Accident on Manic Crack in NM

Kerr Adams wrote: I couldn't give you an exact distance but thinking back, the belayer could have been a little closer. Not too sure what she did to catch the fall but unfortunately it does't really matter. All the gear ripped.

If the gear is not sufficiently slung, the belayer's position can certainly contribute to the zippering of gear below that which held the fall by lifting the gear from "in-line" with the fall to more perpendicular. If that compromises the lower placements and the top piece fails then it makes it more likely that the lower pieces will fail too. The belayer (position/slack/dynamic vs static catch), gear, slinging of the gear and the climber all make a "protection system", so it might matter a great deal.

csproul wrote: He is not asking about the wandering nature of the route. He's suggesting that the cams might have been placed more perpendicular to the wall/fall angle instead of the cam wires pointed in the same direction as the fall. See the WC technical document that was linked upthread. Were the cams slung with a runner or draw, or was the rope clipped directly to the cam?

The gear was placed fine I assure you. I will have a chat with the belayer about their position. Memory is a little foggy about their exact position.

Very likely, when you said take, the top cam and possibly the bottom cam rotated into position 2b. I suggest never take when above gear. This can adversely affect the direction of pull. I've been suggesting this since before I saw the pics.

Sorry bro. I'm sure your placements were good when you placed them. But they must have rotated into less than ideal positions. There is no cam failure here. Just an unfortunate sequence of events on cams with little margin if error. Chalk this one up to a very harsh lesson learned which could have had much more serious consequences. Heal fast.

The .4 failing to hold doesn't really concern me anymore. that's just an odd thing that happened. I'm more interested in the broken .3's after such a short fall. I'm working with professionals now to try to replicate the results. Maybe they walked. i don't know.

Kerr Adams wrote:The .4 failing doesn't really concern me. that's just an odd thing that happened. I'm more interested in the broken .3's after such a short fall. I'm working with professionals now to try to replicate the results. Maybe they walked. i don't know.

I missed it up-thread. What was the order of placements? 0.4 on top and the two 0.3's were below it? Were the 0.3's (lower pieces) slung?

csproul wrote: I missed it up-thread. What was the order of placements? 0.4 on top and the two 0.3's were below it? Were the 0.3's (lower pieces) slung?

That's correct. Clipped straight to the cam. No draw.

bearbreeder wrote: we have tests that show too much flexibility is a problem in certain placements. Think about how cams work in a perfect placement: you pull straight down on the cams, that force is converted to a rotational force on the cams, and the surface of the cams push against the rock surface. Now place a highly flexible cabled cam in a vertical bottoming crack (the stem is sticking out horizontally).

This is important to understand. And this is one of the reasons C3's are one of the most bomber micros out there. But, BD must have felt pressure to compete with the ensuing reintroduction of the ever popular aliens and limited popularity of C3's. . Hence, the X4's.

Kerr Adams wrote: The gear was placed fine I assure you.

Once again I am terribly sorry you got hurt. Nobody wants to see that. I wish you a full and speedy recovery fellow human being.

That being said, you need a bit of humility in this situation. The most likely explanation for all of this is that the cams were not used in a manner that maximized their holding power.

I know that is hard to stomach, but your pain was almost certainly a result of your mistakes. You are asking not a lot of metal to bind to a small amount of rock and that requires some diligence for everything to work correctly.

Kerr Adams wrote: I couldn't give you an exact distance but thinking back, the belayer could have been a little closer. Not too sure what she did to catch the fall but unfortunately it does't really matter. All the gear ripped.

If a belayer gives a take out and away like many do in the gym/sport climbs then that can definately lead the the lower pieces walking

After learning that the hard way a few times, now i let belayers know exactly what kind of catch i want and where to stand

Ive found that i need to retrain gym/sport belayers politely on trad climbs ... Also extending the pieces can help with walking even on straight up cracks

Sometimes its not any one thing that causes a total system failure, but an accumulation of smaller things

Again best wishes healing and with bd

Kerr Adams wrote:I'm more interested in the broken .3's after such a short fall.

Shorter falls equal higher fall factors.

None of the pics you posted indicate that the cams didn't operate as they were designed to.

I've never climbed on NM basalt but I imagine it's pretty similar to that in AZ (specifically thinking of Thumb Butte, Sully's Canyon, and Paradise forks). That rock is not forgiving at all with less-than-perfect cam placements.

I hope you heal up quickly.

Kerr, I wish you a speedy and thorough recovery.

In the interest of trying to keep this discussion as productive as possible, for those of us who are new trad leaders, what are the key takeaways here? Here's what I have so far, but I welcome corrections or additions.

1) Place the stem of the cam pointing in the direction of pull -- or as close to it as possible.
2) Sling cams whenever there is potential for walking (to reduce, among other things, the likelihood that the cam will rotate into a less desirable orientation relative to direction of expected pull).
3) Having the belayer stand closer to the wall is helpful, to minimize outward pull on the first piece (outward pull being a problem because it can rotate a vertically placed cam, which is a problem if said cam ends up being the piece onto which the leader falls).
4) With small cams, the margin of error is very small. A well-placed .3 should inspire less confidence than a well-placed #3.

