Soloist requires rescue (2/12/23) - El Cajon Mountain (main wall, left side)

I am sharing my account of this incident yesterday because it really pissed me off, quite frankly affected my headspace the entire day out, and IMO is telling of a troubling shift in attitudes in climbing - specifically free soloing. Some of the incidents and accident reports that I’ve read here and elsewhere can be frustrating and or emotional even secondhand, but having been foisted into this rescue scenario yesterday by an irresponsible and unprepared soloist - internally spiraling over very possible “what ifs” or alternative outcomes - I’m feeling like I’ve been pushed over the line. Something significant need to change.

I’ll do my best to keep the account of event to the hard facts, but many of the smaller details are essential and unbelievable.

I meet my partner at the trailhead at 7:45. Late start but fewer cars at the pullout than I expected. Two vehicles other than ours, so we figured there could be a party at the wedge or down on mountaineers area. No surprise - it’s the weekend.

Making nice time on the hike, we cross the final drainage and turn north up the slope for the final part of the approach. At some point, my squinty sweaty eyes can make out a climber on p1 of Leonids. No surprise there. He seems to be at the awkward spot (maybe bolt 3-5ish) and he’s not moving. Having both have climbed Leonids a few times, my partner and I lightly joke about being stuck on at that little crux. Five or ten minutes later, checking on the climber, he’s still not moved. Oh well - we’ve all been there. As we draw nearer to the wedge, I’m starting to see things more clearly and I’m beginning to speculate that he’s unroped. Closer, I can now see that there’s no rope and nobody on the ground. Seems like at about that time he must have spotted/heard us and starts yelling down to us. “HEYYYY!!! Can you, uh, help me out???”.

First thing I yell back - “what the fuck are you doing up there, man?!” He replied something along the lines of not knowing and being in over his head.

“So you need us to bail you out? Is that what you’re saying?” Climber confirms.

We respond that we will rope up and bring him to the ground. We ask if he’s at a decent stance, not pumping out. Climber confirms. We drop our packs and start to tie in. I ask the climber if he was aware of the fatal accident on the exact same route by a young man just this past December - climber states that they are unaware.

I ask if he happens to have a harness in his pack, which he did - one that appeared brand new, next to his cell phone and some other bizarre climbing gear, like some metolius QDs from the 90s with a price tag from mammoth gear exchange still stuck on them… My partner ties in and leads the route up to where the climber was perched, clips a quickdraw just about their head and lowers down to him. Getting the awkwardly perched soloist into his harness wasn’t an easy maneuver, so my partner passed him some long runners to make a sumo harness of sorts. Climber has no idea what to do with runners. He does not know what a girth hitch is. Eventually he gets secured to my partner and is able to get into his harness, attach the duo via belay loops and lowered them to the ground.

Upon returning to the ground, I get a closer look at the climber. Short shorts, no shirt, no harness, no approach shoes on him. I ask “so what was your plan today? You weren’t going to rappel, so what was it?” He replied that he was going to “walk off”. Now, some who know the area *well* would tell you that it’s possible to reach the S Ridge from somewhere well above the top of the left wall routes, but he indicated that he would have ventured out right (east). No trail out that way. No shoes besides his climbing shoes. I told him there was no way down that way and he would have been bushwhacking for hours if he had gotten up there. It was very apparent that this was truly the first time that he had considered these any of these logistics. I am feeling like he must have had a very similar planning process to jumping on this 300’ 5.9 which he had never before climbed…

My partner issues some light admonishing in hopes of making this a lesson actually learned. I was nowhere near as compassionate. I’m not excited about the possibility of having to help with a body recovery, administer CPR, scoop your brains up, or even go up ~40’ and bring him down - it’s not the responsibility of others and default behaving like he did forces total strangers into unwanted scenarios. It is not cool. It’s not a thing that we enjoy doing. We *will* rescue you, but ideally wouldn’t have to. It is this kind of selfish mindset that other people would show up with a rope sooner or later and he’ll just entangle them into his shit show. Not ok with me.

Climber awkwardly tells us that he actually has to get going somewhere, he’s late for something. My partner asked him how long he had been hanging at that stance and he replied that it was so long he was embarrassed to admit. 30 minutes, an hour? But he’s late for something and it’s 9:30am. He really thought he was going to OS solo this route and get down to meet somebody for breakfast or something. He picks up his bag of things and takes off without saying much. It’s this wildly casual attitude that I really want to talk about.

