RRC Archives

Picked this up off a news feed - http://www.wkyt.com/news/headlines/Crew ... 43081.html
Nice job WCSART and other rescuers!

Just wanted to report, as a first responder on the scene saturday night at pistol ridge, there are a few inaccuracies in this report. Most notably, the fall height is being reported as 40 ft when in reality the climber fell from no more than 20 ft off the first bouldery section of way of the peaceful warrior. This section of the route is very tricky to protect and definitely runout anyway you go about it. The report makes the assumption that the climber was inexperienced based on the fact that his first piece (a #8 nut behind s thin flake) failed. I want to stress that this is nothing more than assumption as a detailed inventory of his climbing ability was never taken.
On a separate note, Im glad to hear he is doing well and i hope he heals quickly.

Thanks for the update ctb. I would be pissed if I was the climbing and the SAR called me incompetent... I think maybe they could have been a little more professional, next time, wight here PR skills. But, it sounds like they did a great job on the rescue part of it.

Yeah, I thought those guys were mostly climbers themselves. The news always seems to put an anti-climbing slant on these things ("look at those fools!"), but the guy they interviewed seemed to be playing right along.

There go the traddies, ruining the good, clean, safe fun of rock climbing.

While John May (The "Guy interviewed") is not a rock climber, he is one of the most skilled and competent rescuers i have ever encountered. His leadership and commitment to the the team are invaluable and without him the WCSART would not be what it is today: THE premier High-Angle SAR team in the state. While i do not necessarily agree with his assessment of the fall victim's skill set or the way the media portrays any kind of incident that occurs here in the RRG, especially regarding climbing accidents, I think he did an excellent job reporting the incident and an excellent job leading the team Saturday night. What the news does with that information is out of our hands to some degree.
That being said, the WCSART is comprised if not mostly of then largely of rock climbers, many of whom are also highly skilled Rope Rescue Technicians in addition to being good climbers. We are always excited to have new members with valuable skill sets and a desire to help people in need.

ctb wrote:While John May (The "Guy interviewed") is not a rock climber, he is one of the most skilled and competent rescuers i have ever encountered. His leadership and commitment to the the team are invaluable and without him the WCSART would not be what it is today: THE premier High-Angle SAR team in the state. While i do not necessarily agree with his assessment of the fall victim's skill set or the way the media portrays any kind of incident that occurs here in the RRG, especially regarding climbing accidents, I think he did an excellent job reporting the incident and an excellent job leading the team Saturday night. What the news does with that information is out of our hands to some degree.
That being said, the WCSART is comprised if not mostly of then largely of rock climbers, many of whom are also highly skilled Rope Rescue Technicians in addition to being good climbers. We are always excited to have new members with valuable skill sets and a desire to help people in need.

+10000000000

To the RRG climbing community.... This is John May ( " the guy that did the interview"). I don't visit this site all that often but a fellow team member had informed me that my comments during the news interview had sparked some discussion on the site. With that being said, I have a few comments. First, I appreciate the nice comments from ctb. Although I am a volunteer, along with the rest of the WCSAR team, I take this responsibility very serious as we encounter life and death situations on an all to frequent basis. We train throughout the year so we can respond both timely and efficiently to any situation we may encounter. I would also like to say that I agree with some of the negative comments regarding my opinions about the climbers experience level. I'm not a professional interview(e) and sometimes things don't come across as you intended. Although I'm not a seasoned rock climber, I do participate in the sport and I'm doing my best to learn more about it. I have always tried to promote rock climbing and I will continue to do so. Hopefully, this incident will be a learning experience and will help prevent it from occurring again.

Thanks for taking your own time to go through the training required to learn these techniques and for answering the call when accidents happen. Without you guys, climbers would be pretty much on their own.

That's cool! Thanks for all you do, and I am sure the news people did twist it the best they could to make the story exciting. Great job getting a person down that hill.