Two Climbing Accidents in Eldo 07.09.2011

Over the busy weekend we had two climbing accidents in quick succession. The first was a 60y/o male leading the fourth pitch of Rewritten who suffered an isolated ankle injury and was unable to move under his own power. The party contacted us via cell phone at the park office and we sent out a ranger to make initial contact while other rangers coordinated the response from Rocky Mountain Rescue, Rocky Mountain Fire, and the Sheriff. Reaching, stabilizing, and lowering the victim took several hours due to the terrain.

During this time, we closed the West Redgarden Gully due to concerns about rockfall, and closed the park to vehicles several times. Thank you to everyone we contacted for their cooperation and patience.

While that incident was ongoing, the entrance attendant was contacted by a party who stated that someone had taken a ground fall from the top of the first set of anchors on Bastille Crack. Rangers, RMF, and RMR personnel staged for the first incident responded immediately to the new one. Because this victim essentially fell onto the road, we were able to assess, treat, package, and transport this victim very quickly.

RMR conducted a tyrolean traverse across the creek for the Rewritten accident, and every rescuer on scene was drenched by a severe thunderstorm in the last few minutes of the incident...Which was fun.

We are still conducting our investigations into both incidents.

We would like to thank the men and women of Rocky Mountain Fire, Rocky Mountain Rescue, the Boulder County Sheriff, and all of the other people and agencies who responded. If there is such thing as a good place to get hurt, Boulder County is the best place for it.

- The Eldorado Canyon Rangers

I'm not familiar with the area, but a groundfall from the P1 anchors of anything sounds rather severe. Hope the person is doing ok.

The Denver Post reported that the rope became untied from a climber's harness, I would surmise on the Bastille Crack accident. One could imagine leaning back on those anchors, and an improperly/incompletely tied knot coming undone.

Second time in Eldo of late that an improperly tied knot resulted in an accident - C'est La Vie a couple weeks back.

We hear alot about Eldo accidents on MP perhaps only because "Eldorado Canyon" is kind enough to let us know about them, but I get the impression that Eldo has a disproportionate amount of injuries in comparison to other areas.

Is there a good website that tracks accidents for all major areas in climbing?

Is Eldo prone to accidents? If so, why?

Eldo does have a lot of accidents. I would surmise that this is due to the sheer numbers of climbing man-hours there and simple statistics. If you have not been there, on weekends imagine the same density of people as a popular city park, only everyone being vertical. Also, the rock there tends to have flared fissures, requiring more thought in gear placements. Third, the sandstone there has a weird tendency to vary in its friction with the weather; its been raining a lot here and is humid thus the rock gets kinda slick. You can pop-off from holds you've grabbed a dozen times before w/out problems.

It would be interesting to know if it has a typical ratio of accidents compared to other trad areas per climbing visits; but I doubt that anyone has recorded the data needed to determine that. I think it has more, frankly.

Mike Lane wrote:It would be interesting to know if it has a typical ratio of accidents compared to other trad areas per climbing visits; but I doubt that anyone has recorded the data needed to determine that. I think it has more, frankly.

As Nick suggested, and has been noted repeatedly in Accidents in North American Mountaineering, some parks do not go outside of their typical reporting channels to make data available to others.

The internet, and specifically forums like MP, SP, and ST, have made it a bit easier to gather information, but at the end of the day, someone has to do the paperwork for it. If you are a ranger who does not climb, and are writing an incident report about something that happened to a climber in your park, you submit it to your boss and thats the end of it. AAC and MP are acronyms lost in the alphabet soup of .gov-speak.

Eldo is relatively unique in that 43% of our 250,000 annual visitors are here to climb, and as such our rangers and staff tend to be climbers as well (not to mention extremely handsome!) so we try to have our ears to the ground and get information out there in order to educate visitors and prevent accidents.

