Had a near miss last week, thought the story was worth sharing. Was climbing indoor lead with an experienced belayer on a brand new rope.
I got to the top of the route and there was a miscommunication error - the belayer thought I needed slack but in fact I was indicating I was going to drop off and be lowered, my error. Last clip was at waist height so not a great deal of slack at the climber end of the rope.
On my old rope this probably wouldn't have been a big deal but on a slightly thinner and much more slick rope, the acceleration from the slack he'd paid out caught my belayer by surprise and I ended up falling quite a long way to ~2m above the ground. Possibly some additional rope stretch was involved as well, this was the first pitch of the new rope. No injuries, just scary. Luckily we were using a Black Diamond Pilot which provided some assisted braking, think it would have been a bad outcome in this instance on a non-assistive plate-style device, but hard to know for sure.
Takeaway: Imagine most accidents involve a couple of rare things happening at the same time, this seemed to be the case here (comms error + new rope). Worth being ultra careful with a brand new rope. Perhaps this is widely known and I'll be downvoted - I knew it would be more slick and we'd discussed it, just how much more slick was the surprise. We could probably also practice falling a bit more, I don't like big falls so generally downclimb if I feel I'm about to peel off - probably good to practice catching falls every session.
(p.s. shout out to climbing center employee - very nice about the whole thing, hugs all round, said he would watch the belayer just to reassure him that he was safe, which he then did. Non-judgmental, very supportive but also safe and professional.)
Post edited at 11:46
