Trad fall at Seneca Rocks 4/20/25 - seeking update!

Hi everyone,

I witnessed a trad fall at Seneca this past weekend. The cause of the fall was unknown, but the climber fell at least 20 ft and hit a ledge below him. He seemed to have significant arm and back injuries, and my friends and I helped with getting him on the backboard and to the helicopter. I'm wondering if anyone has updates on the condition of the climber or the cause of the fall.

Thanks!

Word on the street is he's going to make as full a recovery as one can from such a major accident!

He'll probably be chock full of metal, but he'll be walking soon and he hopes to come back for the send on Climbin' Punishment when he's back in climbing shape. 

He fell more like 50ft after whipping on and snapping a fixed piton clean out of the rock

Thanks for helping with the rescue <3

Geez  this is awful and glad he will recover.

So are you saying the piton was his only or nearest piece and that it split from the rock causing the fall? 

Leslie H wrote:

Geez  this is awful and glad he will recover.

So are you saying the piton was his only or nearest piece and that it split from the rock causing the fall? 

Correct. There's a long section of easy ground before the crux on that climb, so he ran it out ~20-30ft to the crux, clipped the piton without placing any other gear (he may have been running low on gear by then), then fell at the crux and snapped the piton. 

The piton had been there for decades and the blade had become insanely thin (like one-ish millimeter thin), but it was hard to see how badly it had degraded as the metal at the eye of the piton was about a quarter inch thick

What route was this on?

Yikes! That’s a good reminder not to trust those older Seneca pins just by their appearance outside the rock. Very glad to hear the climber will be ok.

Daniel Hampton wrote:

What route was this on?

It was on Climbin' Punishment