Belaying accident and aftermath
|
I have a friend who was the belayer in an accident this past spring. My friend, an experienced and safe (those who climb with him would say that he is overkill on the safety checks) climber, was out with a group at a sport crag. He knew some folks well but not others. The climber he was belaying was merely an acquaintance. The actual event was that my friend, who was using a Cinch belay device, dropped the climber when he fell, and the climber hit a ledge. He was out for the rest of the day, but has not, to my friend's knowledge, suffered any long-lasting effects. My friend has been unable to get further information, in spite of inquiring mutual friends. |
|
Lots of people get dropped or mess up a belay and it doesn't matter what belay device they are using. An ATC is pretty easy to drop someone with if you don't use it correctly. Same with a GriGri, same with a Cinch. The type of belay device is irrelevant to this conversation. |
|
Search on "cinch accident" and you'll get plenty of hits. There's one particular accident that comes to my mind a few years back in Eldo. Someone leads the first pitch of Rewritten or a nearby climb. The leader uses a Cinch to belay his second. The second falls... and falls... and falls ... until the rope snags on something and saves the guy after falling 80ft. (Edit: I've found the complete post here ( mountainproject.com/v/lost-… in particular post by the victim user name ABMFB) with more accurate info than what I described). |
|
There are occasional threads where people have claimed that their Cinch failed to lock for no identifiable reason. It's hard to say whether they are legit or user error. I have on acquaintance who said he was belaying and the Cinch did not lock immediately and his climber fell more than expected, but the climber did not hit anything. I used to use a Cinch and found it touchy with thin ropes, especially when new and slick. The straight rope path made it feed very nicely, but also made lowering more of a "on or off" proposition IMO, and more difficult to modulate as compared to a Grigri. I switched to a Grigri and have been happier with it. However, I never had a problem with it not catching a fall. I'd like to think that all belay drops are user error, but I'm not sure if there is some rare yet-to-be-identified factor that makes a Cinch prone to not locking. |
|
The saddle pin on a Cinch wears down, and eventually it won't catch as easily as when the pin is in good shape, if at all. I'm a fan of the Cinch design, but they do wear faster than a Gri-gri, and if you've got a slick and/or thin rope and and a sufficiently worn pin, you can crater somebody. There's no mysterious design flaw, but Cinch users do need to keep an eye on the wear. |
|
The Cinch is the most touchy belay device on the market by far. While I'm not completely convinced there is a design flaw keeping it open under certain unlikely condition, I will not belay with one or let anybody belay me with one. IMO, people who have been informed of the various accidents but continue to use one are delusional of their belaying skills. |
|
There was a time when every single groundfall at our local gym was on one particular brand's auto-assist belay device. Was it that device's design...or user error? Turns out it was user error...I'd be very, very careful concluding that one particular device is flawed, simply because you get hits on the internet or that one has heard "lots" of stories about it. |
|
Here's one more person who won't let someone belay me with a cinch. All though the failure mode may still be user error, there is no other device out there that makes it so easy to have user error. Like reboot said, the cinch is the most touchy device out there and is by far the most prone to having someone do nothing noticeably different than they have done a thousand times before when it has caught, and all of the sudden it just doesn't catch. |
|
Irrespective of the belay device used, it strikes me that this question is more about how to help your friend get back on his feet. Has your friend discussed this with the person he dropped? I hit the ground on a climb recently and it was simply nothing my partner could've avoided. Fortunately, I came away with only a few bruises, but I made it a point to assure my partner that she'd done nothing wrong. I know it was still on her mind for a little while but I think just getting it out in the open helped her not feel too bad about. I still trust her completely and we climb whenever we can. |
|
Yeah...maybe it's always been this way, but I feel like we're in the golden age of belay device manufacturing. There's hundreds of different devices out there, made by numerous companies (Petzl, BD, Trango, etc), all touting to be the best/safest/easiest device ever. I swear - every time I go to the gym, some idiot is showing me another freaking belay device. Maybe with this much saturation (and rapid fast churnout), people simply aren't giving themselves long enough to learn how to use each device and work out the design flaws/kinks. There's nothing safer than a device you're comfortable and experienced using... |
|
coppolillo wrote:People get dropped with GriGris all the time. All the time.Well, it's certainly refreshing to see someone acknowledging today's reality for a change. kennoyce wrote:Here's one more person who won't let someone belay me with a cinch. All though the failure mode may still be user error, there is no other device out there that makes it so easy to have user error.I'd very much disagree, the grigri is equally prone to user error - in fact, all autoblocking devices by their very nature are prone to user error because 99% of people instead treat them like autolocking devices in practice. |
|
Some other factors to consider:
