I'd like to open a topic.

Suggestion is to:

A) Post the description op an Epic you had (not you uncle, or friend, but you personally). Falls, gear failure, human error, etc.

B) Next explain why it happend and finally,

C) How it could have been prevented.

This way we get to relive our favourite campfire stories and we all get to learn from each others epics.

STATISTICS OF EPICS BELOW
@ 2010.09.03

Holds Breaking
EPIC 2 / CLIMBERS 0

Helmets
EPIC 0 / CLIMBERS 3

Inadequate Pro Placement
EPIC 3 / CLIMBERS 0

Bad Belaying
EPIC 1 / CLIMBERS 1

Weather
EPIC 3 / CLIMBERS 0

Stove accidents
EPIC 2 / CLIMBERS 0

Inadequate Map
EPIC 1 / CLIMBERS 0

Good Clothes
EPIC 0 / CLIMBERS 2

Team Experience
EPIC 1 / CLIMBERS 1

Time and Hurrying
EPIC 1 / CLIMBERS 0

Technical Skill
EPIC 0 / CLIMBERS 1

CURRENT SCORE
EPIC 13 / CLIMBERS 8

I'd like to make a case to always wear a helmet, and always protect easy ground adequately.

This sounds a little like fiction, but there were 5 witnesses.



I'll try to keep it brief:

Brother Noems and I (anybody knows what happened to the self proclaimed "90kg of throbbing passion"?) set out to climb Agrippa at Muizenberg.

1st pith was easy.

2nd pitch goes at a 20, which at the time, was comfortably within my onsight grade.

I pulled through the crux no problem and set out to finish the easy ground that followed.

The Epic:

A distance up the pitch, on slabby, ledgy climbing a hold broke in my hand.

I realized that the area below me was not steep enough for a clean fall. So I kicked away from the rock face hoping for a better landing, and thus, changing the angle of load on my last piece from expected down force, to up force.

This piece, a nut, dislodged from its placement, and I continued to fall onto the second piece.

The impact was so great that the 'biner melted a 6m long black streak into my one half rope. Thus calculating to a fall of +12m (4 apartment floors). A real proper screamer.

I was very lucky to clear the slabby area, to clear the ledge and to end up under the overhang about 1,5m below my belayer, suspended in clean air. I lifted his "90kg throbbing passion" arse clear of the ledge.

During the fall my one rope lassoed my right foot, causing me to end upside down when I finally stopped. All my weight still on the foot. No weight on my harness.

So, the lesson:

1) The Helmet:

I was lucky to have cleared the ledge and to have walked away unscathed. If I did not clear that ledge I would have hit my head against the rock face.

With a helmet I may have ended in hospital, without a helmet I would have ended in the morgue.

2) Easy Ground.

We all do it. At the end of a long day, the last "Scramble to the top" or "find the easy way over the gargoyles" is often soloed or climb in a hurry. With little gear and long long runouts.

Treat it like real climbing. Arrow Final has an unacceptable accident and fatality ratio because of being treated with less respect that it deserves.

Keep in mind. Accidents do happen. Holds do break. It has happened to me a couple of times. Only this once did it cause a dramatic fall. But once could have been too many.

Any other day, it would have meant a call to WSAR.



Oh, in closing:

Still hanging upside down, I uncoiled myself form the foot lasso, which turned out much more difficult to do than one may think, and made my way to the belay ledge.

Brother Noems gave me a once over, asked "are you OK" to which I replied in the affirmative.

And he made me climb the pitch again.

Thanks Clinton. I mean it.

This one doesn't qualify as an epic, but there is in my view a lesson to be had. While climbing on the climb "promise of light" at the Blaze of Glory crag I was taking rope to clip the bolt through the last bulge on the climb. I was 11m off the deck and my belayer was feeding slack as I was clipping. I was in the upward arm movement of taking rope to the draw when I came off and to my and my belayers surprise the only thing that stopped my fall was the ground. Needless to say i was exceptionally lucky to survive that fall with not much more than a severe bruising on my arse.

