Via Ferrata - I'm a competent climber, can I just buy a via ferrata lanyard and go? Or will I die?

Artem Vee wrote:

Wheter or not wholly rejecting anything risky, for this reason, is the correct approach - depends on your personality. Some people would rather outlaw or ridicule anything that isn’t perfectly utilitarian and economically productive. Personally, it just makes me want to do risky things even more - to spite the oppressive squares. I’m a punk at heart. I want to upset those specific people, because I don’t like them from an idealogical perspective. My body and life is mine and mine alone. I’ll go have fun, and you can’t stop me (childish, I know, but man - just like most things that are childish, it is really fun). 

Guarentee you there is a sizable portion of the population that unironically feels this way - while simultaneously slowly dying of congestive heart failure at middle age due to, ironically enough, their risky diet and sedentary lifestyle. Should I also call them a moron, or should I just shrug my shoulders and stay in my own lane?

But here’s my argument - you are grabbing literal ladder rungs on most of them, so I’ve found it to be about as low risk as it gets. There may be some who disagree, and they remind me of my Soviet Russian grandma. 

Seriously, have you guys ever seen what an unattended series of ladder rungs does to an ape brained person? It’s like an invitation to go into whatever they lead into. Forbidden jungle gym. It’s irresistable. It’s your right as a human to investigate whats up there

Artem, I'm seeing very little "staying in your own lane" and a whole lot of effort to provoke reactions to outrageous statements and behaviours.  Why don't you just go free solo something big and leave the adults to discuss how to enjoy a via ferrata in relative safety?

@artem

I'm generally ok with people soloing if they have a plan for if they fail to not impact people, but you see people soloing popular routes constantly, which has a lot of "look at me" attached. Everyone has their own risk assessment, but if I know anything from my days in loss reporting professionally or studies of snow science, it's that people are absolute shit at risk assessment in general. No one can actually outlaw it, nor am I against risk taking, it's just most of the nimrods you see spraying about it are usually about the wrong reasons, so from a "town square" perspective we should not encourage it as it should require more soul searching to engage in. 

Your arguments are pretty dumb and tired, keep telling yourself you're more core than me brah. 

Does anyone have an idea when the specialized VF leashes were developed?  I did some VFs in the Dolomites in the early 90s with just slings and biners on the harness, and I remember thinking that a fall would likely either break a biner or my pelvis.  So, I'm curious to know whether the lanyards existed back then and I was just not aware.  I was in the UK at the time and don't recall ever seeing anything like that in the gear shops there or in the few shops I checked out in France and Italy.

You guys had thicker spines back then.

PTR wrote:

Does anyone have an idea when the specialized VF leashes were developed?

I don't know, but I found this website which talks a bit about their development:  https://www.alpinetrek.co.uk/blog/via-ferrata-sets/. It seems to suggest that specialized lanyards came on the scene in the first few years of this century, and that some sort of rope brake system was (sometimes?) used before that.

Thanks for the link.  The last comment was relevant:  "P.S. Hopefully, this goes without saying, but a sling with a carabiner is no substitute for a via ferrata set. A sling is static and not capable of absorbing a fall. If you were to take fall onto a sling, it would either lead to a life-threatening injury or death."

Actually, the vertical ladder sections seemed relatively safe.  You just leap-frogged your biners up the ladder -- clipping to the horizontal rungs.  Any fall would have been pretty mellow.  Climbing while clipped into a vertical cable would have meant a fall down onto the last anchor 10 or 20 feet below.  That's the scenario where I envisioned my biners exploding.  I guess that's why we had 2.

PTR wrote:

Climbing while clipped into a vertical cable would have meant a fall down onto the last anchor 10 or 20 feet below.  That's the scenario where I envisioned my biners exploding.  I guess that's why we had 2.

