RRC Archives

Advice to All climbers. Weight test your anchor before going off belay. I see that a slice might hold momentarily. The other message is that redundancies should be real.

caribe wrote:Advice to All climbers. Weight test your anchor before going off belay. I see that a slice might hold momentarily. The other message is that redundancies should be real.

this would not have prevented that accident..they were top roping. she was never planning on going off belay. whomever set up the TR anchor set up the booby trap.

redundancies should be real; they weren't

Somewhat off topic but slightly relevant:
http://www.blackdiamondequipment.com/en ... s-together

....

jakedatc wrote:

weber wrote:

caribe wrote:holy smokes, sounds like a piece of common sense is there a story behind this post? I hope it is not a sad one.

Unfortunately, yes. Fatality in the Gunks.

Rick, Where did you hear that was the cause? Nothing has been released by the Preserve or anyone involved as far as I know.

yes it is good advice to check your webbing but throwing it out there as the cause of that accident might be premature.

Jake

He never said which accident. Those were assumptions made by us

caribe wrote:Advice to All climbers. Weight test your anchor before going off belay. I see that a slice might hold momentarily. The other message is that redundancies should be real.

Words to live by. Before transitioning between any 2 anchor points, I always make sure there is slack in my 'good' anchor, and no slack in my new anchor, and weight it. This doesn't replace the requirement of double checking everything as there are many scenarios where a weight test could give you a false sense of security only to fail later. But I think a visual inspection double check combined with a weight test is as close as you can get to completely safe.

It may not have helped in this case, because it sounds like it was a top rope incident, but even toprope setups can be tested from the ground by jumping up and grapping the 2 ropes and making sure it doesn't fall down on top of you.

jakedatc wrote:

weber wrote:

caribe wrote:holy smokes, sounds like a piece of common sense is there a story behind this post? I hope it is not a sad one.

Unfortunately, yes. Fatality in the Gunks.

Rick, Where did you hear that was the cause? Nothing has been released by the Preserve or anyone involved as far as I know.

yes it is good advice to check your webbing but throwing it out there as the cause of that accident might be premature.

Jake

I'm curious about this too. I have yet to see any sources saying that a splice in the webbing was at fault. The early reports were saying that climber was actually the second person to lower off that anchor, which would suggest that a splice was, in fact, not the problem.

...

Knowing Rick a little and his engineering back ground, I would be quite surprised if his comments were nearly as speculative in nature as yours.