UKC

May I suggest a new series of threads on UKC entitled 'Confessions'. The idea is that posters can relate an incident/accident which provides learning for others from what they experienced. They can provide their own learning points from the event and invite comments/ideas on how to prevent future mishaps.
I will start it with this tale:
I was working as an outdoor instructor in The Peak District and we took youngsters out climbing on the local crags. I was at Lawrencefield - first bay near the road - where we set up top ropes and an abseil. At the start of the session we got the students to fit a waistbelt to which we attached leg loops (It was a few years ago) and we checked every belt for correct threading with a strict instruction never to undo it. If they needed to take it off they must put it back on under supervision of the instructor.
I was running the abseil and a lad stepped forward to be tied on which I did through the belt then attached the figure of eight to the karabiner connecting the loops & harness together. He launched off over the edge and to my horror the belt slid apart. He was a bright lad who grabbed the rope and pulled up hand over hand to the top with the comment "That was close!" It sure was and I started breathing again. The story was that he had been taken short and taken off his belt then put it back himself and got it checked by his teacher who wasn't familiar with a harness but thought he was OK.

Lessons;
1. Check everything yourself every time you commit someone to a rope. The belt buckle was round to the side where I couldn't see it.
2. Invest in harnesses rather than improvised ones - not an issue nowadays I suspect.
3. Clarify who is an instructor - the lad trusted his teacher and didn't differentiate between him and a competent instructor.
4. Change careers - I left professional Outdoor work soon after this - not because of the incident - redundancy did that.

In reply to keith-ratcliffe:

Ok good idea. We've all screwed something up at some point. You learn best by it.

My confession from many years ago, on a route called Mangoletsi at Tremadoc. Not checking harnesses, again. Mine!

We were pushing the grades, as always and it was a biggish tick at the time. There was a respite ledge just before the top pitch. Big and wide this ledge was big enough to answer a call of nature. Yes, sorry everyone, but we were young, stupid and excited. My lead was the top pitch and IIRC it finishes in common with Barbarian. At one point I was a cheval cuddling the overhanging arete, managed to relax and turn around to take a look around and down the crag to my second - notice both my ropes threaded through the harness correctly BUT with two trailing ends protruding and NOT TIED.

It's amazing how you easily you can manage a knot one handed when you have to. Oh, how we laughed!

In reply to keith-ratcliffe:

Good thread.

A few years ago (probably 18) I found myself in Llanberis pass sans partner. Other friends were out walking up Snowdon so I thought it a good idea to scramble up the descent route behind the Nose on Dinas Mot. Not so easy in walking boots but I did it.However my problem really started when I proceeded to scramble up the crumbling pile of choss above, pressing on because I "thought it would get better". Eventually I was forced to conclude that continuing over damp, mossy piles of loose rock looking for the merest excuse to tumble pass ward, would be suicidal. It took me over an hour to gingerly retrace my steps weighting each foot hold very carefully and not trusting the balanced rocks I was holding onto.

Lessons:
1. Better assessment of the terrain would have saved me hours of white knuckle tension and potential fatality

2. Rock boots wouldn't have helped in this instance but I didn't really consider what footwear I would need assuming incorrectly that it would be easy.

3. Don't expect terrain you have never crossed to be easy

In reply to keith-ratcliffe:

I was working in the lab, late one night...

In reply to keith-ratcliffe:

Abseiling into huntsman's leap with a tube device and a prussic, I stopped half way down, weighted the prussic, took both hands off and proceeded to sort the tangled rope.

It was only when I got to the bottom that I discovered I had missed the leg loop and put the carabiner round just the adjustment strap *outside* the buckle... the only thing stopping me from plunging to the bottom of the leap had been the strength of little piece of elastic that keeps the excess strap from flapping about, and the fact that the sewn end of the strap had caught and didn't want to pull through it.

The lesson, I think, was fairly obvious.

In reply to keith-ratcliffe:

Struggling the understand the point of this thread. Am I meant to print it and take it to the crag with me?

Seems like it's just a thread for the sake of there being a new thread.

In reply to Removed User:


Keep struggling. You'll get there in the end.

Keith. A good idea. I am a proponent of the ethos that "the lesson best learned is the lesson learned the hard way" but hopefully there might be a vicarious effect from this one.

I'll think of some of mine in the next few days. There's been a few!

In reply to Removed User:
The American magazines seem to have run 'close call' stories for a good number of years. I think the key to it is awareness and encouraging experienced climbers not to get too complacent.

