Fatal Accident - Lessons Learned

[Steve]

This e-mail from an old climber friend. Not fatal, could've been, a good reminder to us all as we do those mundane clilmbing tasks.


To my climber friends,

I just lived through the scariest brush with mortality I ever hope to
be part of. I relate it here in the hopes that you never, ever find
yourself repeating my mistakes. My apologies if it turned out a
little longer-winded than I originally planned:

This weekend, Amy and I accompanied some friends on a late-season
climbing trip to Shelf Road. Shelf is a beautiful complex of
single-pitch limestone sport routes about two hours south of Denver.
Beautiful scenery, quality rock, hard routes, camaraderie, assorted
good cheer, roaring fires, inclement weather, etc. All the usual
stuff that makes climbing fun.

On Sunday, we hiked up to the Contest Wall and set up in front of a
pair of nice 5.9 crack and face routes. 5.9 is within my abilities,
but is still enough of a challenge that I didn't want to try it on
lead. Fortunately, our climbing party was well-stocked with
hard-person climbers and they cheerfully set up top ropes on both
climbs so that Amy and I could work on challenging routes out without
the extra challenge of doing it on lead. We worked through The
Opportunist (5.9-) and were about to try Enterprise (5.9+) when
another party arrived and looked interested. They weren't eager to
try the lead either and we needed to pull our gear pretty soon. I
volunteered to trail their rope behind me and set it in place of mine
on the route. No problem; this is something I've done many times
before.

I puffed and clawed my way to the top of what was an excellent and
challenging pitch. The anchors were a pair of cold shuts and I
clipped myself to each of them independently. Next step was to unclip
the top rope anchor we'd been using and replace it with their anchor.
Then run the new rope through the new anchor and tie it in to my
harness. Physically and mentally fatigued from two days of hard
climbing, I fumbled around up there and dropped a carabiner. But I
double checked the anchor and everything was up to spec: both
quickdraws clipped to the cold shuts and equalized, rope running
through both draws, carabiners opposite and opposed, etc. I yelled
down to Amy that she should prepare to lower me. "Which rope?" she
yelled back. "My rope" I answered. She put me back on belay and took
in slack. I checked the anchor one last time and unclipped.

I'm a big chicken when it comes to being lowered on top rope. It
doesn't matter who is doing the lowering or how much I trust them, but
I always grab hold of the belay rope and ease myself down five or ten
feet before fully trusting my weight to the belayer. I'd gone down
about five feet from the anchors and was ready to commit, but there
was still a great deal of slack in my top rope and the trailing rope
(the one I had climbed up on that was now hanging uselessly from my
harness) was unusually taught. Looking down, I came to the full and
horrifying realization of what was happening. Amy was belaying me on
my rope, exactly as instructed, but I was lowering on the other one!
My life hung by a rope that ran from my harness, through a pair of
carabiners, and down to a flaked-out coil on the ground! The only
thing keeping me from a 70' free-fall was my right hand gripped firmly
on the top rope.

Fortunately, there was a bolt at about knee-level. Without relaxing
my right handed death grip (quite litteral in this case), I clipped a
runner from my harness to the bolt with my left. I frantically yelled
down to Amy what was going on, and she quickly put me on belay with
the correct rope. After making quadruply sure everything was right
this time, I unclipped from the bolt and was lowered to the ground.
It took a couple minutes before the uncontrollable shakes started and
I shiver still as I write this story. I was closer than I have ever
been to probable death/vegetative state or at the very least, serious,
messy, permanent injury.

It was all my own stupid, inattentive fault. Amy did exactly as I had
instructed. Being located half a rope length below, there's no way
she could have spotted my error. Also, since both ropes in the system
were blue, it wasn't neccessarily obvious even to me, thus requiring
extra attention. I've been climbing for ten years and have derigged
top rope anchors like this hundreds of times before. However, adding
something slightly non-standard (swapping ropes in this case,
something I've still done many times before) requires extra attention.
I paid extra attention, but not to _every_ part of the sequence.
Climbers: don't ever, ever forget to check everything in your system
from harness to anchor. Don't assume that, because you've been doing
this for years, you'll get it right by default. Belayers: be annoying
and make sure your partners don't get complacent. Make sure you both
know what's going on.

I am unspeakably pleased that you aren't sending condolence cards to
my wife and family right now, never mind dividing up my climbing gear.
I got lucky, plain and simple. Each of you is a valued friend and I
don't want to send condolence cards to your kin either. Be safe out
there and stay sharp.

Peace!

Charles

PS: feel free to forward this as necessary.

[kentuckysarah]

Very sad. It's so scary to think about how easy it is for accidents like this to happen. Especially when the person is a super safe, careful climber. We all need to learn a lesson from this!

[tamara]

Maybe you could tell your friend to rap down from anchors, don't get lowered. That way, you don't have to worry about someone dropping you, the wrong rope, miscommunication (on belay or off), or wearing out anchors.

[alien2]

TRIPLE CHECK EVERYTHING - Once when you do it, Once after it's done and Once before you take off.

Comparing risks
Here are current odds, according to the Insurance Information Institute, of Americans -- dying from the following causes over a lifetime:

Car crash: one in 82
Motorcycle crash: one in 1,159
Falling from stairs or steps: one in 2,331
Airplane accident: one in 5,704
Hit by lightning: one in 56,439
Earthquake: one in 120,161
Dog bite: 206,944

[ynot]

I still mantain that my daily commute is way more dangerous than my climbing.
I was nearly killed again on my way to work a month ago. I was sure my truck was going to roll.