Scariest moments/mistakes when climbing not resulting in injury

I’m visiting Barcelona and I want to climb some multi pitches in Montserrat. My friend L lives in Barcelona and speaks Spanish and her friend A has many more years of climbing experience and speaks Spanish fluently. I want to climb a well-known route and they want to climb something else.

I don’t get their reasoning but I trust their judgement because more experience and no language barrier (first red flag). The only beta we have is a blog post from 2012 written in Catalan which none of us speak (second red flag). We have to bushwhack for an hour to get to the start of the route and the bolts are rusty (third red flag). There’s a chance of rain in the forecast so we sit on a ledge and eat lunch and wait it out.

No rain so A and L start on the first pitch which traverses over the ledge. My friend K and I move out of the ledge to get in the shade and 1 minute later A dislodges an oven-sized block that falls onto the ledge and rolls down the mountain. Had we not moved, we would have definitely been killed. 

The rose-tinted glasses shatter and I insist we bail. We climb the routes I wanted to climb, rappel at sunset, and run down the mountain to catch the last train back to Barcelona. I learned to not blindly trust others to make the plan even if they are more experienced. But overall a good time :) 

Earlier this season I was rappelling down from a pitch and set up my ATC on my PAS shelf (120cm sling with overhand in the middle), weighted the system, unclipped the PAS, onto my harness, and proceeded down.

Something didn't feel right, I was a bit askew, and I looked down to see a gear loop bending upwards. I had absentmindedly clipped my PAS back to my gear loop like I always do when not actively using it, instead of back to the belay loop. Because my PAS overhand was not in the middle of the sling, all my weight was held by my gear loop.

The loop held until I noticed, then I unweighted, and reclipped back to my belay loop. If the gear loop had broken it would've shock loaded the other half of the sling.

Good gear loop construction by Misty Mountain!

I've had a couple that I can think of:

On my first alpine climb I had a microwave-sized block land about 5ft away from me when we pulled our ropes.

About two years ago I jostled a branch that was holding a refrigerator-sized block above me on the wall. I watched as the block shifted, leaning closer towards me until it miraculously stopped. It quite possibly would have killed both me and my partner, who was in the line of fire right below.

Last year I was on a rappel after a 16 hour day and I forgot to attach my rappel device. Was caught by the autobloc and luckily had rappel gloves on, or I would have sustained friction burns. 

I've seen a few.

• Seen obvious beginners drop a fridge sized block that then shattered and rolled down tahquitz. Notably, prior to them climbing, I'd commented to the follower 'hey, consider reminding your leader to keep the rope in a straight line," a comment met with disdain.
• Seen a guy lead up a multipitch and forget to tie his wife/gf in. 'Where did the rope go? Uh... it's up there...' Also Tahquitz
• Off-route soloist on Matthes. He was elvis legging and clearly in the wrong place. We had to look away.
• A very early trad lead of my own where someone with a similar voice to mine called 'off belay'...

I could honestly go on. The majority, I would say involve either a soloist going up something they probably shouldn't have, OR 'beginner' mistakes. If you're soloing, please be damn confident. And try to avoid climbing under beginners, even if you, yourself, are a beginner.

Alaina Gwrote:

Still no idea if this was a near-miss because I get mixed responses and haven’t tested it. But I led a sport route with three hard moves and the worst clipping stance at the end. While struggling to clip at the end, my belayer announced they had just realized they had me on the brake end instead of climber’d end in their Grigri. I went in direct and they took me off belay and fixed it so I was no longer threaded backwards. If I had fallen during the lead, I think it would have performed worse than an ATC but possibly better than nothing?

This is why I'm a big fan of yanking it myself rather than relying on someone else to yank it for me.

Michael Sandlerwrote:

I've seen a few.

• Seen obvious beginners drop a fridge sized block that then shattered and rolled down tahquitz. Notably, prior to them climbing, I'd commented to the follower 'hey, consider reminding your leader to keep the rope in a straight line," a comment met with disdain.
• Seen a guy lead up a multipitch and forget to tie his wife/gf in. 'Where did the rope go? Uh... it's up there...' Also Tahquitz
• Off-route soloist on Matthes. He was elvis legging and clearly in the wrong place. We had to look away.
• A very early trad lead of my own where someone with a similar voice to mine called 'off belay'...

I could honestly go on. The majority, I would say involve either a soloist going up something they probably shouldn't have, OR 'beginner' mistakes. If you're soloing, please be damn confident. And try to avoid climbing under beginners, even if you, yourself, are a beginner.

Good examples Michael, but let's try to remember that the spirit of this thread is to describe scary moments/mistakes that happened to oneself, not ridicule others for the mistakes they've made.

Most recent one that comes to mind was last year, but that might also be the closest call I’ve ever had.

Led an easy route to put a tr on an adjacent harder route. I belayed the first route from the top, partner cleaned and lowered and puts me on belay, I swing over and clip directly into the second anchor with a single alpine draw and tell my partner off belay so I can pull the rope through and get out of the original anchor. Only then do I put my weight on the anchor, and the alpine draw wiregate was oriented in some way that, when the belay loop tensioned, it clipped through the other side of the loop and was just hanging there, leaving me attached to nothing.

I luckily had one hand on the anchor and was able to catch myself with a one-arm lock off on the chain, and bring the other hand up as well. Somehow stayed calm enough to say in a totally normal voice “hey, could you please put me back on belay real quick?”

