Simul-climibing

Obviously if the second falls he is going to yank the leader off the wall, causing the leader to fall. Having never taken a simulclimbing fall... where does the extra dangerous part come from besides just an unexpected and somewhat heavy fall? Is it based on the theory that the leader will be zipped into the last piece of protection and come to a sudden halt there? Can someone (who actually knows what they are talking about) please explain?

David Appelhans wrote: based on theory

stich,
tom (bill's partner) seems to be doing just fine.
he has been getting out again. so as far as i know all is
well given the traumatic injury...

slim,
you are right. it is not perfect. simulclimbing is dangerous.
but the fact that it worked. saved the leader is a good thing!

i don't use a tiblock, just because of the rope damage thingy.
a ropeman is much better.

like you said, simuling is better than soloing because it gives you a slim chance if something happens. well i think the same goes for adding some saftey to the system.(ropeman)

david appelhans,
yes the leader would get sucked down to the last protection point.
it would really suck because you would have no rope between you and the gear resulting in a violent stop... ouch!

the only way i can see it any different is if the 2nd stopped falling, and then the leader had some rope left to kind of take a normal leader type fall..(below the gear, not right at it.)

Cor wrote:yes the leader would get sucked down to the last protection point. it would really suck because you would have no rope between you and the gear resulting in a violent stop... ouch! the only way i can see it any different is if the 2nd stopped falling, and then the leader had some rope left to kind of take a normal leader type fall..(below the gear, not right at it.)

Say the leader got pulled off and now both climbers are falling. If the leader fell just the slightest bit past the last protection point, like say 4 inches of rope before the whole system went tight...ok just answered my own question in my head but I'll keep explaining. I was thinking this would still be like a regular fall, because you have the whole rope out not just 4 inches, but the leader is just going to get zipped up into the protection since the biner is just going to act like a pulley. The leader will always get pulled into the last piece of protection unless there is a ton of rope drag and/or he somehow falls faster to get a sizeable amount of rope and potential energy between him and the last piece.

David Appelhans wrote:Obviously if the second falls he is going to yank the leader off the wall, causing the leader to fall. Having never taken a simulclimbing fall... where does the extra dangerous part come from besides just an unexpected and somewhat heavy fall? Is it based on the theory that the leader will be zipped into the last piece of protection and come to a sudden halt there? Can someone (who actually knows what they are talking about) please explain?

i think josh wharton fell on something in the black while seconding/simuling and somehow his partner didn't come off. maybe somebody knows the details. supposedly it was a pretty easy pitch and a hold broke or something.

I've never fallen or had a partner fall while simul-climbing and the idea that you should mentally treat it like soloing is a good one...

However, I do know of more than one instance where the second fell and the leader not only did not come off but barely felt the fall. A full rope length between you and your partner absorbs a shit ton of energy and with the introduction of a little rope drag you can see that not all simul falls end in death or dismemberment.

Still, it's a bit more of an advanced technique and one that is probably best learned from someone with experience. As has been pointed out several times in this hilarious thread.

A lot of people seem to be more worried about hurting the OP's feelings than they are about him dying. There's so much anti bully, peace, love hippy bs out there, that people are willing to see someone risk their life over offending someone. Get real... the internet is not the place to learn proper safe technique. For simul-climbing there happens to be no 'safe' technique. Even if you are climbing easy terrain, on very solid rock, with someone that you trust 100% not to fall or cause you to fall, there is always going to be an element of the unknown. I know people who have been climbing for 20+ years who have recently fallen on 5.6. Holds break, feet slip... There's a whole list of crap that can go wrong. There's a reason that it is never recommended. Nobody wants to give you the advice that gets you hurt.

TLDR version: Don't get yourself killed. Climbing is dangerous, simul-climbing is very dangerous. Don't allow ppl on the internet to hurt your feelings when they give you potentially life saving advice. Freedom of the hills is a great book, but Don't let anyone let you believe that simul-climbing can be done without risk involved.

