First (real) fall on gear.

After a few season of climbing well within my limit, I've bumped my leads up to Gunks 6-8 (depending on quality of pro). This past weekend I was the first of my party to lead Wise Crack (7) down by Middle Earth and tried to jam my way thru the crux. After wasting all my strength, I finally pulled the bulge, but was horrified to be confronted with high feet and thin fingers. The inevitable was obvious to me and after a few more moments I took as much of a controlled fall as possible.

Here's a pic just before the fall:
m.imgur.com/zfVqAD6

I had a 0.3 X4 in the horizontal just left of my left shoulder. I also had a red c4 as back up in the under cling at crotch level. The bulge referred to is just above head level in the pic, the finger crack above that should be obvious. When I came down and was resting, I was low enough I could barely not touch the top of the slab my left foot is on. Belayer gave a soft but appropriate catch considering I was only ~20ft off the ledge.

I keep a gear log to track falls on gear and used an online calculator to calculate the FF to 1.12 (which seemed a little high but there wasn't too much rope out) but a shock factor of 11.2 kN. that part to me as a little alarming. Does the shock factor refer to what me cam held? The x4 looks to be in perfect working order. Any thoughts? Criticism? Advice?

Thanks!!!

Edit: by the way, after a 30min rest, I took a different approach to the crux (pulled away from the wall and slabbed my feet up the flake) and sent the route without a huge effort considering.

Check your math. A FF greater than 1 means you fell below the start of the pitch (not possible if you started on the ground).

Yeah there's no way it's that high. Just eyeballing it: 20 feet of rope to where you are in that picture. Say you climbed five feet higher and fell from five feet above your pro. That's a ten foot fall (which it seems like it'd be much less) with 25 ft of rope: 10/25 = 0.4.

Can you link your online calculator?

Yeah that fall factor calculation is wrong. Fall factors > 1 are impossible on single pitch unless you have serious rope drag or started on a ledge and somehow fell below it. FF = Fall Distance / Length of Rope in System.

Looks like a pretty mellow fall assuming your gear held. You probably didn't experience 11.2 kN... that would be substantial and you'd be hurting. That's ~2500 lbf. Imagine the weight of a small car being applied to your harness and body. Ouch!

Nice man... keep pushing and making sure you have clean landing zones...

I never calculate or count falls on gear...its a waste of time in IMO... i simply inspect the piece after and make sure all the working parts are in good order and nothing structural happened...if not, let it go and keep climbing!

With fall factor is a little tricky...need to consider the dynamic system...rope, belayer give, rope run...etc. etc.

I think Petzl explains it well..

petzl.com/US/EN/Sport/Fall-…

your FF was probably like .3-.6? (assuming from the pic)

11.2 kN is a really hard fall... what calculator are you using? I wouldn't trust it, as it obviously can't calculate fall factor correctly...

I took my first whipper on gear when I got a little spooked on a recently developed 5.8 route. Plugged a great gold C4 in a sweet handcrack through a roof, made a few moves and found myself a few feet above the cam with really thin climbing to the top. I blindly placed a black alien in a crack off to the side and nervously tested it by pulling on it hard. I committed my body weight to the piece and told my partner to lower me slowly. After the first 3 feet, I watched the alien shoot out of the crack and began hurtling downward. My trusty gold C4 caught my fall, and left me 3 feet off the deck. D'oh! Thanks for the catch, Sam.

I wouldn't worry too much about keeping a log of your gear falls. Just check after each route that it's still in working order with no visible damage.

A fall log is more time and effort than it's worth considering how many variables there are. Even from the start, you seem to be vastly overestimating loading. Tiny changes in rope stretch, fall distance and slack will lead to huge variation in calculated peak load.

Also, how are you deciding when your gear has seen enough stress? Are you going by cyclic loading? Peak force? Lifetime impulse? When you decide your gear has seen enough falls and you should retire it, lemme know and you can send it to me for safe disposal.

Just inspect the gear. Make sure the lobes aren't bent, trigger wires are OK, cable isn't frayed, and that everything still retracts and extends nicely. No need to keep a "fall tracker." Gear is designed to arrest a fall and unless you take a 50-footer on a sub-optimal placement, it's almost certainly alright.

Welcome to trad climbing! The "must not fall" attitude holds you back, and your climbing is about to progress markedly.