If I'm falling 20 feet onto a static sling, I think I'm gonna be hoping my biners explode!    Your historical experience is interesting, though, and your question makes me wonder what methods were used back when early via ferratas (ferratae?) were developed (either the late 19th century ones or the WWI era).  Wikipedia has a passing reference to the historical equipment development. Other comments there about risk of serious injury suggest to me that the modern "ladder rung" type of via ferrata is quite different than what many of the earlier versions probably were: essentially rock climbing routes with permanent cables for protection. Otherwise, I would think you could have climbed much like industrial ladder climbers (tower workers, etc.) do these days, with two rung hooks moved from rung to rung with each step, more or less. Presumably slower progress, but arguably not really any less safe than the modern way. Curiosity piqued!

Most of the original via ferratta were created for military use during WW1. My guess is that safety equipment, if any, was pretty rudimentary--doubt if safety was a priority given everything that was going on them.

Alan, probably something like:

"Aren't you terrified of falling off those ladders?"

"Are you fucking kidding me? We're all going to get slaughtered at the top anyway!"

Cherokee Nunes wrote:

Alan, probably something like:

"Aren't you terrified of falling off those ladders?"

"Are you fucking kidding me? We're all going to get slaughtered at the top anyway!"

Or, "It's safer up here than down there!"

Generally they were climbing peaks and passes to gain the height advantage to rain down death upon the enemies below, more or less.

I've only scanned the other responses so I don't know if this has been mentioned already, but a lot of it seemed to be going into the infrastructure safety of VF's. Another thing to consider is that you will almost certainly be sharing the route with other parties, in some cases quite a lot of them. Some of these parties might not be so concerned about safety, ie bunching up quite considerably. 

Considering you'll almost certainly be injured if you fall into your safety equipment, I'd be very wary of other parties on the routes - some of them are bound to be inexperienced or just plain uncaring. Technique-wise you'll almost certainly be fine, it's all the rest that makes VF potentially more dangerous than actual climbing. 

1) Hi Victor!  Send me an email!  Hope you're doing well.

2) All this talk of ladders reminds me of one of good friends who has been a PA in emergency rooms for 20 years.  Can you imagine all the accidents he has seen?  He told me recently that he absolutely, positvely, will not climb on a ladder without wearing his cycling helmet.

The OP would be advised to get the reccomended modern gear, plan ahead, get an early start, and have fun.  I hope to do an alpine VF in Switzerland with my 15 year old daughter this summer.  

@artem - sorry for the delay, the dumb post limit ate my response and I was annoyed at the site. To my claims:

-Nothing novel here. We hear this narrow minded argument ad nasuem. This is the exact reasoning for why certain countries + areas have outlawed any form of climbing, alpinism, base jumping, super sport motorcycles, paragliding etc. With these activities there is an inherent unwanted responsibility that you must unilaterally put on rescuers when you take a risk that doesn’t have any economic gain - just purely selfish personal/spiritual gains. These activities are on the fringes of reality. You wanted to fly closer to the sun, and now people are picking up pieces of your body, extracting your corpse, or dealing with you as you die or come close to it. Way to go.

There's nothing particularly open-minded on doing risky sports, nor are they particularly "noble" if uncompensated. Is racing cars noble? It used to kill a heck of a lot of people, even professionals. Renumeration/economics are mostly to pay for equipment and crews to scrape you off of whatever - I doubt many climbers would turn down major salaries to just climb more. These are risky activities we choose to engage in that bring us some level of enjoyment. They are not particularly fringe (especially in these days of PLB's, climbing gym chains and route documentation), they are just less popular than other activities. 

-Wheter or not wholly rejecting anything risky, for this reason, is the correct approach - depends on your personality and culture of origin. Some people would rather outlaw or ridicule anything that isn’t perfectly utilitarian and economically productive. Personally, it just makes me want to do risky things even more - to spite the oppressive squares. I’m a punk at heart. I want to upset those specific people, because I don’t like them from an idealogical perspective. My body and life is mine and mine alone. I’ll go have fun, and you can’t stop me (childish, I know, but man - just like most things that are childish, it is really fun). 