Now I know people have been belaying with tubes for many years and that with excellent technique one should never have a mishap like this, but we are all human and mistakes happen. It is for this this reason that I think people should use the technology that is available out there to prevent this from happening. Personally I use a Zapomat self locking device for sport and a tre for trad. Obviously there is the grigri for sport. I know the Zapomat and tre are not strictly completely selflocking as the grigir, but you are not going to hit the ground in free fall like I did. And yes it is still possible to drop someone with one of these devices, but in my view you have to be dumb and not just have a momnetary lapse of concentration.

Flame away.

My Plastic Epic: http://www.on-the-edge.co.za/forum/topics/plastic-epic

_________________
If you aren't willing to solve your own problems, how can you expect others to?

Great topic!

@Hann: Awesome! What gear arrested your fall (placement, single or half rope (did one or both ropes catch you)) ?

@Russell: Why did you deck (long runout, belayer let you slip, 11m bolt was first one ) ?

_________________
"I have no more friends, and my nuts are too small!"

A Nut, not too big. no 2 or 3.
Scary thing is, when I climbed past it the second time it seemed to be barely holding its position.



Only one rope. We were climbing on half ropes, so that was 1 x half rope that caught a fall in excess of factor 1.
It was also the same rope wrapped around my foot.
The other rope took 0% impact

I merrily continued to climb on the rope for another 2 or 3 years.
Not the best idea, I must admit.

Hmmm. Mine's about seven pages long and in the last issue of SA Mountain. Do I need to retype it here?

It was a grand epic, and (if I may be so bold) makes a great read!

When the belayer was feeding the rope as I was trying to clip he lost control of the rope in his braking hand so the next thing he saw was me next to him on the floor and he had a wtf expression on his face.

It was more a less the same as letting go of the rope when belaying with a tube device - the end result is a freefall until terra firma stops you. My belayer said he had never been so happy to be sworn at in his life!

If you think you will be able to catch the braking rope once the fall starts, think again. That was my reason for saying that one should buy a self locking belay device as it woudl certainly have prevented me from decking from 11m up, not a pleasant experience may I add!

Is true Jono,
Does makes a good read.

And no, even if you cut and paste it here, I for one, will not read it again.

But, how about outlining the lessons you learned?

So my epic was noted on climb.co.za earlier this year.... but here is a full description of what happened!

The accident:
It was a perfect Thursday morning for a climb on lions head, my boet and I decided to tackle Wailing Wall, graded at 16 (I think) The first 2 pitches were great, although we took longer than expected, and my brother needed to be back at work soon. He lead the last pitch, of pretty easy climbing, and then it was my turn. I cleaned the stance, and started up from the belay ledge (prob about 1m wide). Wanting to climb quickly in order to save time, I reached for the obvious looking massive horn, matched on it, and tried to pull myself up.

Before I knew it, the horn, along with the rest of the rock attached to it pulled clean out of the rockface... I fell backwards, and the rope stretch left me hanging horizontally just above the belay ledge, with my feet on the ledge.

The rock came down on the end of my left big toe, and completely crushed it, leaving the last 1.5cm of my toe hanging on by a tiny piece of skin. probably would have been clean off if it wasn't in a shoe.

After the rock had landed (i think) i swung round (lying horizontally) and hit my head into the rock face, although the impact wasn't severe, without a helmet, it could have lead to some form of head injury.

My brother was out of earshot, and i had to extract my phone from my pack and call him above... We contacted the rescue services immediately, thinking we could require assistance getting off.
My brother down climbed the last pitch back to the ledge, and by that time, we had the skymed chopper hovering over us, ready to hoist us in. (A big thanks to those guys, it would have been quite tricky getting off there with a mostly amputated toe)

How it could have been prevented:
I guess a good test of the massive horn would have been a good idea, but no climber with any kind of experience would have had good reason to suspect that that piece of rock would be loose....

Lessons Learnt:
ALWAYS test a hand hold.. no matter how good and solid it may seem! Be careful when doing this tho, if a hold breaks on a test pull and you fall off, its no longer a test pull! make sure you holding on to something else solid! One test pull on a piece of rock could save your life!

ALWAYS make sure that you AND your partner are carrying a cellphone (where theres reception), it was the only way to get contact with my climbing partner at the time. and have the rescue number saved in it!

ALWAYS wear a helmet... (relates to Hann's post above)

NEVER rush! Getting back to work on time is not as important as keeping all your body parts! or your life!


The end of the story:
3 days in hospital, debridement, plastic surgury, 3 months recovery, and a left "big" toe 1cm shorter than the right one!