One of our projects for the week (right now, in fact) is to update our climbing accident database, so we are digging through our archives to get a better idea of the rates and ratios. Our hypothesis is that we are no more or less dangerous than any trad area, but it may appear that way because we have better information and high climbing visitation. We can't speak for JOTR, ROMO, GRTE, or anyone else. Also keep in mind that many climbing accidents go unreported because parties are able to self-rescue.

Rest assured that we have top men working on it. Top. Men.

- The Eldo Rangers

Mike Lane wrote:Eldo does have a lot of accidents. I would surmise that this is due to the sheer numbers of climbing man-hours there and simple statistics. If you have not been there, on weekends imagine the same density of people as a popular city park, only everyone being vertical. Also, the rock there tends to have flared fissures, requiring more thought in gear placements. Third, the sandstone there has a weird tendency to vary in its friction with the weather; its been raining a lot here and is humid thus the rock gets kinda slick. You can pop-off from holds you've grabbed a dozen times before w/out problems.

I was not aware that Eldo has so many reported accidents, but I agree that, if it does, the simple Occam's Razor explanation would be the sheer number of climbers who climb there.

I am visiting Boulder—from SoCal—for my first time, and I have been amazed at how busy Eldo is. I've been climbed there three days so far, two of which were on weekdays, and from what I've observed, Eldo is busier on weekdays than any trad destination I've ever visited (except maybe Yosemite) is on the weekend.

Jay

Eldorado Canyon wrote: Rest assured that we have top men working on it. Top. Men. - The Eldo Rangers

Fools! Bureaucratic fools, you've no idea what you've got there...

Best movie ever

Eldorado Canyon wrote:Eldo is relatively unique in that 43% of our 250,000 annual visitors are here to climb

Eldorado Rangers: Thanks for all the useful information you've posted. I'm curious to know how you've estimated the number of climber visits. If I'm doing my math correctly, 43% of 250,000 works out as an average of about 300 climbers a day, every day, year-round. Considering how often it's too cold, or too hot, or too windy, that seems to imply that on nice weekend days you might be getting 600 or even 900 climber visits. Now I know that routes like the Bastille Crack and Calypso can get a dozen or more parties in the course of a single day, but I'm having a hard time visualizing 900 climbers in the park. Of course some people might arrive late or leave early, but there aren't that many parking spaces, are there?

More than arguing subjective user counts, one thing I see repeatedly in land management involvement and question:

What are the natural resource concerns that lead to such a hypothesis?

Mark Nelson wrote:More than arguing subjective user counts, one thing I see repeatedly in land management involvement and question: What are the natural resource concerns that lead to such a hypothesis?

Huh?

To answer a few questions before the busy weekend...

We established that 43% of visitors are coming primarily to climb based on visitor surveys. We'd always like to do more surveys and get more feedback. Maybe there's a young academic/climber out there who could help us out? There could be a volunteer pass in it...

The accident data is released annually to the American Alpine Club for inclusion in Accidents in North American Mountaineering. An addendum this year is to briefly summarize the 2000-2010 incidents for any broad conclusions we can draw. They are our best medium.

We always try to be open, especially with anything that can prevent future accidents. Based on what you have read in AINAM every year, and for those of you who have seen our interpretive signage, there are no surprises. Wear a helmet. Tie knots in the ends of your rope. Communicate. Respect moderate routes.

We have many public safety and natural resource concerns. First and foremost, we use education wherever possible to ensure that people do the right thing, even when nobody's watching. Education is why we have a presence on this forum in the first place. We want everyone to be informed, enjoy our park, and go home safe and happy. We also want the park to be here in its present state for future generations. These ideals are mutually inclusive, or at least that is the assumption we operate under when we go to work each day.

We'll have more info when we get more done, and we have a lot on our desks right now. If you have specific questions, contact us at 303-494-3943 or talk to us when you see us in the park. Have a great weekend, be safe, and have fun!

