RRC Archives

the lurkist wrote:someone will not calculate properly, not take the time a forthought, think it is behign (b/c after all it was in that cool video), and someone will deck.

Exactly what happenned to Dano (the decking that is) & he was an experienced rigger. As Lurk knows, it was a rappelling accident / death that closed Springfield Gorge in Ohio for good. All it takes is one bad incident to lose it all.

The other option is that the landowner of any crag could simply request that people not do that before something happens. It certainly wouldn't be legally binding but pretty much everyone (the experienced climbers who go to the Lode especially) knows about the impact closures have on our sport. So much of our climbing is on private ground and we have so much to thank the landowners for. I think a simple request from the landowner would go a long way toward keeping things safe.

the falls from the top of "the madness", "last of the bohicans", and other cave routes are routinely close to a hundred feet. The only difference is he did a backflip. those falls happen a lot.

There is at least one other video that has been out for a long while with someone doing a big victory whip in the southern region....I dont believe it has caused a ruckus.

a few months ago, I was told that the landower had been contacted about the film. He basically said, "I don't care, I don't want to know." I seriously doubt he wants to be giving edicts about backflips.

this has been discussed a thousand times at miguels. everyone thinks it is rad and should be in the video except for some professor that did damn near the same thing in another video.

Ya'll get too bent. I agree Caspian.I remember seeing that whip.

davsa wrote:a few months ago, I was told that the landower had been contacted about the film. He basically said, "I don't care, I don't want to know." I seriously doubt he wants to be giving edicts about backflips.

That sounds like what my mom used to say, "I don't mind you climbing, I just don't want to hear about it."

The landowner is right to keep his knowledge limited. He does not participate in setting routes, he knows nothing of rock climbing, he does not purchase bolts or anchors and does not examine them for fitness. He does not even go to the property but has his partner go down to remove obvious dangers that may be present.

He relies on the Kentucky Recreation law to keep him free from liability if someone is injured. There is a section of that law stating that liability is weakened or eliminated if the landowner knows that dangerous conditions exist or dangerous actions are being taken, then the landowner has a duty to act.

My recommendation as climbers is to talk to people. If someone is doing the backflips, as climbers who care about the cliff maybe we should try to dissuade them.

My recommendation as climbers is to talk to people. If someone is doing the backflips, as climbers who care about the cliff maybe we should try to dissuade them.

So to that end we actively tell climbers that high risk ground sweeping jumps are discouraged at the Lode. But in the meantime the same falls are aggrandized in heroic form without the risk or the prep for the stunt being made explicit in a video that everyone in the climbing world can see.
I agree that dissuading folks from this is good idea. But encouraging it in a widely seen medium runs contrary to that logic.