I've learnt my lesson... hopefully others can learn from this too!

D

OK, not too epic but eye-opening nonetheless:

We were heading up Ifidi Pass in the Northern Drakensberg in December 2004 - for those of you that don't know it, it's a scramble route through a steep and narrow gully to gain access to the escarpment above. We left from Cycad Cave that morning and spent the day boulder-hopping up the river bed until we reached the final 400m rocky gully which is only 4m wide in places. The scrambles are technically easy (about C grade at worst) and no rope is required in good conditions.

We had climbed up a few of these scrambles and were about 100 vertical meters from the top when the usual berg thunderstorm rolled in. At that point, there was a small overhang in the side wall of the gully which is where we chose to have lunch and take shelter from the rain. We did not want to get the escarpment at that moment with all that lightning around. About 10 minutes later, we noticed a trickle of water coming down the scramble above us in the gully. I didn't think much of it as we were so close to the top of the gully that there was surely very little potential for any flooding. Within about 30 minutes, the entire gully had become a raging torrent with waterfalls cascading down both side-walls. Ho hum

We had to scramble up to a slightly higher ledge (standing space only) to get above the water line. Both the scramble we had just come up as well as the next blockage up the gully had waterfalls running down them, effectively trapping us on this ledge for the next 3 hours waiting for the water to subside. The rain had stopped after about an hour but the waterfalls just did not let up. At about 5pm, we heard another thunderstorm approaching so we decided to try the next scramble to see if we could escape to the escarpment before the situation got worse. Even with the waterfalls, the rock still had a surprising amount of friction - we were able to get up and haul our packs with the guy ropes from our tent flysheet. Fortunately, the remaining difficulties were also doable in the wet and we topped out a short while later.

How could this have been prevented?

At the first sign of rain, we could have hot-footed it to the top. Although then we would have been exposed to the lightning.

What I do these days whenever hiking in the berg in summer is to get going at first light (yup, that's 04:30am). This proves quite challenging with certain hiking companions but a kick in the ribs generally sorts that one out.

This way, we're normally at our overnight cave or campsite by lunchtime before those storms hit. Having said that, I have seen berg thunderstorms break at 9am before...

Thanks tjom!

Lessons... hmmmmm.....

Well, for starters....... check the weather reports! Even if you've been planning the adventure for close on a year, and those few days are the only days' leave you have...... don't muck about if there's potential for foul weather.

Secondly, where possible over-kit yourself. If it wasn't for those "luxury" items like body and hand warmers, a pocket rocket, full rain gear, and a very well stocked pantry, Mark and Steve would definitely have been far worse off. Ja, so the pack's a little heavier.... suck it up fat boy, it'll make you strong and keep you safe!

Thirdly, pick your adventure partners well...... we worked extraordinarily well as a team and if it weren't for that, things might have ended up far more pear-shaped.

And lastly, all three of us have learned that we no longer like Jungle Oats Breakfast Bars as much as much as we used to.

Hi

My epic wasn't on a climbing trip, but rather on a hiking trip.

Many years ago, when I was younger and stupider and had like minded friends, we (Koos and I) decided that it would be good to do the Drakensberg Grand Traverse in winter. Neither of us had ever hiked in the 'berg before, or had really experienced the effects of altitude or had even done much winter hiking. Anyway we had decent gear, a map showing the whole route and lots of (stupidity/) bravery.

We planned to do the whole route in 10 days, none of this 13 day nonsense, particularly as we reckoned that it would mean that we would be able to carry everything and wouldn't have to arrange a resupply.

We set of from the Sentinal car park and made good time up the chain ladders to the top, and were soon on our way to Mount-aux-Sources when it started to snow lightly. It snowed for the rest of that day and the next so by the time we reached Cleft Peak it was getting dark and we were struggling. We were both very, very cold and decided to quickly pitch the tent and make a brew to warm us up.

We pitched the tent in the most sheltered spot we could find (actually not sheltered at all) and grabbed the stove out of Koos' pack. We decided that it would be too windy for us to cook outside and put the stove in the one vestibule. We knew of the carbon monoxide poisoning problem and so left the other door and vestibule open.