Tyson Taylor wrote:A lot of people seem to be more worried about hurting the OP's feelings than they are about him dying. There's so much anti bully, peace, love hippy bs out there, that people are willing to see someone risk their life over offending someone. Get real... the internet is not the place to learn proper safe technique. For simul-climbing there happens to be no 'safe' technique. Even if you are climbing easy terrain, on very solid rock, with someone that you trust 100% not to fall or cause you to fall, there is always going to be an element of the unknown. I know people who have been climbing for 20+ years who have recently fallen on 5.6. Holds break, feet slip... There's a whole list of crap that can go wrong. There's a reason that it is never recommended. Nobody wants to give you the advice that gets you hurt. TLDR version: Don't get yourself killed. Climbing is dangerous, simul-climbing is very dangerous. Don't allow ppl on the internet to hurt your feelings when they give you potentially life saving advice. Freedom of the hills is a great book, but Don't let anyone let you believe that simul-climbing can be done without risk involved.

Honestly I think that there a quite a few people on this site that can't wait to be jerks about any post regardless of the OP. It's got nothing to do about the concern for others or their safetly. They are just looking for the first opportunity to bash someone for not being as awesome as they are.

I suppose you're probably right. And nobody can make such a personal decision for someone else.
In my opinion the biggest problem is that there's another person involved in the simul-climbing process. Somebody else who's live you're risking, and someone else who could potentially endanger your own.

Theory question: When the second falls and pulls the leader off, is it safe to assume that the second consumed a large portion of the rope's dynamic properties before the leader peeled off? If so, even if the leader somehow avoids taking a static fall on his last piece of gear and fell past it on some rope, would the rope's dynamic properties be available to him with the second having already stretched the rope a considerable amount?

Either way it sounds like static fall potential is the scariest part of the scenario.

This isn't a comment on "special knots to tie in" with, it is a meditation on simul-climbing, which I have done quite a bit of. Of course, I'm merely advocating a personal position, evidently on in the mainstream, on the practice.

I think people start out thinking about it in a way that is fundamentally dangerous. My view is that simul-climbing is soloing with, however, the possibility of giving an immediate belay because the rope is already in place and belay devices are installed. In other words, if you wouldn't free solo the ground you are simul-climbing, you shouldn't be simul-climbing it, you should stop and belay.

Of course, this does require a lot of judgement, self-knowledge, and discipline on the part of the participants. I included "discipline" in the list because it is actually quite hard to modify your behavior to the appropriate soloing parameters when you have a rope on, in spite of the fact that there is a great deal of uncertainty about how effective the rope will be. Adding tiblocs or ropemen, none of which can be counted on in all situations, only makes it harder to adopt the proper mental attitude, because all such measures increase the psychological sense---the fantasy, really---that a fall is not going to be consequential.

In addition to the fact that the rope in simul-climbing provides an illusion of safety that I think needs to be resisted, simul-climbing is done for speed and so the participants, lulled to some extent by the presence of the rope, are likely to do things in haste that the wouldn't do if free-soloing. (For example, pulling on an ok-looking but potentially detached flake without testing it, as opposed to slowing down and totally bypassing it via slightly harder moves on holds of better security.) Here again is a question of discipline: the speed from simulclimbing should come from the fact that the party is moving together, not from the fact that they are climbing fast.

Speed is safety - the old alpine adage. Simul climbing is one way of achieving some measure of speed, thus reducing time spent in a hazardous area (rock fall, soft snow etc...) It's a good technique for saving time on moderate terrain where a fall would have a high likelyhood of death.

when starting out to simul ... you may want to use an inverted ascender or two at key points ... i use the same microascender that i use for solo TRing ...

you can find the technique in mr florine's speed climbing book ...

BirdDog wrote:Speed is safety - the old alpine adage. Simul climbing is one way of achieving some measure of speed, thus reducing time spent in a hazardous area (rock fall, soft snow etc...) It's a good technique for saving time on moderate terrain where a fall would have a high likelyhood of death.

In some cases speed may be safety. But that might be among the most inappropriately quoted "adages" in all of climbing. As far as I can tell, many people are simulclimbing, not to escape from dangerous conditions, but for the sake of speed itself, or for the sake of some related goal such as the OP's "mileage." In pursuit of mileage or speed record goals, they are willing to sacrifice some level of safety, and in these cases, perhaps the most common ones, it is impossible to pretend that speed is safety.

YER GONNA DIE!
Especially if the second falls...

Hi rgold,

I have a lot of respect for you and your opinion but I have to respectfully disagree with this statement:

rgold wrote:I think people start out thinking about it in a way that is fundamentally dangerous. My view is that simul-climbing is soloing with, however, the possibility of giving an immediate belay because the rope is already in place and belay devices are installed. In other words, if you wouldn't free solo the ground you are simul-climbing, you shouldn't be simul-climbing it, you should stop and belay.