I just can’t wrap my mind around really any decisions that this person made that day. I do not consider myself a soloist in any capacity, but soloing a route onsight - even if well below your fitness level - seems crazy. Getting something familiar dialed and going ropeless seems like another story, but I don’t want to open Pandora’s box for this debate. I have climbed Leonids four or five times - never really struggled anywhere on the route, always super fun, but I’ve never considered soloing this sustained type of sport route. Why in the world that people are attracted to solo it onsight, I’ll really never understand. But apparently it’s becoming an appealing thing to do.

My takeaway is this - I really can’t say if this climber from yesterday realized the true seriousness of his situation. We got him down lickety split - strangers came to the rescue like he thought they would - but that doesn’t make any of this ok or just another day out climbing - for him or for us. Another party later told us that they saw him on the trail on their way up and that he smiled, said hello and seemed normal. Not exactly the thousand yard stare that I’d expect from somebody who just faced down decking for the better part of an hour before being rescued by less than willing strangers. I do not know whether or not this will be a lesson learned, and I think that’s pretty troubling. I do not think that we should normalize having to bail out soloists or just shrugging it off when we read about another one of them taking the final fall.

Everything that I read about the soloist falling from Leonids in Demeber really frustrated, saddened and confused me. This scenario seems all too similar and it’s tough to deny that it’s a trend in the attitude towards soloing. Neither of these climbers were knowledgeable enough,  prepared or capable of soloing Leonids but they both felt like giving it a shot wasn’t going to have high consequences. One of them is no longer with us. I’m happy that the climber yesterday stayed where he was and didn’t continue upward - but that’s literally the only thing he did right that day. So many bad decisions.

Something needs to change before more lives are lost to this causal and lazy mindset.

It’s not a casual and lazy mindset that’s the problem. It’s the mindset of an intrepid, adventurous, and myopic individual who lacks appreciation and perspective when it comes to risk and mortality. Or more simply put, the mindset of many young men who are looking to find themselves in life. Many are biologically hardwired to seek this type of adventure out, and now that climbing has gone mainstream, and as a direct result of easy access, gym-cultivated strength, and the perceived “safety” of bolted cliffs, it was inevitable.

All we can do is watch and shake our heads, and those of us who survived the precious years when we, too, put ourselves into harm’s way, should consider ourselves lucky. 

B Donovanwrote:

Lol! You forgot the fact that he was shirtless!

Probably too embarrassed to admit his fault right then. Oh well, kids these days!

Thanks dude. What an idiot. Glad you didn’t do any brain scooping.

B Donovanwrote:

Something needs to change before more lives are lost to this causal and lazy mindset.

I suspect nothing will change until there are enough fatalities annually that it gets more attention from the climbing press/media/influencers.  It's probably going to get worse. 

As part of my own useless and futile protest about this trend, I haven't read any articles or threads about AH since almost the beginning, and I have never seen the movie that I believe is behind the majority of this nonsense.  When I come upon people soloing IRL, I go to another area.  I'm actually not opposed to soloing per se, I just think that 99% of the people doing it these days are accidents waiting to happen.

Good on you for helping this clueless dude out, and I would also be just as frustrated at an apparent lack of humility. We can only hope he took the lesson to heart later in the day when the adrenaline wore off.

just curious. did the guy have a big bushy steve prefontaine looking mustache?

This was truly upsetting to read. Guy was treating 300ft face climb like a quick solo bouldering session. 

I have seen similar totally clueless behavior at a crag once that reminds me of this story.  I was climbing at Cracked Wall at Bishop's Peak in SLO. We had a couple ropes hanging from anchors for top roping (this was probably 15 years ago). Its a busy hiking trail as well with college students etc. So this random hiker approaches the wall in running shoes and shorts. He looks a little forlorn, kinda like a loner type. Doesn't make eye contact with anyone at the crag but just walks up to one of the ropes and takes a long look at the situation, and then just starts batmanning up the double strands of rope. Mind you this wall is pretty steep, slightly overhung in spots. No idea what his plan is.....he gets about 20 feet up and seems to realize he is in over his head and sketchily (not smoothly) batman's back down. It all happened kinda fast, he wasn't playing a practical joke, he didn't know anyone at the crag, he didn't say anything before or after the stunt....he didn't really even make eye contact the entire time. He hit the ground and just kept walking. For some reason I was so shocked and confused I didn't say anything (I would these days), I sorta thought he would hit the ground and crack a smile, bust out a harness and say hey to a friend at the crag....but nope. This was just a walk up and climb a random rope without asking anyone in the area if it was theirs, safe, OK, etc. Super weird. 

