It’s a trap to base our understanding of safety systems on our personal experience alone. Over the summer holidays I decided to spend some time reading about rockclimbing accidents. The American Alpine Club has been recording details of mountaineering and rockclimbing accidents in North America since 1951. Each year they produce a new publication that summarises the accidents of previous year. Here’s a few stats from the 2018 book:
- Reported accidents (1951-2017): 8879
- Injured people: 7273
- Fatalities: 2007
- Injuries caused by lowering accidents (1951-2016): 6
- Fatalities caused by lowering accidents (1951-2016): 1
- Injuries caused by lowering accidents (2017): 11
- Fatalities caused by lowering accidents (2017): 1
In 2017 there were more reported accidents during lowering from a climb than in the previous 65 years put together. The experience levels of those involved in the reported lowering-off accidents ranged, but experienced climbers were strongly represented in the numbers.
In the 2017 edition of Accidents in North American Climbing, Molly Loomis highlights how transitions from one activity to another (eg, climbing to lowering, or climbing to abseiling) expose participants to extra risks and seem to be causing more accidents in recent times. This may be related to the increased participation in sport-climbing where lower-offs are more common.
My compilation of suggestions and tips from various sources to make transitions to lowering or abseiling safer include:
- Before you leave the ground agree on a plan with your belayer for getting down from, and cleaning, the climb. Don’t change that plan unless you are able to easily communicate those changes with your partner. Accidents often occur when one person makes an assumption about what the other is thinking or planning to do – rather than explicitly communicating, and agreeing on, a plan.
- Develop a system of checks before leaving the ground including at least: harnesses, tie-ins, threading of belay devices, connection of belay devices, and closing of the system in some way.
- Close the system. Even if the rope is clearly long enough for the selected climb, tie a knot in the non-leading end of the rope or get your belayer to tie-in. This step alone would have prevented almost all of the lowering accidents reported in the last few years. In some accidents, climbers went to higher anchors or the wrong anchors – eventuating in the belayer letting all the rope through their device when the leader lowered from these different anchors. Lowering accidents don’t just happen to beginners. Even if you know your rope is long enough, it’s a good habit to get into.
- Always maintain at least one safety connection while transitioning from climbing-to-lowering or climbing-to-abseiling.
- Double-check attachments to the anchors and test-load your system before transitioning from one activity/system to another (climbing to lowering, or climbing to abseiling).
- Clutter is not your friend when your preparing to lower or abseil. Find ways to keep the working area around your harness and the anchors as simple and clear as possible.
- Auto-locking biners are a good idea – but they are not foolproof. They still need checking.
- Know exactly how long the rope you’re using is, and know the height of the anchors from the ground. If on some earlier occasion you cut a section off your rope, find some way of taping the end and recording the new length on it. A number of accidents in 2017 were caused by people thinking their rope was longer than it really was.
- Put a halfway mark on your rope using an approved rope-pen. It is handy for belayers to communicate to the leader as they climb past the halfway mark. It also helps you set the abseil rope in the middle. Failure to set up an abseil with equal lengths has caused a number of accidents and fatalities when combined with the failure to tie a knot in both ends.
- Before you commit to being lowered off by your belayer communicate with them unambigiously about who’s doing what. To be certain, hold the rope running from the anchors back down to your belayer, and don’t let it go until you’re sure you are securely on belay.
- If you have an in-experienced belayer holding your rope, consider abseiling to clean the climb and get back to ground, rather than relying on them to lower you when you can’t supervise them. Even ‘so-called’ auto-locking belay devices can ‘fail’ in the hands of both beginners (and sometimes experienced) belayers. Even Alex Honnold got belayed off the end of the rope by his girlfriend. Sadly, in the movie “Free solo” the description of the incident implied that it was the girlfriend’s fault? Take responsibility for your own safety as much as possible if you’re climbing with beginners.
- If you are abseiling from anchors be systematic in your pre-transition checks. I like to move from top to bottom: anchors, threading of rope, halfway mark (if applicable), correct threading of device, correct connection of device, harness on correctly, ‘third hand’ safety prussik attached, both ropes visibly on ground and/or knots in the end of both ropes.
- If you are tired or dehydrated be hyper-vigilant.
- If it is the end of the day be hyper-vigilant.
- Concentrate on what you’re doing: not the next climb, the perfect selfie, that attractive person on the next climb over, etc. etc.
- Wear a helmet. People involved in the lowering accidents described in 2018 Accidents in North American Climbing commented on the implications of wearing or not wearing a helmet in those accidents.
If you are not convinced, that these things are important, or that they are just common-sense, read some of the relevant accident reports in the “Accidents in North American Climbing” series. None of the people in those incidents went to the cliff thinking that they were going to have an accident that day. Understanding that on any occasion I could be the next accident is what keeps me focused on doing all that I can to make sure I am not.
Glyn Thomas has been an Instructor Trainer Assessor with the Australian Climbing Instructors’ Association since 2000, and was an instructor with the Rockclimbing Instructors’ Association of Qld from 1991-2000. The contents of this blog are not a substitute for good instruction.