.

In 5 years at the Gunks I never saw anything even close to that first year in the RRG. Lots of slow, panic-y followers (hey, isn't High E the best 'first outdoor climb' ever?), but everyone was largely safe and competent enough.