I discovered that the stove was empty and set about changing the cylinder. The stove, one of those old Colemans took punch cylinders. I took the old cylinder off and put on the new one. I smelled gas but thought nothing of it, as it was common for a small amount to leak out when you changed the cylinder. Koos passed me the billies with the water and I put it on stove, struck a match and opened the valve.

When I lit the stove, it instantly transformed into a tower of flame. We threw ourselves out of the opposite door, into the snow and turned around in time to see the entire tent erupt in flame and the stove explode, shooting chunks of metal everywhere. We were left standing in the snow with bits of burning nylon dropping down around us and nothing left but our packs (which we hadn't unpacked yet, fortunately) and some charred tent poles that clattered to the ground.

We were now at least a days walk from the nearest shelter marked on our map (which had seemed very impressively detailed but now seemed totally blank), a cave. We had no tent, no stove and no way of calling for help. The only choice was to start hiking.

We covered the distance to the cave in only 6 hours, making it there by around midnight. We surprised a group of hikers, who, initially at least, were rather grumpy to be woken by two sweaty, blackened, exhausted hikers. Too their credit they quickly realised that we needed help and swung into action. Soon we were sipping hot tea and eating warm soup. It was the best meal I have ever had.

Needless to say, that was the end of that trip. Two sets of parents were very surprised to have their children appear on their doorstep 6 days early.

Lessons:
We reckon that the stove punch must have corroded, it was quite old. When I punched the new cylinder, it didn't seal properly allowing the still liquid butane (the altitude and the cold mean that the butane doesn't convert easily to gas) to escape. When I lit the stove, it warmed the liquid, converting it to gas and it ignited, causing the stove to explode. So if you use an old style stove, check the punch and seal carefully before use. Also carry a spare stove.
If we had had a better map or a better knowledge of the area, we might have been able to locate a nearer cave an avoid the 6 hour death march. So don't do winter hikes in areas you are completely unfamiliar with. Take some one who knows the route and area well.

Lastly, very many thanks to David, Pete, Jan and Annike for taking pity on some poor, tired hikers who rudely invaded their cave at midnight. You were angels!

_________________
Happy climbing
Nic

Thanks for your hiking epic Nic! I don't know how much I learnt, but I just burst out laughing at work whilst reading about your exploding gas stove I can just see it happening!

Years ago the good doctor and I set out to Mount Everest (Harrismith) to climb Fight
The Feeling. It was to be one of our first multipitch climbs together. Filled
with confidence inverse to our experience we bravely started the route and finished
in good style.

Rapping down turned out to be a completely different story:
We yelled 'rope below' and tossed the rope.
The wind promptly took the rope and coiled it, almost horizontally from us, around a
gargoyle.
Yanking and pulling it soon became clear that the rope was not coming loose and for
reasons that elude me know, we realized that we would not be able to climb there and
manually dislodge it.
For all practical purposes we were stuck.
Luckily for us, some foreign climbers were climbing the route as we were rapping,
saw our predicament, and assisted by detangling the rope.

Further down, at the last stance, I dropped my figure of 8 abseil device. (if you
picked up a red DMM figure of hearts at the base of Fight the Feeling in the middle
90's, I sincerely hope you didn't use it)
At the time we only had one belay device between us, which placed us in our second
predicament of the day.
Fortunately I was forced to learn and memorized an Italian / Munter hitch by
circumstances a few months earlier (top of Inner Tower, Drakensberg, but that is
another story) thus enabling me to safely rap to mother earth without a belay or
abseil device.

Two lessons were learned.
1) To this day, when I rap and there is a possibility of the rope snagging, I do the
following:
- coil the rope trad style over my shoulders, keep it there and rap with the rope ON
my shoulders slowly feeding it out as I descend.
NOTE: This takes some practice, so don't attempt this for the first time in failing
light when at Wolfberg.

2) Small skills can really avoid of a big epic.
Here the munter hitch got us down. If you don't know it, learn it.
It can be used for:
- rapping
- belaying 1 rope
- belaying 2 ropes, on 2 screwgates (one screwgate per rope)

How to tie a Munter-hitch, see here

_________________
Happy climbing
Nic

I've spoken on ClimbZA of this before, but here is the full story.

Krakadouw.
I don't know, maybe 4 or 5 years ago.
We set out to climb Icthyosaurus.
http://www.climb.co.za/wiki/index.php/K ... aurus_-_21
We were styling, onsiting all the pitches.