- The Eldo Rangers

"Rest assured that we have top men working on it. Top. Men."

nice Indiana Jones reference!

Eldorado Canyon wrote: ...the entrance attendant was contacted by a party who stated that someone had taken a ground fall from the top of the first set of anchors on Bastille Crack.

Any details on this accident?

Eldorado Canyon wrote: The accident data is released annually to the American Alpine Club for inclusion in Accidents in North American Mountaineering. An addendum this year is to briefly summarize the 2000-2010 incidents for any broad conclusions we can draw. They are our best medium. We always try to be open, especially with anything that can prevent future accidents. ... We have many public safety and natural resource concerns. First and foremost, we use education wherever possible to ensure that people do the right thing, even when nobody's watching. Education is why we have a presence on this forum in the first place. We want everyone to be informed, enjoy our park, and go home safe and happy. We also want the park to be here in its present state for future generations. These ideals are mutually inclusive, or at least that is the assumption we operate under when we go to work each day. ... - The Eldo Rangers

I extract these reasons:

1. Reporting and analysis for the community in general to interpret, the ANAM.

Agreed. It's an applicable medium to educate. As can be online forum groups and classroom discussion.

Whereas various press releases to the media seem to fail at this when it comes to mountaineering and climbing more than they succeed. Which is generally not the fault of the media, some times. These messages usually come from designated agency information officers and relaying is certainly not an easy task to offer a quick statement aimed at a general populace especially when a more thorough analysis warrants.

2. "We have many public safety and natural resource concerns."

This seems a generalized statement. What exactly are you offering here as examples of dangers to the general public and the natural resources?

Climbers go into the park with the acceptance of risk. Those who do not intend on technical climbing are warned by signage.

Is it really the place of land management to relay what is considered "safe" for a climber as a matter of public safety? Some instances can be helpful, notably things such as: distances, anchors, trail access, route condition reporting, and routes that see a high frequency of accident occurrence. A great deal of which are addressed in guidebooks, mentors, and sites like this.

The subjective opinion that addresses the manner of climbing or risk acceptance that climbers make for themselves that may have led to an accident, I don't think this is the place for land management. Well regarded climbers can have a bad day just the same as the novice out trad climbing on their first real rock outing.

I think if you surveyed the mtn rescue teams along the front range, you'll find they all are having higher call-outs than ever, with more of them being serious situations than they used to be. Population increases, advancement in specialized performance equipment, and improved technology on access and help notification probably lend to this. And, honestly, I cannot find a correlation of experience or preparedness levels as to the amount of call-outs that occur; people have bad days when out recreating.

Things I see:

A. No matter how hard anyone tries, we can't save the world from its own bad decisions; we can't fix stupid. Though I do wish people would stop being so hell-bent on lowering their partner off the end of the rope, or mis-communicating the anchor drop.

B. Analyses do serve an educational purpose if done appropriately. If these just come from the land manager along with a lecture, climbers that have a bad day may become conditioned to not request help when they need it or make the situation worse for an injured partner; such as in the fear of charge for rescue. However, if we can better assist in situational awareness and assessment, some good can come in learning about an accident.

Dale puts our decision making in a very clear light (though his focus is in avy) that we are good at visualizing objective hazard, but we suck at risk assessment. How can we make better decisions if we willfully won't properly assess our situation? What can we do to offer better tools at assessment -- lessons learned.

C. Our focus on climbing accidents needs to change. Accidents happen in the mountains and will continue to happen. Acceptable risk does not mean "no risk" and the cliffs and mountains will never be "safe." I think climbers are in a different light than the general public that has not willingly accepted risk. So the act of risk acceptance should place little emphasis on climbers as being the focus of a safety mandate.

I think the earlier posts have a basis coming from this mindset that a park like this is supposed to be safe. Meaning, land management analyzes why these accidents happen and that they come from a manner of free expression, then try to "fix this safety problem" so it won't happen to anyone else. Okay, how? Take away free expression.