That simul-climbing is essentially free-soloing. While I agree that many climbers may not clearly understand the dangers of simul-climbing or how to properly simul-climb, I think you exaggerate quite a bit in equating it to essentially free-soloing (that's not to say that there are not times when simul-climbing that the safety of the rope is merely an illusion).

I've simul-climbed quite a bit: on technical climbing routes almost always on well protected routes with the grade below my onsight level, or in a more alpine setting on ridge climbs and such. While I have never taken a fall when simul climbing, I have caught falls simul-climbing while both on lead and while seconding. Falling while simul-climbing is not a death sentence as your statement (and those of many others) would lead one to believe. Back in 2001 when Dean Potter and Tim O'Neil were making a speed attempt up the Nose I believe their are photos of the leader falling on a pitch while the two were simul climbing (can't remember if they broke the record on that attempt or another).

The rope and the protection placed do provide a margin of safety, less perhaps than belaying and climbing pitches, but definitely much more than free-soloing (beyond the "set up a belay when you want"). You've even written in the past that if a pitch is longer than the rope it is not that big deal for the second to break down the belay and start climbing, since the 60m of rope out and many pieces of protection in between the two climbers provides secure enough system to simul-climb for the meters that remain before the leader reaches the belay.

That written, I agree that simul-climbing should not be taken lightly, and there are many things to pay attention to, techniques to apply, and an clear communication system between the two climbers to establish.

By the way, I don't free solo (at least not intentionally).

Cheers.

Degaine, I've done lots of simulclimbing and have also done a lot of free-soloing. I'm certainly not arguing against either one of them, per se.

My comments are, perhaps, a bit on the subtle side and I think you have misunderstood them; I'm not suggesting that simul-climbing is no safer than free-soloing. The leader, for example, may be about as well-protected as they would be on an ordinary climb with a gri-gri belay if the party is managing the slack well (actually a big if).

Nonetheless, what I'm saying is that the appropriate attitude for simul-climbing ought to be the free-soloing attitude, and I think the presence of the rope and gear makes it easy for the leader to behave, at times (and it only has to be for a wrong instant) like an ordinary leader and the second like an ordinary second. The power to concentrate the mind that comes from the complete absence of safety backups in free soloing is not present in the simulclimbing context, and has to be replaced by the discipline I referred to.

I don't care who is doing it and what their reputations are, I think falls taken while simulclimbing indicate the party is pushing beyond limits I'd consider intelligent, but that's just me, and I ain't on no magazine covers.

Hi rgold,

I agree 100% with the need to have the appropriate attitude and focus when simulclimbing.

Don't worry, I'm not on any magazine covers either (and never will be). I only cited the two well-known climbers as an easily verifiable example of a simul-climb fall where no death occurred.

I agree that it's definitely preferable not to fall while simul-climbing, but that does not mean that one can't fall while simul-climbing, as opposed to free-soloing where once you are 30 or 40 feet off the deck, a fall pretty much means certain death.

Thanks for the perspective rgold and Degaine. This is a pretty good thread.

A couple of factors in the danger of a second falling while simuling have not been addressed. First of all, due to the fact that both people are falling, you significantly increase the force applied on the last gear placement. Secondly, if your goal is to be light and fast, you probably aren't carrying a triple rack or stopping every pitch to swap gear. Simuling is often coupled with a solid amount of runouts, greatly increasing the chances of smacking into things as you are ripped off of the rock...

Dan's comment above is getting closer to the real danger. Yes, the force could be higher on the top piece. But, worse case scenario: the second falls and rips the leader off. They fall simultaneously at similar rates. But, by the time the leader gets to his last piece that he placed, there is almost no rope between him and that piece because the second was pulling it through because he was falling. The leader will get yanked into this piece with a lot less dynamics then a typical leader fall. This will be very painful at the very least.

The famous duo mentioned above was a leader fall which is not any different than a typical leader fall except the likelihood that there will be more slack. Bill Wright's account was a leader fall also. The leader fell 100 feet or so before the rope tensioned. Then, yanked Bill up 25 feet or so. Bill was fine. The leader was not.

BTW, I do simul and free solo from time to time.

Simul Climb On!