My close call occurred at the end of a rainy trip to Yosemite a few years back. We'd been rained out of the Valley for a few weeks and not managed the walls I wanted to get on. As my departure date loomed we decided on a quick ascent of Lurking Fear on El Cap, day and a bit. We arrived back in the valley in the evening, walked in and did a few pitches to a ledge. After a pretty terrible nights' sleep on a very small uneven ledge we set off up the route knowing that my bus was departing that evening. We were 2 pitches from the top when we decided that we were not going to make it and descend in time for the bus and my flight. We agreed to ab off, rigged the ab, clipped in my belay device and began lowering... only to realise I was only on the tailed of the rope! Tiredness and haste could have see me off.

In reply to keith-ratcliffe:

Wintours on Sunday we did Swatter on Fly Wall then decided to ab down to the the top pitch of the split as they share the same first pitch. Found two good threads in the boulders at the top, but one was a bit choked with ivy. Gave it a damn good tug and it seemed good. Didn't bother equalizing them. Soon as I put full weight on rope going over the lip the thread with ivy around it blew and I went down a fair way! Threw the rope over 3 of the boulders for the second attempt. Should have done that the first time it was too obvious to miss really

In reply to Ciro:

Why wouldn't you have just gone the few inches until the prusik jammed in the tube?

In reply to AlanLittle:

I've done similar when ab'ing to clean a route and using the prussik to enable hands free operation only to discover I'd managed to clip a null-loop on the prussik and it had untwisted off the crab. I had been working hands free on the assumption the prussik was holding and only discovered the problem when I went to free the prussik after I got the gear. The weight of the ropes below the belay device were all that was holding me.

On further confessions I normally forget to check my harness and knot until I'm (a) high enough to die and (b) in a rather stressful position, if I have been distracted while gearing up there is a real chance I have forgotten to get something right. Luckily with a bit of mental discipline I've mostly swapped forgetting to check my knot etc for forgetting to take important belay gear such as screw gates, belay plate and sandwiches

In reply to keith-ratcliffe:

My closest brush with the Grim Reaper? I went to do Great Slab when I was about 16, even though I only had a single 120' rope. Because I found the initial step across easy, I didn't bother with any other gear, just drifted up until I almost ran out of rope and belayed where I stopped, a couple of cr*p nuts behind loose flakes (Troll Spuds!) and belayed my mate with a shoulder belay(!)

Of course my mate, who was even then quite large, fell off the initial step and pendulumed across the crag; I was flipped upside down and could hear the Spuds grate through the cracks, so I was (literally) looking at a head first ground fall of 120'. But of curse, they held - just.

Various lessons, none of which I have completely learned, but I suppose the main ones are a) never be complacent about protection, and b) never assume your second is going to find stuff easy just because you have.

In reply to AlanLittle:

It might have done, but I would like to bet on it. To be more accurate it would have been a klemheist knot and they release pretty easily when pushed down on (as the tube would have done when they met).

In reply to keith-ratcliffe:

Lowering off to strip a my route and a neighboring route on a crag with a sloping base and slightly diagonal lines I elected to change ropes part way down. I was careful when changing over to test the new rope but in my haste I'd tied in mid-rope rather than pulling up an end. Shortly after untying from my initial rope I was lowered off the end of the new one. A very lucky landing was all that saved me from serious injury.

Lesson learned: Don't rush, pause, check, think. If something seems quick, easy and feels risk free you've probably become complacent and that'll kill you eventually.

Knots in the ends would also have saved me but I should never have put myself in that position to begin with.

jk

In reply to Ciro:

Ah, ok. I use an autoblock, which I'm pretty confident would stuff itself as a tangled mess into the tube rather than sliding

In reply to AlanLittle:

I wouldn't count on it. The device can push the prussik (particularly with something like a Bug); there isn't really room for the prussik to enter the device. In fact you use this property when ascending a rope with a prussik just in front of your belay device - when you pull the rope in, the prussik slides against the device and stops gripping. Then when you sit back on the rope the prussik slides back up and bites it goes tight.

In reply to keith-ratcliffe:

I was putting the draws into Road Rage on Portland, got to the penultimate bolt at the top and ran out of strength to clip the draw in. My choices were to fall a couple of metres to the last bolt and haul back up, or temptingly, just hook a finger into the bolt to steady myself while i put the draw in...
Guess which option stupid here went for.
I'd been climbing for 7 or so years at this point so I knew perfectly well what I was doing was idiotic, but still I found myself hanging onto a bolt with one finger whilst stood on super thin feet.
I then realised that if I put the draw into the bolt above my finger, I would crush the finger as soon as I weighted the draw, so I tried to shift my grip higher up in the bolt so I could fit the draw under my finger.
All this jiggling about caused one of my already precarious feet to slip off and I found myself hanging by one finger from the bolt. (at least it was a staple and not a petzl!)

