Luckily, with a good belayer, and being high up on the route with nothing but air to hit, I was not hurt, other than getting a really big scare.
We have taken some pictures and I think have re-created what happened pretty accurately.
This is how the draw was hanging on the bolt. You can’t see it very well in this picture, but the rock is overhanging enough so that the top biner is not touching the rock in any way. I do know that the draw was hanging straight and not snagged on the bolt, because I was shaking out on the jugs right below it for about a minute after I clipped it, so it was definitely not a desperate clip-and-go-without-noticing-that-the-draw-was-snagged scenario. Besides, it is a key-lock biner, the snagged nose usually happens with notched biners.
These are the marks on the biner that suggest how the biner was positioned on the hanger when it snapped:
Using these marks and a spare bolt hanger, we recreated the likely scenario—in these next three pictures:
My best guess is that I had kicked/snagged the draw as I was making the next long move, because the move does take me directly in front of the draw, and I have to stay close to the wall when making the reach. And then, when I fell, the biner snapped, because it is not meant to be loaded this way.
I have heard of biners breaking in such fashion, and have been aware of the dangers of the biner being snagged/rotated/cross-loaded on the hanger. What really surprised me is how little force is needed to snap the draw this way. When I fell, the bolt was barely a foot below my tie-in knot. I was at the 8th bolt of an ~80ft route, so there was probably ~75 feet of rope out. With slack and soft catch (yes, it was a soft catch, belayer jumped) I would have expected to fall maybe 7-8 feet. The draw was newish, had only been climbed on a handful of times, and was not notched or burred. The rope—also newish, brand-new last fall, and only had maybe 12-14 days of climbing on it, because the owner lives in Florida. There were no falls or takes on the rope in the 3 days prior to this fall, so you can’t even say that the rope was stretched out from too many subsequent falls in a short period of time, and was thus less dynamic that optimal. I weigh 105 lb. Somebody else can try and calculate the forces, but in terms of climbing falls, this is as light as it gets.
What can be learned from this, and how this could have been prevented? Obviously, in general terms, you have to be very aware of the position of your quickdraw, and you should avoid kicking your draws when you climb past them. But in this particular case on this particular bolt and particular moves —I am not sure.
I went back to send this route on the next go, and even though I was obviously HYPER-aware of that draw, I STILL couldn’t avoid snagging and shifting it with my body as I made the move. I cannot stop and adjust the draw mid-move. The first time I can reach down to make an adjustment is after I reach the next jug. But in that case, if I had reached the next jug, there is no falling, and I can make another move and clip the next bolt, anyway.
I have been on this route before, have made the move before, and have fallen there before, without any incident. Considering that this is a redpoint crux of the route for many people, there have been probably 1000s of falls there, and as far as I know biners are not broken right-and-left in this spot, even though I am pretty sure a lot of people do the move the same way I do, and thus have the same potential of getting the draw snagged.
I am thinking that a trad draw might have been good in that spot, because even if I snagged/pulled the rope-side biner, the bolt-side biner would probably not have shifted. But who climbs Mercy with trad biners? Having a short stainless chain to extend down, so the draw is clipped below the little roof might be helpful, as would be a permadraw, but this is at the Left Flank, no fixed gear, so it’s a moot point.
Opinions, suggestions, and analysis are welcome.
My partner who owned this draw contacted Petzl, but at this point there is no reason to think that this was a defective biner.
The general take-home message for me is to:
-double-check your draws, to make sure they are hanging properly and not snagged or twisted
-avoid kicking or shifting your draws as you climb past them
-look down and double-check that you haven’t kicked them
-be mindful of the fact that you really aren’t out of the “danger zone” when sport climbing until you are fairly high up
-avoid falling when you have only one draw clipped. None of us have ever fallen on the first draw, right?
