New Study on Rock Climbing Accidents and Rescues
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The Rocky Mountain Rescue Group has just published a study in the Wilderness and Environmental Medicine Journal on 14 years of rock climbing accidents in Boulder County, Colorado. |
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This is great info, Dan -- thanks very much for posting. |
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Thanks! |
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"Notable anchor failures include:...the failure of an anchor built from webbing spliced together using masking tape". |
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Thanks for sharing and congratulations on the publication! Very well done! |
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Dan, |
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^^DOUCHE!--------------they're just tryin to help |
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The last 2 posters completely miss the point. They probably have a lot of useful data but all I read here is: |
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OMG I had to CLICK A LINK TO FIND THIS! |
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Rick Blair wrote:Dan, Point 1, are you including protection in the anchor stats (vs just belay anchors)? Is there a breakdown between fixed and placed pro? Point 2, Is there a breakdown between lowering someone off the end of a rope and losing control of a belay? Why the gloves? Are people losing control/lowering too fast when they see they are about to lower someone off the rope then trying to grab it?Rick and others, thanks for the questions and comments. In response to your points: 1) When we were breaking the results into the various categories we chose to define an anchor as a piece of protection that was intentionally loaded (top rope anchor, slung rock, trad anchor etc.). We assumed that a single piece of pro placed in the middle of a lead climb is not usually intended to be loaded. This might not always be the case but for the analysis we had to draw a line. Cams that pulled after a lead fall were not included as an anchor. There was one situation where a climber was using a single cam as an anchor for an extended rest and the rock surrounding the cam broke. 2) The belay breakdown is: 21 of 51 climbers were either lowered off or rappelled off the rope while 8 of 51 lost control of the belay. In most of these Lost Control situations the belayer (or person on rappel) could not generate enough friction and let go of the rope due to the rope burns. The cause of losing control was by fast lowering, and energetic falls that were not caught. |
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Rocky Mountain Rescue Group wrote: 2) The belay breakdown is: 21 of 51 climbers were either lowered off or rappelled off the rope while 8 of 51 lost control of the belay. In most of these Lost Control situations the belayer (or person on rappel) could not generate enough friction and let go of the rope due to the rope burns. The cause of losing control was by fast lowering, and energetic falls that were not caught.Thanks for the quick response! What I am reading is that belay gloves are important for situations where lowering is common ( Top rope, single pitch trad and sport ) Are we specifically talking about belaying while lowering? |
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JLP wrote:... A breakdown of the lead falls - kind of gear that failed, routes, etc - would have been infinitely more useful in itself than the sum of all other information in your links.How would you benefit by knowing, for instance, that nuts failed more frequently than cams or hexes? JLP wrote: There is more useful and better quality information on the accident interpretive sign near the bathroom in Eldo. One example - the ANAM tables and the Eldo sign clearly indicate that gear pulling out of the rock (or no gear) during those lead falls is by far the biggest cause of injury in all of rock climbing (ie, technical, rope, no snow/ice, etc). Your reports absolutely miss that.So, there was either no gear or gear was placed and pulled out. You think that's more valuable to the climbing community than a reminder about the importance of knowing the descent route or rap locations before getting on a climb? |
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Dan/RMRG, |
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RMRG wrote:- Un-roped climbers made up one third of climbers rescued and almost 40% of those fatally injured.Dan, Does this stat include those folks that have little to no technical climbing experience and not even the most basic climbing gear (i.e. climbing/approach/sticky rubber shoes) and find themselves on technical (4th - 5th class) terrain when they have their accident? Or does it just include those folks that have at least some technical climbing experience and at least sticky rubber on their feet? Thanks! |
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JLP wrote:O One example - the ANAM tables and the Eldo sign clearly indicate that gear pulling out of the rock (or no gear) during those lead falls is by far the biggest cause of injury in all of rock climbing (ie, technical, rope, no snow/ice, etc). Your reports absolutely miss that.I would to some extent not conclude this as the biggest cause, but rather a problem in situational awareness. As well, perhaps the information submitted in the ANAM and Eldo needs a better look to the reporting parties submitting info that seem to do it with a bias to promote a message, or quite frankly to mask personal responsibility in the accident. Similar to every news report of a chest injury on a ski slope due to whether or not a person wore a helmet or an avy beacon; which may not relate, but the intent was to put out a message about getting education & safety equipment. Grain of salt. A loss of situational awareness due to some rational cognitive decision made in the process results in an accident in most every case. Which is surely attributable to rescuer accidents just as much as recreationalists. This would seem counter-intuitive as being in this type of terrain, you have, or should have, an intense focus on the situation at hand. Why does this occur and continue to occur? Complacency of the experienced & educated possibly just as much as the lack of talent or knowledge by the inexperienced. Maybe also seek things like: do we have acceptable use of equipment that still ends in an accident (or misuse, for that matter)? Falling when its not an option? Partners not on the same page and/or mis-communicating? Do we have abnormal psychology disorder/medical concern? An unforeseen (or foreseeable) objective hazard from the terrain? Just pure egotistical arrogance? I think the data submitted here seeks to address some of this better, which I believe also mirrors what the NPS has collected and reported. Overdue Hiking/Search is still, by far, the biggest occurrence of SAR in needing to utilize resources. Not that there is anything inherently wrong with getting out into the mountains whether climbing, hiking, or gang-banging the local tavern queen. Shit happens sometimes; the mountains will never be the sanitized forum of soccer-mom safety no matter how good the pro and anchors are. But, I think having the extensive data history presented in this type of report offers a better understanding. |
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Dan, etal - |
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JLP wrote:O A breakdown of the lead falls - kind of gear that failed, routes,For reliable statistics, you'd need to know the ratio of "kind of gear" failed to "kind of gear" fell on. I guess no one had the fell-on-gear stats to make a useful comparison. Routes? What if I said 3 people were hurt climbing Route ABC? What if only 3 people attempted that route in 11 years? What if 498 parties had successfully summited? JLP wrote: One example - the ANAM tables and the Eldo sign clearly indicate that gear pulling out of the rock (or no gear) during those lead falls is by far the biggest cause of injury in all of rock climbing"Gear (or no gear)"... That's the most useful sign I've seen yet. Except for this one: It's pretty cool - and for some people almost necessary - to take a huge mass (mess?) of incoherent data, arrange it, define categories and boundaries, sort, classify, sieve out the useful info, and turn it into stats. However, it requires that one knows what _can't_ be reported due to data limitations, of which you, amongst you're sniveling adolescent retort, have just pointed out 2 perfect examples. |
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Rick Blair wrote:The last 2 posters completely miss the point.... And he is correct, the sign in Eldo contradicts point #1 about anchors. Yeah, GREAT sign at Eldo!! "Failed gear during lead fall (or no gear) is the leading cause of injury"". It's like, crashing while drunk driving (or walking) is the leading cause of injury to drinkers. |
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Bump, particularly for the 20% of belay failure accidents. What can the climbing community collectively do to reduce this ________ (tragic? appalling? alarming?) number? |
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To address a few more of the comments brought up: |
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Great study with lots of info. Being involved in research myself I realize a line has to be drawn at some point. There simply is never enough time or money to answer all questions. |