Matthew Bellwrote:

This is why I'm a big fan of yanking it myself rather than relying on someone else to yank it for me.

Been yanking it myself for a while.  Sure beats having someone else yank it 

TR soloing a chossy line I was working on using a static, mini track and chest ascender. Was lapping it to clean up some of the junk. After a bunch of laps with occasional falls due to loose holds I was pretty dialed and on autopilot. Rope caught on my upper device soon after I left the ground and wasn’t feeding, I didn’t notice the slack until I was 45 feet up. If I would have fallen I would have either decked or blown up the progress capture devices and decked. Fortunately I didn’t and corrected the mistake. Definitely a good reminder to check that your systems are functioning!

In my first year climbing I was leading a sport route and my more-experienced partner said I didn't need a PAS and lockers to clean and could just use 3 draws. You put them in a Y shape with 1 draw attached to your belay loop and 2 draws attached to the anchor.

The anchor on this route is on an overhanging section and there isn't a foothold to do a no-hands rest. To unweight the anchor I had to pull myself up with one hand and fiddle with the gear with the other. This was a tricky maneuver and I failed at it multiple times. I was getting exhausted and frustrated and then I looked down and I saw that the gate is starting to open on the quickdraw going to my harness. I panicked and wiggled such that the gate closes. Who knows how many times it opened while I was up there

The dumbest thing was that this anchor was ram's horns (which I wasn't familiar with at the time) so I didn't need to build an anchor and clean. I could have just put the rope through those and lowered 

Who here ever got to the top of a pitch they were following and found their partner had them on "Guide mode" but with the rope inserted upside down so it would never have caught a fall? I have. 

This was a few years ago...had been climbing most of day at Castle Rock in Big Bear. It was getting dark just as we had packed up to head out. We heard some screaming and yelling at the end of the crag. It became apparent that some exuberant youngsters had free soloed a popular 5.7 crack that ends on a big ledge where there are anchors, or you continue up the headwall at 5.10b to another anchor. As they were celebrating their achievement. I yelled up enquiring if they had a descent plan, they did not.

So I put my harness back on and my partner belayed me while I climbed up to the ledge. On the ledge, I made a swiss seat for each of the couple, they had been drinking. My partner then lowered them. After they were safely on the ground, I passed my rope through the rings and tied off and began the process to lower, I think I have might have half heartedly said lower me and started off the edge. Luckily the top of the climb is pretty low angle but when I started down I dropped several feet fairly rapidly. My partner had taken me off belay assuming I was going to rap. He managed to grab the rope and stop the fall, aided by the fact that I had climbed a meandering bolted route to the ledge. We had been climbing together for years at that point, but I think we were both in a rush and made assumptions about what the other person was doing---narrowly missed a bad fall.

Andrew Ricewrote:

Who here ever got to the top of a pitch they were following and found their partner had them on "Guide mode" but with the rope inserted upside down so it would never have caught a fall? I have. 

No but someone once belayed me with a non-guide atc clipped to the anchor

Jasonwrote:

No but someone once belayed me with a non-guide atc clipped to the anchor

so... basically just a carabiner?

Andrew Ricewrote:

Who here ever got to the top of a pitch they were following and found their partner had them on "Guide mode" but with the rope inserted upside down so it would never have caught a fall? I have. 

"Oh that's why it was so hard to take up slack." Just charging ahead even though something is clearly wrong, not a great quality in a climbing partner.

Andrew Rice wrote:

It's not harder to take up slack with the belayer's rope on top of the guide mode ATC. The problem is that when the climber falls their rope, since it's on the bottom instead of the top where it should be, won't pinch and brake the belayer strand. 

Maybe you're using a different style of ATC guide than me, but it's an absolute PITA to pull up slack if my device is loaded backwards. It locks up just as hard as if it's loaded correctly, just in the wrong direction.

Soloing ice around Lincoln Falls. Pretty much ran up most of the climbs there twice. There’s a flow in the middle, maybe only 20-30 of it is free from the formation but it provides a fun vertical section in the otherwise lower angle stuff at Lincoln.

I’d been up it once already that day and went off to do some other things. On my way down, I walked passed it, literally stopped and took a leak at the base, and decided to head off to the far left to take another lap up a longer line.

While climbing, I heard the unmistakable crash in the distance. I knew right away what and where it was. As I walked down later I looked up and saw that at least half of that waterfall was gone.

Had I climbed it again, like I had planned, I would have definitely been on it when it fell.

I’m not religious but that there is some tingly shit.

J Lwrote:

so... basically just a carabiner?

He was wearing belay gloves at least

carnage adovadawrote:

Maybe you're using a different style of ATC guide than me, but it's an absolute PITA to pull up slack if my device is loaded backwards. It locks up just as hard as if it's loaded correctly, just in the wrong direction.

You are probably right. I hate guide mode on an ATC and avoid it as much as possible, which seems to be always. 

Belaying my (then 11 year old) son from the ground as he led a  wandering 5.8ish trad route in Snow Canyon State Park.  He pulled up over a ledge and out of sight and called down that he was "at the anchors".  I quickly popped open the autolocker on my grigri and took him off belay.

A few heartbeats went by and my brain finally caught up.  I had him back on belay a moment later, but 6 years later that one still haunts me.  I've had plenty of screw ups that could have killed *me*, but not may that would have killed my kid.