Near miss, absent-mindedness

At the top of Remain in the Light at Smith (after four pitches), my partner nearly killed me due to a serious lapse in judgment at the anchor. I’m still upset about how dangerously absentminded the mistake was — climbing is inherently risky, but this was avoidable.

Here’s what happened:

After we topped out, we left our quad anchor set up at the top bolts and summited unroped. Just above the anchor, there’s one “beached whale” move before the actual summit. For safety, I remained clipped in with my PAS to the quad during that move — both on the way up and on the way back down to the anchor.

Back at the anchor ledge (a small exposed stance), I stayed clipped in with my PAS, repeatedly weighting and unweighting it as I leaned over to assess where to drop the rope for our rappel.

In one of those moments — between unweighting and reweighting my PAS — I looked up. My partner had already unclipped one of the two carabiners attaching the quad to the anchor bolts. He was reaching for the second carabiner when I stopped him — just before he would have fully detached the quad from the anchor.

Had he unclipped that second carabiner, I would’ve fallen hundreds of feet. My PAS was still attached to the quad, but he was removing the quad from the anchor entirely — effectively severing my only point of protection.

It was horrifying. I’ve been climbing for over twenty years, and I’ve never seen anything like it.

Once we were safely down, we debriefed. He said he doesn't usually use quads for rappels and prefers to rely solely on his PAS into the bolts. Later, he even texted me: “Best day ever.”

That shook me even more. It made me feel like he didn’t understand — or take seriously — the fact that he nearly caused a fatal accident. I talked with him for about 15 minutes on the walk out about the importance of being hyper-aware around anchors, and how critical it is to never make changes without confirming your partner’s situation.

But it’s left me unsettled. The casualness of it, the lack of accountability or reflection — it’s hard to trust someone after something like this.

You've been climbing 20 years, you should be able to trust your gut by now. If your gut tells you this is a nice guy but he doesn't seem to be internalizing and fully appreciating what happened (defense mechanism, denial, whatever) then you might want to to downgrade him to "single pitch cragging only partner" where the objective hazards are fewer. I feel it's pretty universally understood you don't unclip biners at an anchor on a multi unless you are staring your partner in the eyes and asking permission to do so. There is no grey area here.

Thanks for sharing your close call. Conversations like this are an important part of the professional guiding world—and other high-consequence fields like medicine, law enforcement and firefighting. They’re a great way to reflect on our habits and learn how to avoid similar situations in the future.

The Accidents and Injuries forum often dives deep into major incidents, but I think we could all benefit from talking about near-misses more regularly too.

I’ve had my share of close calls, and I’ve climbed with partners who’ve had lapses in focus—or worse, shown a pattern of absent-mindedness. In those cases, I usually step back from climbing with them.

I don’t have much specific advice beyond this: if a partner is inexperienced, or simply acting that way, they need direct supervision. But in this case, it sounds like it caught you completely off guard.

That's crazy. I don't remove the anchor until everything else has been disconnected from it.

Yikes! Glad you looked over in time! Thanks for the reminder about vigilance and communication! Very disconcerting to have a nonchalant response to a real close call.

Honestly you're missing the accountability towards yourself.  There was no communication after the "top out" thing? You both are 50/50 responsible for everything that happened up there. Come on with this total blame rant. You're on a 400 foot ledge with a person who you decided to climb with.  Nothing was spoken about the sequence/plan after doing some weird above -anchor moves and then setting up rappel afterwards. As soon as normal protocol is broken, and initial visual inspection of what was previously going on (finishing the final pitch) is lost to new circumstances, the team should re-set and have a meeting.

Russ Keanewrote:

Honestly you're missing the accountability towards yourself.  There was no communication after the "top out" thing? You both are 50/50 responsible for everything that happened up there. Come on with this total blame rant. You're on a 400 foot ledge with a person who you decided to climb with.  Nothing was spoken about the sequence/plan after doing some weird above -anchor moves and then setting up rappel afterwards. As soon as normal protocol is broken, and initial visual inspection of what was previously going on (finishing the final pitch) is lost to new circumstances, the team should re-set and have a meeting.