It's true, but a thing to remember is that if you off yourself soloing (which I personally hope no one does, for the record), in the words from a classic ski movie (Waiting Game) - you aren't just trashing yourself, you're trashing the people that find your body, your family and friends. If you're setting out and notifying people to minimize the blast radius if something does go wrong (IE telling them to notify SAR for body recovery past a certain time) - good on you. Many in this thread talking about it don't seem to be of that particular level of mindfulness, nor do many of the videos I see of people soloing popular routes. 

-What are the odds that you have the perfect risk assessment? 

No such thing. I've worked professionally in loss reporting analysis for insurance as well as almost killed myself innumerable times - some expected, some unexpected. There is no such thing as zero risk or perfect risk assessment. Things can always go wrong no matter what. In the words of Picard "You can do everything right and still lose". This is where my stance on soloing comes from - the things that kill experienced soloists typically aren't running out of skill, they're shit rock that decides to give on that 10,001st pull, a sudden wind gust at the wrong moment or a microseizure/involuntary body movement or issue at the wrong moment.

Many of the rest of your points are solid, as I agree that the total rejection of risk is foolhardy in favor of experiencing more in life. However, much like driving around without a seatbelt is relatively dumb considering risk/reward (or motorcycle without a helmet), I put soloing in the same category. If you want to climb without ropes so bad, just go bouldering (you will have to buy a beanie though).

Bruno Schull wrote:

I hope to do an alpine VF in Switzerland with my 15 year old daughter this summer.  

Ooh, that sounds like fun! I was planning to send you an email Bruno, stay tuned!

Sep M wrote:

I feel like “risk assessment” has taken on a different meaning where one just looks at how severe the risk is. I learned risk assessment as comparing two things. In the case of free soloing, that’d be the risk of death vs the joy of the free movement,

I agree there exist some ladder-like via ferratas where the risk is low. But I don’t get what is on the other side of the comparison. Saving a few seconds of moving carabiners? The flow state of a ladder? $60 in your pocket? Sticking it to “the man?” I’m not seeing what outweighs the admittedly small risk of death. I worry that folks have stopped making risk assessments and just substituted a half-assed “low risk” vs “high risk” form of decision making.

There can be differences in how risky we think an activity is. But the difference between something being "really low risk" and "really really low risk" is probably not where people are vehemently disagreeing. The crux is on the other side of the equation: what is there to be gained? That, I think, can vary quite a lot from one person to another. 

There's definitely a common simplification of the term risk as well. It's really two things: probability and consequence. In climbing, people mainly address probability and think low probability = low risk. Low probability/high consequence is still high risk, even if it's lower than high probability/high consequence.

You can experience high-factor falls with via ferrata. Close enough to factor 2. So I would never do one without the via-ferrata-specific lanyards, which have built-in dissipators (to make the jerk of a high-factor fall less intense). 

For me, it's always "what do you want out of climbing?". I always choose a level of protection that is conservative compared to my climbing capability.

What Victor said - other people falling onto you is the scary part.  Nice to have one person per segment, but that goes out the window when it gets crowded.  Skylotec makes a cooler lanyard that clamps the cable - fall distance minimal and you can use it to rest or belay.  My wife hired a guide who gave her a Skylotec and the guide used one also and had my wife on a short rope.  As a climber, you can try to touch only the rock.  But, if the route is crowded, you'll have a hard time keeping up and might end up pulling on metal.  The cable tends to disappear in gulleys (rockfall) right when you wish there was one.  You'll have a lot of fun.

Todd Mansfield wrote:

You can experience high-factor falls with via ferrata. Close enough to factor 2.

It was noted somewhere online that fall factors can go higher than factor 2. Due to a fall down a vertical cable possibly being much longer than the length of lanyard.

Similar to climbing, via ferratas have grades for their difficulty. Found a site that describes it: https://ferrata.world/grades

I lived near the alps for last 5 years and also experienced climber. IMO, anything A or B is going to be easy for climbers. Biggest challenge will need polished holds. At D and E the exposure is much higher and more of no fall territory. VF sets are more to prevent death not injury IMO.