Most dangerous newbie situation you've seen

Michael Schneider wrote:

The Neck is a much more convoluted story. A combination of falls and one final slip & flip out of the back of a cargo van following a snow storm;  that led to an extremely lucky diagnosis that came after working/ climbing and traveling with a broken neck for  months.

DONT BREAK YOUR  HEELZ -OR- NECKZ,   KIDZ !

 

Strange what we find ourselves grateful for, sometimes, eh?

Glad you're still here, in more or less working order! ;-) OLH

Old lady H wrote:

Strange what we find ourselves grateful for, sometimes, eh?

Glad you're still here, in more or less working order! ;-) OLH

#Waitin'formyleastfavorite troll, but I will add that the values & rewards of going cordless , are few, if any. 

If you want to climb forever,  stay tied in and seriously consider Only Top roping boulder problems.

Michael Schneider wrote:

#Waitin'formyleastfavorite troll, but I will add that the values & rewards of going cordless , are few, if any. 

If you want to climb forever,  stay tied in and seriously consider Only Top roping boulder problems.

Sorry if I became your least favorite troll, somewhere along the line....

My "top rope" when I went on my first boulder trip recently, was my six foot tall son. And a short boulder. He literally grabbed my feet and gave me the ignominious boost I needed to "mantle" my top half, beached whale fashion, over the top.

Yes, that close to the ground, panic was starting in. But, you see, the knees scream in agony when jolted these days, so the entire trip was about trusting the pad and the catcher, and confronting that rather real fear. 

So, I'm grateful I got stuck and scared. It's a good hurdle to have jumped.

Happy b'days to the two of you, coming up! Wishing you many more.

Best, Helen

Old lady H wrote:

Sorry if I became your least favorite troll, somewhere along the line....

My "top rope" when I went on my first boulder trip recently, was my six foot tall son. And a short boulder. He literally grabbed my feet and gave me the ignominious boost I needed to "mantle" my top half, beached whale fashion, over the top.

Yes, that close to the ground, panic was starting in. But, you see, the knees scream in agony when jolted these days, so the entire trip was about trusting the pad and the catcher, and confronting that rather real fear. 

So, I'm grateful I got stuck and scared. It's a good hurdle to have jumped.

Happy b'days to the two of you, coming up! Wishing you many more.

Best, Helen

NO NO NO NOT YOU ! sheeze girl, I am your 5th biggest fan, you have no idea really. &  lwill come to your defense; defend you over on that other thread  too,  if another wanna be reject from this site says one more thing about you being un-worthy of the discussions here. 

Just saying 

You Rock Old Lady(not that old tho)Numbers are just that and count for very little as well as being stupid to chase. 

Yes I'll be glad to see the end of the double nickle, i may actually have matured some,?and congratulations for your most recent trip around the sun as well! you are an amazing mom 

& to have  remembered  that. i didn't remember  id mentioned 

This week I saw/ called out a belayer who shook someone's hand with his brake hand...

caughtinside wrote:

I was climbing up at the Leap one day, and noticed Corrugation Corner, the classic steep 5.7 which always has a line, was open. So my partner and I went up.  

Turns out it wasn't open. There was a party obscured on a ledge atop p2.  Well, ok. We keep climbing up to them. 

We arrive, and its a brother and sister from Reno. The brother did his first trad lead a week ago, and decided to take his sister, who had never done a multi pitch, up Corrugation Corner.

There is a 15' chimney, followed by a balancey traverse across a face into the corner, which is tricky because you kind of traverse downward on a foot rail, with little for your hands.  The brother had tried this traverse several times, and fallen off a couple. His only pro was a rusty, bent ring angle. He lowered down to the ledge, then sent his sister up, who had the same experience. These guys were taking swinging traverse falls onto a single shittty piton. 

The offered to let me pass, and I offered to tow their rope up with me.

I have to say, this one is scary as crap to me. A pendulum fall fatality is what first brought me to this forum seeking more information.

Good for you for stepping in and helping out!

Best, Helen

Was hanging out at Elizabeth's Furnace, trying to figure out how to get climbing photos that weren't just peoples backs. Scrambled up 30ish feet, sat myself down. On one side, friends climbing. On the other side, a couple comes over, with obviously brand new gear, and the fellow starts leading up a generous but overhanging 5.8. His belayer has obviously never heard of lead climbing, and has a pretty tenuous grasp on belaying period. I started coaching her through it, but the leader did manage to drop two quickdraws and only get shortroped the entire way up. 

Sketchiest thing i've seen so far..