Hi angry person. Want to ask questions instead of assuming there was no communication? I’m happy to go over the three times we communicated plans and how we knew each other. Not really stoked to talk to people who don’t communicate nicely though. I sent you a dm. Happy to communicate there too. 

So you messed up.  You started to break down your anchor before transitioning to your new system. You should always be fully weighting your system while in use.  Assuming you were fully weighting your old anchor you have no concern as obviously your partner could not break down a weighted system. Also you didn’t get your partner back down to the rap ledge before you started to transition to descending. You have equal blame here in my book. If you had both been where you were supposed to be, hanging out on a belay, no one would have been breaking down the anchor.

Hello Fluffy, as presented,  non of what happened is on you. Since 1972, I have had many occasion to detach a partner from an anchor, for a variety of good reasons. It has NEVER been done without being absolutely sure they knew and fully understood. Same in reverse. The reason usually is to move the belay somewhere mid route on a multipitch, rock or alpine. And it never occurs when the person is busy performing a task, especially when there is serious risk. 

Same goes for taking someone off belay without that person anchored. It needs to be confirmed, or requested. Doesn't necessarily require words. But does require acknowledgment.

i am really surprised at russ and kevin's take on this. i completely disagree with them.  first, ALWAYS weighting the system isn't ALWAYS practical, and is sometimes not really possible.  also seems like there are some full-on assumptions here.  "Also you didn’t get your partner back down to the rap ledge before you started to transition to descending. "  not sure where he said anything about this.  for all we know they could have been hanging out for an hour back at the anchor before this happened.   "There was no communication after the "top out" thing? "  again, seems like an assumption.  "Nothing was spoken about the sequence/plan after doing some weird above -anchor moves and then setting up rappel afterwards."  more assumptions here...

"As soon as normal protocol is broken, and initial visual inspection of what was previously going on (finishing the final pitch) is lost to new circumstances, the team should re-set and have a meeting."  lolz,  what, should he have emailed him a teams invite?

So maybe I am jumping to conclusions, but the whole thing smells like BS to me.

edit: If he was standing there next to you and took down the quad thinking you were on the anchor directly with your PAS, I think that would be screwed up and not your fault.  If that’s the case then I’m sorry for jumping to the wrong assumption. 

Hey Fluffy Stuff, 

1) I feel like this belongs in the long running thread we have about such incidents.  If you read through that thread, you will find many examples of such incidents.  Maybe you can ask the admins to move this thread over? 

https://www.mountainproject.com/forum/topic/126203278/scariest-momentsmistakes-when-climbing-not-resulting-in-injury?page=19#ForumMessage-201878692

2) One of my previous partners, who is deeply skilled and experienced, took me out of anchor on two separate occasions without intending to and without me knowing.  In both cases, he was just organizing and doing stuff, and made a simple mistake.  Despite all the years of experience, it happened anyway.  In those cases, one contributing factor was that I was using a PAS and he was not--I think the difference in systems lead to some rapid thoughts/decisions that ended up being dangerous.  I'm not saying everybody should or must use the same system, but it's something to consider. 

In any case, focusing on details like what system one uses is ultimately distracting. 

Taking a broad view, I appreciate your desire to debrief this with your partner and to get him to acknowledge the seriousness of what happened.  If he really is flippant and unaware perhaps he should be downgraded to single pitch sport cragging.  

But what I don't see in your post is the admission of anything you might have done differently and the understanding that you could just as easily make a similar mistake--no matter how firmly you might believe that you could not. Discuss and debrief, but don't blame and shame.  Acknowleding the reality that mistakes happen is an important starting point, I think.  

There's a lot of weird for lack of a better term "blaming the victim" going on here. As described you did absolutely nothing wrong here. 

"Always weight your anchor", "reset and have a meeting" are rather bizarre takes in my opinion. Its always best practice to discuss your plan for descent but nothing about topping out and returning to a rigged anchor negates a pretty fundamental rule:  

You never just break down an anchor without being sure its no longer doing a job. If you need to break down an anchor someone is still connected to you better be completely sure the other person is aware and on board (or put them in to another system if for some reason you are unable to communicate to them). 