Well I'm glad to hear you all think the reported FF is too high, I did too and like I said was a bit alarmed. I've def had worse sport falls and all in all felt it was a pretty soft catch. Here's the link: ferforge.tripod.com/Srt002.htm

I just googled calculating fall factors and punched in the data.

As far as the gear log, it's more for my rope. It was recommended for 7-11 falls. Of course I don't count the smaller ones where I'm basically just weighting the gear. But this one seemed worthy of at least noting. Is the UIAA recommendations not followed at all? Is that just strictly FF2 falls?

And thanks for the encouragement, there was def a boost of confidence following the fall....until I got a few feet above the next placement anyway...,

Ropes recover elasticity over time. The UIAA number is how many FF2 falls it can take in rapid succession before breaking. Anyone else correct me if I'm wrong, but a climbing rope should be able to handle a lot more falls than this if allowed to "recover" between them.

The UIAA fall tests are more about comparing one rope to another to see how relatively durable they are. They are brutally unrealistic (80kg factor 2 falls with no rope rest) and not a good guideline for determining when your rope is ready to become a door mat.

This fall doesn't look particularly hard, does your back hurt? Remember, any force experienced by the rope is experienced by you.

For the most part, your rope will become stiffer and less comfortable and you won't want to use it, and that will be the guideline for when to retire it. Ropes are your single tether to the realm of the living, when you stop trusting it, you need to replace it. That said, it's probably more worthwhile to spend your time checking the length of your ropes for damage than trying to calculate the number and severity of falls.

The rope fall rating is only useful for comparing general durability between ropes. You will never encounter a fall as severe as the UIAA testing. Not really used

A rope can handle hundreds of typical falls. You only need to think about retiring it if it takes a truly severe, kidney-busting (i.e. long and close to factor 2) fall, is severely loaded over an edge, hit by rockfall, or something like that. Inspection is your friend. Look for soft spots, core visible through the sheath, etc.

Edited: deleted for redundancy

EthanC wrote: This fall doesn't look particularly hard, does your back hurt? h

Nah, not at all. A scrape on my ankle and a couple bloody knuckles are the only evidence.

I was just going to write up the fall just as an exercise in process, but then did that FF calculation with that (apparently) bullshit calculator and felt that I needed some input. As far as I'm concerned, it's resolved. Let's go climb.

Sometime a couple years ago Rgold pointed out bad math and assumptions in at least one of the online force calculators.

You fell a bodylength or two onto good gear. All is fine - climb on.

if I judged your description correctly, that was a pretty good catch from your belayer.

This further promotes the scariness of wise crack for me and increases the probability of me never doing it... I rather lead never never land...

:-) vertical cracks and gunkies don't mix well. Sounds like my first fall except that it was on Scungilli and may fall was 30 ft and one piece of pro. #9 hex in a horizontal crack. If you wonder what happened were the slings the that where wrapped around the rock, my fat ass took care of that.

Don't think too much about it, climbing gear can take a lot of abuse. Just check your rope for flat spots(I had to retire a rope after one sport climbing fall) and your pro for damage.

PS: Wisecrack is 5.6 mountainproject.com/v/10935… but don't worry everything at the gunks is rated 5 grades harder so technically it is 5.11 everywhere else except in a couple of places around the country where it is 5.5 because vertical cracks and gunkies don't mix well.

JulianG wrote: PS: Wisecrack is 5.6 mountainproject.com/v/10935… but don't worry everything at the gunks is rated 5 grades harder so technically it is 5.11 everywhere else except in a couple of places around the country where it is 5.5 because vertical cracks and gunkies don't mix well.

In the old guides (and MP) it's a 6, which obviously we saw, but a guide we saw around Middle Earth said it was the most bagged 6 in the Trapps and was recently 'Officially Upgraded" to a 7 in the new books. Who knows. Whatever.

Grades don't really mean much to me, I've got so many holes in my climbing skills/technique that I can have trouble sporting/TRing 8s and send some 10+s. Just depends.

Right. I've climbed at Red Rocks last year and the area I went to didn't fell soft rated. Even that everyone I know says that everything at Red Rocks is over rated.

I remember climbing Wisecrack a couple times a few years ago. It felt like a super sandbagged 5.6 the first time, more like 5.8. The second time, with proper beta, which does not at all require jamming if my memory serves, it felt more like a solid 5.7.

Definitely a very intimidating onsight, I would say more so than some Gunks 8s. Glad you are okay!