I lead pitch 3 and made a hanging stance under roof instead of on the ledge a few meters below. My partner joined me, and I readied myself to lead the next pitch. She attached herself to the hanging stance and I detached from it. Scoping out the route above me, I was still hanging on a single nut before setting off on the lead.

And then the nut popped.

Dropping through the air I was at first confused at what was happening, but quikly figured it out when I heard a loud bang and a little scream above me.

There was no gear between my belayer and me, thus the load was directly down instead of the expected up force. So it turned out that my belayer took all the impact of this basic factor 2 fall, and connected the rockface due to my pendulum with relative severity.

Dilligent belayer that she is, she was holding the ropes with both hands, even while we where in the stance.
Dedicated belayer that she is, she held on to the ropes with both hands as I fell.
And hard-headed belayer that she is, she absorbed all the impact with the rock face with her shiny white Ecrin Roc helmet and head.

Suspended in air it took a second or 2 for the confusion to settle and for the penny to drop about what happened.

Upset and shaken I got back onto the route, fumbeled about and fell off. This time on gear that held.

By this time my belayer was as white in the face as her helmet and insisted we bail.

So,
What went wrong.
I placed a nut which I was not familiar with and did it incorecly. See tread "DMM vs. Black Diamond"
viewtopic.php?f=17&t=632

Good belaying saved me. Propper belaying, even while in the stance probably stoped me from a ground fall from 3 pitches up.

Wearing a helmet kept her mellon intact and enabled her to hold on to the ropes.

So, again:
Silly placements.
Good belaying.
And most important - a helmet.

And I vouch for Nikki's belaying.
These accidents happen incredibly fast and if you are not actively belaying every millisecond, you may kill your climber.

Another excellent reason to use a self locking belay device!

eh... how does that work? Where I come from we climb with 2 ropes.

@shorti: The tre takes 2 ropes. Absolutely the best device ever.
@Russell: If you ever want to get rid of yours, I'll pay double.

that krakadow story is hairy! like my back there's such an immense responsibilty on belayers - totally freaks me out when people become casual on the belay.....

shorti has not taken the trouble, and since i'm bored, here goes shorti's epic:

climbing at tafelberg (cederberg) for 4 days saw shorti & seemonster getting on solitaire (19) - onsight. the route and gear looked good from the bottom. seemeonster carefully negotiated the 1st run-out pitch with gear behind a huge flake which looked like it could be pulled off by a mouse.... made it to a good belay. shorti started in fine style and placed a good nut; then a dodgy cam; then another dodgy cam; but continued to climb. when the dragon started to breathe on his forearms he placed (what looked like) a good cam and proceded to put his weight on it for a shake-out. the cam popped and so did the next 2. an almighty roar rolled through the valleys as shorti came thundering down 15m; hitting a ledge (or 2) in the process with his forearms; painting seemonster's helmet black with his shoes (yes, he hit him with his feet) and came to a standstill a couple of meters below him - that 1st nut held and so did seemonster. dazed & confused he was lowered to the ground (luckily it was not on a 3rd or 4th pitch!!) where we proceded to fill him up with sugary things.

we had to walk down that afternoon to get him to a hospital - net result was skinless knuckles, a badly bruised wrist, another wrist with a hairline fracture.... we celebrated shortis survival with ice cream in kalbay the next day. he duly ignored some mega-hot babe's wanting attention and just continued to stuff himself with ice cream. a habit which persists to this day

some pics of the route and "before & after" shots below.

At Shorti. Where I come from I also climb with 2 ropes. In my previous post I mention that I use a Zapomat for single ropes and a tre for trad.

At lelikegogga. I went to great lengths to aquire two more tres for my wife and I so am not likely to sell them, but I see DMM have brought out a 2 rope self locking device which I will get my hands on as soon as it is available. I will let you know how well it works.

ah Where I come from we live under a rock. That thing looks a bit like a potato pealer Nice looking ropes though. They don't make those devices any more right?

Mok, I don't think my story counts much for an epic, it was more of a quick "bliksem neer". I also don't know about any ledges except the belay ledge and I find it a bit unlikely that I could have hit it with my arms. I did hit something though. Oh, and for the record, I did ask one of those girls to take money out of my pocket to pay for the ice cream Post some climbing pics instead, pleaaaase...