I somehow managed to reset my feet, stand back up and grip a proper hold with my other hand long enough to extricate my battered finger from the bolt and drop to the next bolt down.

I got to the ground and examined the finger, aside from a small scratch it was completely fine, no tendon damage, no bruising, nothing, I was ridiculously lucky.
I was so angry with myself I immediately got back on the route and redpointed it, putting the top few draws in (properly) as i went.

Lesson learned: Well, probably doesn't need to be said, but bolts aren't holds, mm'kay?

In reply to andrewmcleod:

I'm planning an experimental test of my naive theory: will report back in due course (if I survive)

In reply to Dandan:

Yep, sounds like you'd be lucky to still have your whole finger if it had been an expansion bolt

In reply to keith-ratcliffe:

Years ago on a first trip to the Alps, three of us (2 alpine novices and a complete climbing novice) did the Petite Aiguille Verte above Chamonix as our first alpine route one morning. All went well and we did it fairly quickly so we decided we'd walk back down to the valley rather than take the cable car. The map showed the path down to begin with a long-ish dogleg, but there appeared to be a feint track also shown, which would cut off the dogleg.

No-brainer take the shortcut we thinks. The shortcut turned out to be down-climbing over mossy slippy slabs and before you know it the sunny morning turns into heavy rain. The down-climbing gets steeper and steeper until we're getting really pretty worried. Then as if by some miracle we come across some fixed abseil tat. We can see that one full abseil will take us to a decent looking ledge and another one from there will take us down to the glacier and back onto the proper path. The gods must be smiling.

I go first, get down to the ledge (about the size of a car) and confirm there is more tat and pegs there we can ab off. I see there is a lovely square flat block at the end of the ledge. In absoulte relief I unclip from the ab and call to my mate to come down. I'm so relieved and the ledge is big, so I don't bother to clip into the tat, I just sit down and lean back on the block feeling smug that I'm going to make it down safe.

What I've not noticed, is that the block is leaning slightly backwards and as I tansfer all my weight onto the block, it starts to move sharpish. Turns out the block is perched on a load of small stones and pebbles and the block is rolling on them towards the end of the ledge. And because it's leaning backwards, so am I and I can't get up off it easily.Luckily I managed to roll off it sideways and catch myself on the edge of the ledge, just before the block fell 100ft into the begschrund.

Lessons learned:
- It's easy to get killed in the Alps if you're not 100% on your game
- Always tie in on multi-pitch belays, no matter how big or comfy the ledge
- Don't take shortcuts in the mountains unless you're 100% sure they'll pan out
- I say again...it's easy to get killed in the Alps if you're not 100% on your game

In reply to AlanLittle:

I'm guessing he had it above the device.

Neil

Threading a gri-gri the wrong way. Don't do that, there's not much friction. Helpfully there's a little pictogram on the side, I use that now.

In reply to keith-ratcliffe:

Thanks for all your contributions so far - keep them coming.

In reply to keith-ratcliffe:

Been doing laps on a wall using a shunt. I came down, got distracted, chatted then set off again. Normally I would slump onto the rope/shunt at the top..... fortunately, I did not as I had not put the rope back in to the shunt. Another case of best to check and check again!

Plenty of occasions when temporarily misplaced in the mountains...... indeed, I have, on occasion, climbed the 'wrong' mountain altogether. This was usually related to bleary eyed Alpine starts

In reply to keith-ratcliffe:
Another from Yosemite.

We'd just done the Royal Arches and had quite a long day in blazing heat, if I remember correctly it's 11 abseils to get back down, and for some reason I'd chosen a giant, purple dyneema doubled over many times as my sling to clip into the ab stations. No problems until about halfway down, when (thank goodness) I'd come down the rope second, got to the belay and clipped my sling into the bolt, put my weight on it and unclippeed from the ab line.
The next thing I hear is 'Holy f*ucking $hit!!!!!' and notice my mate has hold of my harness, as it turns out my sling was doubled over so many times that I'd unclipped from the screwgate without realising.

We didn't speak about this incident for quite some time afterwards.

In reply to Troy Tempest:


No wonder you didn't speak of it.

We don't usually get a second chance with abeiling accidents.

Keith R., thanks for starting the thread, I think it's instructive and useful.

In reply to abseil:

No. Terrifying what being tired does to you.