I also had to rescue my friend once who tried to solo a 5.7 slab in Joshua Tree. He sketched out and I had to hike to the top, and rap in. He solo'd the rest of the slab with the fixed rope right next to him in case he needed to grab it. Pretty lame and I definitely gave him shit at the time. But he was a wild dude. He's not doing so well these days

slimwrote:

just curious. did the guy have a big bushy steve prefontaine looking mustache?

Nope. No facial hair.

GYM BROS!!

Tradibanwrote:

Lol! You forgot the fact that he was shirtless!

Probably too embarrassed to admit his fault right then. Oh well, kids these days!

Wrong!

…“no shirt.”

Daav Seeleywrote:

Wrong!

…“no shirt.”

The Tradiban regrets the error.

Tradibanwrote:

The Tradiban regrets the error.

J/k

Other half of the "rescue team" here. We can all come up with a million things this guy did wrong, but I want to reiterate the one thing he did right. He realized he was in over his head, saw people coming up the approach trail, and waited it out in a rest stance to ask for help. I'll take this any day over finding a broken body at the base of the wall. I'm happy to take time out of my day to rescue anyone who feels like they are in over their head, no matter how stupid their predicament is because one day it's going to be me that needs the rescue. I've gotten into a few tight spots and managed to self-rescue in all of them, but it's been close on a couple. Hell as a teenager I tried to hike a 14er in skate shoes having been at sea level the day before. I started at like 2pm and ended up benighted at 12,000 feet with no lamp, no water left, and minimal clothing. Shivered the night away and barely made it back to the parking lot the next morning with how dehydrated I was. People gave me water and a ride back to town and now I make better decisions in the mountains. I hope this guy learned an important lesson and I wish the kid we lost on the route two months ago had made the same decision and learned that lesson, but he didn't. 

Chase Morganwrote:

Other half of the "rescue team" here. We can all come up with a million things this guy did wrong, but I want to reiterate the one thing he did right. He realized he was in over his head, saw people coming up the approach trail, and waited it out in a rest stance to ask for help. I'll take this any day over finding a broken body at the base of the wall. I'm happy to take time out of my day to rescue anyone who feels like they are in over their head, no matter how stupid their predicament is because one day it's going to be me that needs the rescue. I've gotten into a few tight spots and managed to self-rescue in all of them, but it's been close on a couple. Hell as a teenager I tried to hike a 14er in skate shoes having been at sea level the day before. I started at like 2pm and ended up benighted at 12,000 feet with no lamp, no water left, and minimal clothing. Shivered the night away and barely made it back to the parking lot the next morning with how dehydrated I was. People gave me water and a ride back to town and now I make better decisions in the mountains. I hope this guy learned an important lesson and I wish the kid we lost on the route two months ago had made the same decision and learned that lesson, but he didn't. 

I like this approach much better than the-sky-is-falling approach from the OP. After reading it, I assumed people were dying or being rescued every weekend out there. 

Marc Hwrote:

I like this approach much better than the-sky-is-falling approach from the OP. After reading it, I assumed people were dying or being rescued every weekend out there. 

Ummm…they kinda are nowadays.

slimwrote:

just curious. did the guy have a big bushy steve prefontaine looking mustache?

I guarantee we were thinking this was the same person.  

The increase in these incidents concerns me as well. It’s putting more people unnecessarily at risk, physically and emotionally. It could affect access with the resources being used more often. However, the reality is this. People are climbing now more than ever. I reckon many more will come as well. Could be a phase simply from the increase in popularity (Olympics, Honnold, the HBO show).

However, one person ranting isn’t going to solve this issue. I just started working at the Mesa Rim in Mission Valley and I want to create a space to have a conversation that would address the issue so that people can become more knowledgeable on the matter and hopefully the dialogue opens up with their friends who might be considering soloing and not have the experience to make it a sound judgement. 

If anyone has any ideas at all, about how the program/mini series could work, want to help create an outline, please reach out. This will be a months long process for me no doubt but I need all the help I can get since it’s been years since I’ve led any sort of discussion like the one I’m proposing. It also doesn’t have to be a discussion it could be like a vendor booth gathering type deal. If you genuinely care about this issue then I would really appreciate any and all ideas!

Last thing before I get off my soap box..I feel like if anything is to be done, then talking about it in real life is better than diatribes online or writing “GYM BROS” from the safety of our devices.

Also if you know anyone who’s thinking about soloing and wants some perspective feel free to reach out. I’m always willing to talk it out

Next year's academy award nominees, The Rock Warriors Way, The Art of Downclimbing, Practice Makes Perfect... please feed us our tutelage, screens.