Hey Shorts - how about your other quick bliksem neer?

@Russell: Please keep me posted. I surfed the interwebs a bit, but could not find any reference to said DMM device. Do you have a link or something?

ja, you're right. the epic was for us guys who had to walk you down, carry your 35kg of gear + our own and then spend the rest of our time listening to you. so it should really be "Mok's epic"
ja, its kind of a mystery to me what you hit with your arms. maybe tiny ledges? or seemonster's dreads?
and btw, these pics are better than the ones of you blue black & green butt after your quick bliksem neer on energy crisis. but i think marley was referring to the other quick bliksem neer. and sorry for betraying your identity - did not think about that

the "looks like a potato peeler" quip almost had me choking on my chicken frikkadel here

My mistake lelikegogga. It is a tworope version of the mammut smart belay device and I saw it in a gear show report Justin posted here about 2 months ago.

http://www.mammut.ch/en/productDetail/2 ... Smart.html

This is the sinlge rope version and the 2 rope version will be available early next year.

Not sure if this is the best topic to post this, but anyway...

Referring to viewtopic.php?f=31004&t=6165

Rumors of this rescue have traveled.
Not pretending to know any of the details and solely for educational purposes (mine included) I will attempt to resolve the issues of similar situations.

Problem:
You have both rapped to a abseil stance mid route, you pull the rope through the rap ancors above and the rope gets stuck.

Solution:

Step 1:
You'll need to reach the rope jam safely.
Use 2 x 3 rap prussics. Tie one to each of the ropes and connect both with a screw gate to your belay loop.
Do not use any other jummar device or any other prussic knot. It MUST be a 3 rap prussic.
Do not tie the screwgate to any other part of the harness, it MUST be the belay loop or you stand a great chance of cross loading.
If you can only reach 1 of the half ropes tie both prussics onto the 1 rope.
For both 2 rope and 1 rope scenario, take a 3rd prussic and a sling and clip these to a gear loop for later use.
You are 2 climbers so you should have a minimum of 4 prussics between you.

Step 2:
make a proper belay stance for the belayer. He then places you on belay. Make sure there is a knot in the bottom end of the rope.
If you are abseiling a multipitch route without a knot in the end of the ropes you are a fool and should give up rock climbing all together.

Situation:
the rope or ropes are now running from the jam, to the 3 rap prussics to the belayer. You are attached to both prussics.

Step 3:
you climb the route and manually move the 2 prussics as you ascend. Place gear as per lead, and clip the gear onto the rope or ropes below the prussics.
should you not be able to climb, jummar up the rope using the 3rd prussic and sling for your foot.

now it becomes interesting.
in the event of a fall:
a) if the rope jam holds, the prussics will catch your fall as per top rope scenario.
b) should the rope jam dislodge you will fall as per lead fall with the belayer catching your fall.
this is why you MUST use a 3 rap prussic knot. All other prussic knots (klemheist etc) and all jummar devices are directional. If you adjust them for the toprop fall they will FAIL for the lead fall. And vise versa. The 3 rap prussic is not directional, and will be safe for both falls due to it stopping in both directions.
This is also the reason why you are tied to 2 x 3rap prussic: Redundancy issues if lead falling.

If you have access to one half rope only, with both prussics attached to it, you will in the event of the lead fall scenario, fall on one half rope only. In these circumstances I would argue that it is an acceptable risk.
is there any historic incident of a half breaking in a fall? (not cutting, but breaking)

Step 4:
thus you continue to the jam, and untangle the rope.

Step 5:
getting down safely.
depending on the distance to rap point below vs. above and the difficulty of the climb you could:
a) continue the climb and redo the original abseil, taking better care not to get the rope stuck again. From experience the rope usually gets stuck right at the lip of the edge, so I expect this to be the most frequent.
b) sacrifice a sling or other gear, and make a rap point at you current position and abseil down.
c) downclimb the route while being belayed from below.

My logic tells me the above should work, and is safe for most such circumstances.
any opinions are encouraged.

@ Nic, please do your animated knots thingy again for the 3rap prussic.

@Hann: Sure

You can see how to tie a 3-wrap prussik here

_________________
Happy climbing
Nic