Someone "leading" a crack on gear.
Without a rope (well, they were tied in, just the belayer is not actually belaying them, more like he's trailing it for future TR use?).
He is "protecting" his climb by clipping into the gear he places with really long slings.
At one point, he gets about 6' above his last piece, and realizes he has to down climb to unclip the piece.

Tim Lutz wrote:

pretty much everyday in the gym:

children running around unsupervised, under boulderers, swinging on ropes, yelling....

This was about a year ago, saw two kids running around the gym, came around a corner and the first kid gets his chin right into the slip knot used to store the ropes not being used.  he took another step or two before the rope caught tight under his chin and he went horizontal, then flat on his back. the gym has nice padded floors so I think he was more stunned than anything.  So was I for that matter.

JRZane wrote:

This was about a year ago, saw two kids running around the gym, came around a corner and the first kid gets his chin right into the slip knot used to store the ropes not being used.  he took another step or two before the rope caught tight under his chin and he went horizontal, then flat on his back. the gym has nice padded floors so I think he was more stunned than anything.  So was I for that matter.

I watched a similar situation a couple years ago at the gym. All I got out of it was a really dirty look from  the parent as I was laughing at it.

A couple years ago at the Valdez Ice climbing festival I was waiting in line to fire up a TR on the first pitch of Bridal veil falls.  Off to the right of this 800 foot ice climb are a bunch of  50 foot ice smears with tons of brush and sticks jutting out of them. They have have top ropes set up. We look over and this girl caught her rope on one of these sticks and then continued to climb. The @&*^$ belayer had to have been paying her out slack on top rope...... as she was now 10 feet above this stick the rope had slung on.  We start yelling at her that she is in deep shit and she needs to stop climbing.  She tries to take like half a step down climb and falls.  She whipped, went upside down and just barely tapped the ground as the rope came taught.  She was laughing.  She had no idea how close she was to a broken back or spiral fracture from what I could tell.    The people I was standing next to when this happened ended up being my regular climbing partners and we still crack jokes about taking huge top rope whippers.....

Bridal Veil Falls.  The mentioned area is the smear to the right.

Here is the situation.........

Close up of the climbs to the left.

Bonus story....

We went out with about 8 or so climbers to a nearby local climb to climb some WI2 and WI 3 ice for the day. We had a nice mix of new and moderately experienced climbers and got 4 top ropes up and running. A few hours in, a second group of 3 showed up to climb. The were a nice group and we pretty much let them just jump on and share ropes since we were taking up a fair portion of the climbs, and we knew at least one of them. It was getting near the end of the day and I am hanging out on the right hand climb at the top of the first pitch, which allows to me a perfect overview of left hand climb.

All of a sudden I hear a HUGE "CRACKKK" from my left that sound like someone broke of a huge pillar. All I can think is "OH FUCK, THAT IS BIG... I HOPE NO ONE IS UNDER THAT....". As that is happening I whip my head around and see not ice.. but a blue jacketed body fucking flying down the ice bouncing into the air over bulges feet first.This is from the top of a 150 foot WI 2/3 pitch... All I can think is "whoever that is FUCKED, I can't believe this is happening". I also had a serious moment of fear that it might have been my wife who has a blue jacket (though different color). Some how the guy does not catch a crampon and flip/shatter his leg...... who knows how... He finally stops in some snow, which is fortunate as he could have dropped another 100+ feet if he hadn't. So people start yelling for me to come down before the dude even stops and my buddy calms me down before I rap. Someone informs me that it wasn't my wife, which was helpful.

I rap down thinking about what we need to do for this guy to get rescue here, stabilize him, etc. I am also selfishly worried it might have been the anchors I set that caused the issue, though I knew I had built good ones.... So I get down over to the guy.... He somehow avoided hitting his head, shattering his legs or severing his damn spinal cord. I gave him a quick once over and once it was apparent he was able to walk about the 300 yards to the road we set up a rap and he took off with some buddies to get checked out. He apparently broke his coccyx and had a humerus fracture.

So, the question is, what happened... Right? Well, it turns out that they made one of the most common (deadly) mistakes in climbing and did not discuss before hand how the climber would be coming down (lower or rappel). The climber thought he was being lowered and the belayer thought he was going to rappel. They had been using unclear verbal signals "I'm Good" rather than ("Lowering", "on Rappel") all day and then there was miscommunication belayer though he heard on rappel. The belayer was also a newish climber, which might explain why he didn't question why there wasn't a second strand on the ground or all the other stuff that comes with a rappel... dunno on that part.... However the result was that the belayer took him off belay and then the climber leaned back to lower, right off the edge......