Accident At New River Gorge Offers Learning Experience

Tragic. We must learn from it. It is always a small unthinking choice that can cause such a disaster.

Hi y’all, this accident reminds me of a incident that occurred last year in CA with a helicopter crew of Forest Service wildland firefighters. During a training exercise the victim began to rappel from a hovering helicopter and fell to his death. During the aftermath it was learned that the locking ‘biners on his rig had been improperly attached, rather than aluminum intersecting aluminum, the ‘biners were held in place by a small rubber ring. Similar to the Petzl Strings, these little rings are a matter of convenience and not designed to take any significant load. They’re also small and unobtrusive and can easily give the impression that they are correctly aligned, even when there are critical flaws.

To compound the firefighter’s tragedy, his rig had been checked by several other team members, including supervisors, none of whom caught the mistake. I imagine that this climber’s partners, like most of us, have a similar safety-check routine, and I can’t imagine what it must have felt like to be there in the moments after the tragedy. My heart goes out to everyone involved.

In the firefighter example, the Forest Service is improving its protocols to make it more difficult for something like this to ever happen again, and there is currently a freeze on helicopter rappelling. Amongst us climbers, this incident might teach us all something about safety… I doubt Petzl will recall the strings, and I don’t think they should, but we all need to think about the gear choices we make and the doo-dads that we trust our lives to. We need to be using systems that are simple, easy to get right, easy to check and redundant. We all know what it’s like to be physically & emotionally strung out in sphincter-puckering territory and still need make instantaneous & crucial decisions. Those are moments when I want my gear to be idiot proof.

Sad news for sure, I’ve been using a similar setup for long-draws for a while…will be changing that for sure.

Good reminder though, always test yourself on the anchor before you untie the rope…atleast the next draw should catch you if something goes wrong.

Narc,

I climb mostly in the southwest. I haven’t seen a rap ring at a sport area, or even a mixed one in ages. The average route at least has chains or welded cold shuts. The 10a area classic at a well-traveled area usually has biners for speed, safety, and it easier to replace a biner than chain.

Why was the climber not still on belay? If she clipped the anchors and yelled safe, she surely should still be on belay, with an overhand with a biner or something similar in place while threading??