What are possible observations & objectives?

High general visitation that stresses the Park's resources
High percentage of those visitors are climbers (??)
We use education wherever possible to ensure that people do the right thing (??)
We want everyone to be informed, enjoy our park, and go home safe and happy. (??)
We also want the park to be here in its present state for future generations. (!!)
Big cliffs with frequency of climbers being visible
Climbing accidents that occur are highly visible to the Park
When climbing accidents occur, access to the Park becomes restricted (??)

Hypothesis Offered:

Our hypothesis is that we are no more or less dangerous than any trad area, but it may appear that way because we have better information and high climbing visitation.

I would offer that you need to come up with a revised hypothesis that can be better tested as falsifiable as what is offered doesn't allow. It seems as if a conclusion is being proposed as the hypothesis; don't feel the need to prove, test and gather data to try and disprove -- falsifiability provides more substantive process.

As well, the proposed statement doesn't address the reasoning provided for collecting data that seems to be related to technical climbing accidents:

"We have many public safety and natural resource concerns."

A more relevant and testable hypothesis to land management concerns:

"Over-stressing Park resources and endangering the general public directly results from technical climbing accidents."

Title it to imply a testing process, something like:

"On the Association of Park Resources and General Public Safety to Technical Climbing Accidents."

The trouble with any of this as Mike brought forward is bias; which I think is why falsifiability allows you to collect & analyze, then draw better conclusions. Sometimes the conclusions brought out end up being things nobody would have thought about; possibly better ways to perform risk assessment, park management, and/or emergency response.

With the user volume of that park, you all should be able to collect and analyze a significant amount of information that benefits all of us.

i find their conclusion pretty interesting, and don't really agree with it. i've climbed fairly extensively, and out of all of the places that i have climbed, i would consider eldo among the top in the 'seriousness' category. here is a list of the reasons behind my opinion.

-loose rock. eldo has a lot of loose rock. a lot of routes have loose flakes/blocks/plates that the climber is pulling on. also, a lot of times the only available protection is in rock that isn't that great. another problem is rockfall from above. i have witnessed several accidents involving each of these, from gear pulling/blowing out rock, falls due to holds breaking, and injuries due to rockfall from above.

-ledges. eldo has a lot of ledges on the routes, meaning that the falls are often not very clean. it seems like a lot of routes have cruxy climbing with marginal gear above ledges or slabs.

-tricky gear. for the given grades, the gear is often not straight forward. the cracks are often flared (inward and outward), involve small finnicky gear, and/or involve rock that isn't completely sound. often the route doesn't follow a singular crack and requires a lot of slings to keep the gear from getting shifted around, which can pose a problem when climbing above ledges and trying to minimize fall length.

-increase in seriousness with increase in grades. most places the protection and steepness of the routes gets better with an increase in grades. eldo is kind of opposite. the more you try to climb at a higher grade, the fewer number of well protected routes are available.

-large number of beginner climbers. this is somewhat independent, in that this would be a factor anywhere, but when you combine it with the loose rock it is pretty important. beginner climbers often don't realize the importance of not dragging the rope through a vertical talus field, walk across a ledge without kicking off a block, or how to not drop a water bottle/shoe/cam/phone/walkietalkie/camera, etc.

-slippery rock. as mentioned above, the rock gets pretty polished, and if there isn't rain in the summer it gets pretty greasy.

In reading all the great insight in this thread I would like to add not simply to beginning climber idea only because I don't see Eldo as a beginner area but certainly as a destination.

I once had a group approach me later in the evening asking what was a good place to go? Three people with less than two hours of daylight with the Rossiter guide in hand looking for some advice. Once of these individuals still had the baggage claim tag attached to the shoulder strap of his pack.

Do those who climb there more often than I have similar stories or experiences or insight? Does anyone think Eldo receives more "tourist" climbers that are on terrain that they uneducated about?