Your partner fucked up, plain and simple. we all make mistakes sometimes, but how we respond afterwards is extremely important. doesn't seem like this person respects the gravity of the situation, either due to ego, ignorance or some other factor. I would be inclined to reevaluate my partnership for sure. If the relationship is important to you, have another conversation with them. "Hey I'm still pretty upset about what happened the other day on remain in the light. from my perspective you broke a fundamental rule and put my life in danger, and it feels like you aren't taking that seriously enough, can we debrief this a little further?" and take it from there.

FluffyStuff, I didn't see anything in your post that made me think you were at fault in any way.
Based on what you said about your partner brushing off the incident: if it were me, I'd never climb with this person again. Forget about TR/single pitch. Never again. Fool me once and all that.
I do think it would be helpful to know in more detail the different steps as they happened, since I'm trying to imagine being clipped in with a PAS to the quad and "summiting unroped" with a beached whale move. What did the anchor look like, how was your partner anchored in, etc? More details if you wouldn't mind. This will possibly help other people who may one day be in a similar situation - what to avoid?

Yeah - pretty unthinking to start removing a quad from the anchor bolts while something is still attached to the quad.

I’ve done unthinking things with similar potential consequences in 22 years of climbing and more mountaineering  

Trust your intuition. More discussion needed with your partner. If it still does not feel like your partner understands the seriousness and does not talk through what should be done differently, I’d consider them someone you only do climbs with where you act as though you are soloing everything. I have had a partner like that with whom I very much enjoy being in the mountains.

If I’d unclipped half the quad my partner was on and was reaching to unclip the other, I would have been gutted and might have concluded I should not be in high stakes terrain. I definitely would’ve taken a time out in my climbing career and slowed down. I would have apologized on several occasions and not responded with ‘best day ever’. If this had led to a death, I would not see it as 50/50 mistake and would see it as manslaughter.  

Part of our communication from the last anchor…

1) as a team we decided to stay on the quad with pas for the beached whale move and leave the quad for reversing the beached whale. It was too dangerous to drag the rope on the loose blocks

2) when done with the summit, I communicated to my partner… ‘clipping into the quad’, ‘ reversing the move’.

3) he was not to the anchor yet but less than 10’ away. I communicated over and over as I weighed the quad on and off. I looked to the right for the rappel descent, unweighted to move to a different angle, then looked left for the rappel, back and forth making assessments and talking to him. We were chatting since the rappel descent was a different route than the climb.

4) I look up and boom… he’d walked to the edge above the beached whale move and had removed one carabiner from the quad, and was reaching for the second (just as I was going to sit back again).

i hope and pray I never am so tired or absent minded that I make a big mistake like that. (Two experienced friends, one amga guide and climbing author have unclipped my only attachment to the anchor previously in cramped quarters. In those cases it might have been more confusing to them and also proved deadly. In this case, it was crazy he walked up to the anchor I was on and started to remove from above.)

Initially I had a long post written including the details above about communication and also ponderings to the state of my partner (maybe he was tired, maybe not enough water/food, maybe I should have picked up on something). The post was long and I’m inexperienced posting here, so I kept it short figuring people would open the discussion if they were interested. Starting short seemed better.

About my partner… he was acting fine but he did call me the wrong name towards the end of the day. I pondered that with climbing friends after the incident. I wondered if I could have picked up that he was bonking, but he was acting normal otherwise. When he called me the wrong name, I mentioned we should get some food and water. He was moving fine and seemed alert. Maybe I should have guessed he was tired from a long drive, lots of pitches, I dunno but certainly had discussed this with several climbing friends wondering what I might have missed. One partner who is writing a book on climbing mistakes said this nearly fatal mistake could have to do with endorphins.  Again I left this from the initial post for brevity sake. I do know I’d prefer a gentler approach to asking questions about the situation instead of saying I’m 50/50 to blame without more questions first. Though, the 50/50 blame is an interesting perspective to apply to other situations. If I’m driving down the road in my lane and a car crashes into me from another lane, am I 50/50 at fault for deciding to be on the road that day? I think that was the intent of the one post… I tied in with that person that day so any mistakes they make are my mistakes too.

