UKC

Climbing at the wall today with regular partner. Both done plenty of climbing and are pretty rigorous at buddy checks. Always check the knot and belay device and are careful and attentive belayers. My partner said " well that's it for the" and I replied that she had one more climb to do. She got to the top and we said our OK's. Then as I started the lower she dropped a little way and the rope went taught. Her harness belt had come undone. She held onto the knot and her leg loops supported her as I completed the lower.
Both of us had made an error. Thinking the session was over she had loosened the waist belt and I didn't notice when I did my check. All to easy and luckily no accident.
I'm old enough to pompously quote Whymper. "Climb if you must...............but always remember a moments negligence may destroy the happiness of a life time"

In reply to Grumps:

A pal of mine was abbing off something and I hppened to notice that his harness waist belt was slowly slipping through the buckle as he had forgotten to triple thread it. I told him to abb a bit faster.

In reply to Grumps:

I tied onto my leg loop one time.

In reply to Grumps:

Funny enough, this is something that we used to discuss on our Crew Resource Management course (how a pilot manages their time pre/post/during flight and in the cockpit).
The following is a life saver:
A visual check is never good enough, you should actually do a 'hands on' check.

Glad all is ok.

In reply to Grumps:

Glad that ended well! Out of curiosity, did the harness belt loop have the sewn-over bit at the end like on a DMM harness? (I always hope, albeit somewhat optimistically, that it would fail to make it through the buckle in the event of loosening).

In reply to andrewmcleod:

Sorry don't know. Will check at next climb