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What's the sketchiest thing you've seen while climbing?
Sam Mwrote: Please tell me that there are also 'trad rappellers'! And how do you distinguish one from the other? No matter; clearly, these are my people. |
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February day in the Adirondacks, three people are heading up an icy slide and another party (including me) are at the bottom. 80' up the route, a microwave-sized bulge of solid blue water ice looks like it has some air behind it. The leader arrives at the microwave block. Without looking down or saying anything, he starts using his axe shaft to lever it out and trundles it down towards his two followers, who are directly in the fall line. One reaches out his arms to (pretend?) to catch the flying block and they laugh as it shoots past them and laugh again when it smashes into a trunk and shakes the ground. It was a guaranteed fatality if taken to the chest or head. |
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Saw this today at Index in WA: Guy is lead rope soloing saggitarious, looking worked and hanging on a piece. Down solos, cleans and comes over to first pitch of Japanese Gardens, which my partner and I are just finishing (to the first chains only). We offer to give him a regular lead belay because it would just be just better? But he wants to rope solo it. He works up to a thin section about 20’ up, places a couple of pieces while we are telling him gear beta, z-clips, then realizes his gri-gri is loaded backwards! Goes in direct to the crux .2 cam and fixes the gri. For some reason, he removes his last piece, so now he only has that .2 between him and the ground. He moves up, places another .2, pumps out and falls. He pulls the first .2 and falls 30’, the other .2 catches and he stops 6” from the ledge! No helmet. We climbed it again to retrieve his gear and the .2 axle was real bent. Lucky guy. My takeaways: 1: The modern gear we have is amazing. This guy was 210lbs, took a 30’ fall on 55’ of rope and that .2 locked in. 2: it’s more fun and safer to climb with other people who will belay you. Another climber at the crag traded numbers with this guy and offered belays so he didn’t have to rope solo. Hopefully he survives his trad climbing journey. Be safe out there, friends! |
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Not nearly as wild as lots here but once I was a pitch up the liberty bell and up comes a guy with a go pro to the belay ledge. He slings a tiny tree and tries to clove into his new non redundant anchor. After a few tries he just can't figure out the clove and just clips himself in with a non locker. When his partner arrives he proceeds to complain about how slow she was and how she doesn't know what she's doing. Bad vibes for sure. |
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John Bachar skipping down the Lembert Dome Water Cracks facing out with his back to the dome after a solo unprotected ascent on the West side ! There was water in the crack buckets. |
Ignatius Piwrote: ‘Sport rappellers’ are folks, not necessarily climbers, that go rappelling, not climbing. |
Andrew Bartelswrote: You’re not wrong vis a vis #2 but you have to be pretty oblivious to get on the wall solo with your grigri backwards… not to mention all his other mistakes. Not sure I would wanna climb with this broski |
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One time I was following a moderate pitch with one microtrax on El Cap, about 2000ft up. Partner had led it and fixed the rope. Half way up this 5.10 pitch the rope was feeding funny through the traxion, so I checked and realized that I had loaded the device wrong - I had clipped it to my locker with the pulley side in; not deadly this way but really annoying with the rope. Luckily I had good foot holds, but it was too steep to go hands-free. So I rested the back of my head against a flake so I could free both my hands to rethread the device. It probably wasn't the smartest thing I did that day. |
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Once had a hiker pass our portaledge at terminal velocity midway up Prodigal Sun. That was pretty sketch. |
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I work at a climbing gym, and I had to do a belay takeover because this girl loaded her grigri backward and belayed her friend halfway up the wall |
Nate Molloywrote: Reminds me off the time I had to run over and correct a girl because she was just pulling the slack down but not through her belay device as her friend climbed. |
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It's stories like these that make me wonder how they passed their top rope belay test (which seems to be standard and mandatory in Canada/US) |
Nate Molloywrote: Hah! Is 'belay takeover' now a recognized climbing term? I appreciate that these days it probably has to be - but OMG, whatever next! [Mumble grumble etc] |
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A dad with his kid, his friend, and his friend's kid leads a blocky 5.7 at the local crag and sets up a TR with a brand new rope and what were essentially Walmart carabiners. He somehow reaches the ground safely. His son however fell a significant portion of the route aftter the anchor inevitably broke while he was being lowered back to the ground. The kid was very injured and taken out of the canyon by search and rescue. Last I heard he made a full recovery but it could have easily been a fatal mistake. I also witnessed a VERY large section of a wall at Volunteer Canyon break apart while climbing a multipitch on the opposite side of the canyon. Needless to say, we booked it up the last couple pitches and got out of there. |
J Ewrote: FWIW, there are a couple rope soloing methods that involve a gr gri backwards, can't endorse any of these methods, however that might explain the confusion. However you really got to have your stuff dialed in before you solo in any form IMO. https://sicgrips.blogspot.com/2022/08/grigri-3-hub-system-for-lead-rope.html https://www.ukclimbing.com/forums/rock_talk/grigri_rope_solo_device_orientation-756112 |
Ignatius Piwrote: I'm confused by your comment. It's taught as a required skill by the amga so it's definitely a thing, but only really relevant to instructing new belayers. Maybe useful in some rescue scenario where you need to take over so someone can get help? |
Bailey Nicholsonwrote: Grigri mounted " upside down " (as some do in rope soloing) is not the same as threading the rope in backwards. |
Austin Shaverwrote: Don't worry; I'm confused by most things these days. Ignore me! |
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A few weeks ago I was near Boulder with a spare afternoon, so figured I should check out the Flatirons. I picked Freeway since it seemed to be the local easy classic. I arrived at the base and saw a party of three soloists on the route, about 20 meters up. The lowest of them was on a small ledge, maybe 1 foot wide. He seemed a little uncertain of how to proceed and his friends were giving him beta. After much deliberation, he starts climbing. A meter off the ledge, he starts panicking and desperately stabbing for feet. He falls, but lands on this ledge, so no harm done. So what do his "friends" do? They persuade him to try again. He falls again. Eventually one friend downclimbs and shows him a much easier variation a couple meters left. They seem to have lived. |