This story hits a nerve for me. A sort-of similar thing happened to me once a few years ago. The details are different, but the key thing is that someone disconnected a life-protecting system without my knowledge or consent, and it was only through luck (and a very attentive belay) that I stayed on the wall. 

A difference is that, in my case, the person who did it was horrified when they figured out what happened. But, frankly, I'm still angry about it all these years later. It could have been really bad. 

We rely on our partners, and on other climbers in the area, to not actively put us in danger. We don't, and can't always expect perfection in setting up climbing systems. That's why we try to be redundant when we can. But even the most redundant system (A QUAD!!) is no match for a person deliberately dismantling it. Unclipping someone's anchor while they're clipped in to it is beyond a mistake. It's a different category.

I think that the comments by Russ and Kevin above (which Kevin appropriately walked back) miss something important: there is no scenario where a climber should unclip their partner's anchor without, as Bryans said, "staring your partner in the eyes and asking permission to do so." And even then, the climber unclipping anything should assure themself that they're not putting themself or their partner in danger by disconnecting whatever they're about to disconnect. The more unfamiliar one is with the system being used, the more cautious one should be in messing with it. (I'm getting more and more upset just thinking this through)

 Kevin and Russ seem to be saying that a party should confer before switching from climbing to rapping, or when changing systems. That's not bad advice, per se. But the burden is not on every climber to say "don't unclip me from the anchor!"  every five minutes. No reasonable climber would ever unclip their partner, so there is nothing that could have been said or not said in that hypothetical conversation that would justify unclipping the anchor in the absence of such a conversation. So, even if there was no conversation or meeting or whatever Russ and Kevin think should have occurred, that's irrelevant to what happened here.

And no, it's not always possible to weight your tether at every stance. Nor does an unweighted tether confer permission on your partner to disconnect it! 

To sum up, I think you are absolutely justified to feel upset, to feel unsettled, to feel angry. I would certainly have trouble ever trusting that person again.

PS is this the final anchor?

If your partner:

• cannot readily and independently assess the implications of their actions in that context and respond accordingly,
• requires tedious communication to prevent such an OBVIOUS 'wrong', ('...hey, going to unclip you while you're weighting/unweighting your sole attachment to this world...')
• and fails to appreciate the gravity of their actions

Look out!

I get the monitoring thing but this is base-level intuition. Too much 'monitoring' (anxiety?) diminishes/nullifies the joy.

Nkane 1wrote:

PS is this the final anchor?

Great photo! That is the final anchor and where I was looking right off the little ledge and looking left. We were rappelling a different route, so was discussing it with my partner trying to be vigilant.

Sorry about your similar experience. It makes me shudder. Several people have DM’d me similar experiences (bonehead mistakes then no remorse/reflection).

Again… I hope and pray I can keep from making mistakes like this. I’ve been around some fatalities from other parties and it sure is heart wrenching for all.

Kevin Strickerwrote:

So maybe I am jumping to conclusions, but the whole thing smells like BS to me.

edit: If he was standing there next to you and took down the quad thinking you were on the anchor directly with your PAS, I think that would be screwed up and not your fault.  If that’s the case then I’m sorry for jumping to the wrong assumption. 

same, getting weird vibes from this one. does anybody feel like this was written by AI? lot of em-dashes, almost too perfect grammar, sentence spacing etc. Seems like a real account but this post is whack

Casey Fentonwrote:

same, getting weird vibes from this one. does anybody feel like this was written by AI? lot of em-dashes, almost too perfect grammar, sentence spacing etc. Seems like a real account but this post is whack

In about 2 minutes (the time it took you to post this) you can view the OP's impressive tick lists, and comments, and conclude that they are a real person. Is it all true, I don't know, but they joined 10 years ago and have over 400 ticks and 400 "contributions." I don't think AI fakes it til it makes it, quite that hard. The fact I'm writing this really makes me miss the old MP pre-bots, now we are all paranoid. 

That said it can be pretty hard to succintly summarize climbing scenarios in only words without images, I can see why many people are scratching their heads over this whole "I mantled up to the summit while still on my PAS but not on belay" description. (Is the PAS like 20 feet long? If she actually fell mantling or reversing mantle-  which can be tricky -  wouldn't the static fall on a PAS be cause serious injury?)