Point #3 is actually not one that I had thought of (or learned from another source) before. Having the belayer stand close to the wall is helpful for other reasons as well of course.

michaelp wrote:Kerr, I wish you a speedy and thorough recovery. In the interest of trying to keep this discussion as productive as possible, for those of us who are new trad leaders, what are the key takeaways here? Here's what I have so far, but I welcome corrections or additions. 1) Place the stem of the cam pointing in the direction of pull -- or as close to it as possible. 2) Sling cams whenever there is potential for walking (to reduce, among other things, the likelihood that the cam will rotate into a less desirable orientation relative to direction of expected pull). 3) Having the belayer stand closer to the wall is helpful, to minimize outward pull on the first piece (outward pull being a problem because it can rotate a vertically placed cam, which is a problem if said cam ends up being the piece onto which the leader falls). 4) With small cams, the margin of error is very small. A well-placed .3 should inspire less confidence than a well-placed #3. Point #3 is actually not one that I had thought of (or learned from another source) before. Having the belayer stand close to the wall is helpful for other reasons as well of course.

Get in a solid nut or two if you can on the way up and at the crux

This is especially true if you are projecting and have the luxury of working out the gear placements ...

And especially true in irregular rock

Theres a reason why DMM makes what are considered possibly the bests nuts in the business ... All that funky brit rock with weird placements ...

question for those more experienced that I:

to me, this looks like the direction of pull on the cams didn't match the orientation of the cam in the crack. For the stem to be that bent after a fall, especially one in a vertical crack, it would seem like the cam would have to be placed with the stem facing almost exactly perpendicular to the crack/parallel with the ground and then a downward force (fall) cranked the stem into that shape.
Am I reading that wrong? Again, much more green trad climber than a lot of the people on here, and just looking at the pictures, it seems like what happened, but if I'm wrong I'd like to know.

Rob,

I'd say you're spot on.

alexanderblum wrote:Rob, I'd say you're spot on.

Cool. And second question:
I'm the umbrella cam, that's just under camming, yeah? And if only two lobes ended up this way why didn't the others and since they didn't, at what point does a partial cam failure result in total failure of the gear?

To echo what Jake said, we are getting into fuzzy territory at that point. A good rule of thumb would certainly be to treat any placement that doesn't seem "perfect" with varying degrees of suspicion. I know the Gunks are definitely suited to that kind of introspection . . . remember, a lot of very strange looking gear can be bomber, and some stuff that looks solid as a rock at first glance could be total trash. Patient experience is really the only way to learn about the former, and careful placement, sticking to well known rules and best practices, is how we avoid the latter.

"In testing, the high flexible cables did not generate the torque necessary to hold the falls and the units slid sideways out of the placement at very low loads." --- quoted from Black Diamond

Then why the hell did I buy two X4's? Why do they even make them? I was always thinking of stem flexibility as a plus.

A flexible stem is a boon in some situations and a liability in others. For placements where there is no way for the cam to rotate back into line with the fall a flexible stem can increase holding power. This is the most obvious "pin scar" example that aliens and their ilk are famous for doing so well.

In a vertically oriented crack with relatively smooth sides the flexible stem cam keep the cam from rotating into the best orientation for holding a fall, decreasing the maximum strength of the cam. They're two different tools that are used in different ways, with different strengths, weaknesses, and applications.

alexanderblum wrote:A flexible stem is a boon in some situations and a liability in others. For placements where there is no way for the cam to rotate back into line with the fall a flexible stem can increase holding power. This is the most obvious "pin scar" example that aliens and their ilk are famous for doing so well. In a vertically oriented crack with relatively smooth sides the flexible stem cam keep the cam from rotating into the best orientation for holding a fall, decreasing the maximum strength of the cam. They're two different tools that are used in different ways, with different strengths, weaknesses, and applications.

If the flexibility of the stem would prevent the cam from rotating into the right orientation, shouldn't that same flexibility prevent the stem from rotating away from the line of the fall in the first place? I don't believe other flexible stem cams are known to pull this way, are they?

Kerr, do you have a desire to return to climbing? If so, do you intend to stick with C4s or boycott black diamond altogether? It seems you still believe the cams downright "failed" ... can you articulate why you might believe a different model cam could have prevented your accident?
I'd appreciate more details about what happened, others have posted lists of very good questions earlier in the thread.

THIS (Brassmonkey quote below) is one of the most important observations of this thread, and points to a design weakness. Of course the cam should not be allowed to align away from the direction of pull, but other camming unit designs have more of a floating trigger and would not self-release on one side as this one did.

Brassmonkey wrote:So initially when I saw the pics, mostly due to what Kerr said in the original post that was deleted, I expected to see mayhem. Lobes in pieces etc. Clearly that isn't the case and I would say it appears to be user error in some way. Heres a thought though, on the first cam pictured the trigger is stuck in a partially opened position due to the kink in the wire. I know that when MC's first came out people were concerned that in a horizontal the trigger could twist and pull on the trigger wires essentially uncamming the device. I'm wondering if in a fall on an X4 where the direction of force is not in line with the cam could be a more severe problem on this cam than others. The combination of the large metal base of the trigger and susceptibility to kinking at the base may be an issue in this scenario. To break it down, the cam is placed "incorrectly" (or pulled due to taking on after placing) in a perpendicular position to the crack, aka sticking straight out. Climber falls or takes on said cam pulling the wire in a downward position. As the wire begins to kink the large metal base of the trigger is pulled away from cam heads with the kink essentially uncamming the top 2 lobes and the cam pulls due to only 2 lobes now being in contact with the rock. I know cams shouldn't be placed in this position because it will lessen their holding power, what I am wondering is if this cam is even more susceptible than others due to the design. I'm at work so unfortunately I don't have any cams to play with to see if this is feasible but its just a thought. I could be completely wrong but I'm just throwing a theory out there. Other than that I would say it doesn't look like a manufacturing defect of any sort' but rather some form of user error possibly in placing the cams, cams that walked, a fall with a higher factor due to small amount of rope out, etc. Speedy recovery Kerr!