Putting those two together: The difficulty of making a "quick feed" with a device can be very different with different ropes. So the degree to which you have to sort of "disable" the auto-lock function of the device could vary widely for different devices with different ropes. And the "safe" method of making a "quick feed" might be different for different devices. Most people I know learned how to make a "quick feed" with a GriGri -- but I don't know if it works the same way with a Cinch. Guessing from the posters I see at indoor gyms, I guess there have been mistakes with improper "quick feed" technique using a GriGri. Or were some of those cases not "mistakes" but device problems? . . . (of course the more serious mistake is simply threading the rope the wrong way through the device in set-up -- something which the _climber_ should check before setting off -- but surely that was already ruled out in this case). Ken |
|
Healyje wrote: I'd very much disagree, the grigri is equally prone to user errorThe grigri offers way more latitude over slight user errors, and the consequences are typically not nearly as severe. It's pretty telling that most of the known Cinch accidents are NOT made by people who are complete newbies or lackadaisical about safety. |
|
Katie, I am glad you are seeking to help your friend! |
|
Katie Church wrote: My question for the forum is whether anyone else has 1) been through a similar experience; 2) knows anyone else who has; and 3) has any advice or words of counsel for my friend. Please help!There's a saying: there's two types of motorcycle riders: those how haven't gone down yet, and those who have. It doesn't apply directly to climbing, since "going down on a bike" shouldn't always be considered a "user crash", just as not every climbing mistake results in a ground fall. Sooner or later everybody makes mistakes while climbing; it's a matter of the degree of severity & consequences: 1.) trivial: momentarily not paying out rope quickly enough when climber is advancing above the belay 2.) moderate: failing to give a soft catch when appropriate 3.) critical: catching a belay but only after taking off two layers of skin... 4.) fatal: not catching a belay at all The scale can be applied to most climbing situations, i.e.: 1.) trivial: not knotting the loose end of a figure 8 tail 2.) moderate: tying and using a bowline instead of a figure 8 knot 3.) critical: tying a figure 8 improperly 4.) fatal: not tying a not at all, and weighting the rope on rappel etc... Yes all people make mistakes, but the discipline of climbing is aiming for perfection and minimizing mistakes. Because Mt. Project isn't the best place for honest and real conversations that need to happen about the outdoors & adventure (Mt. Project and climbers in groups in general tend to have too much ego invested and guys typically want to turn everything into a pissing contest). I recommend that the friend should go talk individually to older, experienced climbers, alone, ask those people if they have messed up while climbing and somebody got hurt a little. Have the person tell the older climber what happened and how they feel. The friend will have to open up to grow. The friend might be surprised by the sympathy that he gets. At least the friend will certainly be surprised when he hears about experienced people's #3 & #4 errors and how they dealt with them. |
|
reboot wrote:It's pretty telling that most of the known Cinch accidents are NOT made by people who are complete newbies or lackadaisical about safety.Not really, it's more a case of newbies stick with grigris and the cinch is more a device choice of people with some degree of experience. |
|
1) The cinch is a perfectly fine device 2) Learn how to use whatever device you choose 3) It's always user error |
|
Healyje wrote: Not really, it's more a case of newbies stick with grigris and the cinch is more a device choice of people with some degree of experience.It's not a popular device ANYWAY you try to slice the climbing experience, but we sure seem to have heard plenty accidents involving one. And then there are of those us who've used it, maybe worn one thru (not hard at all), and/or had a close call or worse, then maybe looked at its slight lead rope feeding benefit and decided it does not come close to make up for its deficiencies in wear, rope feeding under tension, and more importantly, margin of error. |
|
Hey Katie, |
|
reboot wrote: It's not a popular device ANYWAY you try to slice the climbing experience, but we sure seem to have heard plenty accidents involving one.I'd bet that on a percentage basis grigri accidents are still way, way out front by a long shot. reboot wrote:And then there are of those us who've used it, maybe worn one thru (not hard at all), and/or had a close call or worse, then maybe looked at its slight lead rope feeding benefit and decided it does not come close to make up for its deficiencies in wear, rope feeding under tension, and more importantly, margin of error.And I'd also bet device wear has played only a very minor role in cinch accident stats. Ditto design 'deficiencies', because it's not really about the device specifics. Todd Ra wrote:...but my point is this: if you're out there climbing for a significant amount of time, shit happens.Hate to be a downer, but when it comes to belaying, no one should ever drop or be dropped. The alarming frequency of people dropping each other and the 'shit happens' attitude that has developed around it have only come about since the advent of sport climbing, gyms, autoblock devices and a swollen demographic with a penchant for climbing in groups. Prior to the mid-80's, dropping a climber was a rare - like bordering on unheard of - occurrence. But it's also pretty clear it's a genie that is not going back in the bottle and it is now a built-in statistic to the demographic no different than us all driving despite auto accident stats. Bottom line it means a certain percentage of climbers (you) are unavoidably going to drop and be dropped each year and, given that frightening reality, the name of the game is how not to be part of that statistic. For me it's about inexperience, inadequate mastery and distracted behaviors - any of the three alone is problematic, any two together are an accident waiting to happen. Unfortunately about the only advice to be given online is learn the craft, log the yardage and clamp down on any and all distracted behaviors. Belaying definitely falls under the heading of "do unto others..." in a big way but, like a lot of things, it's a lot easier said than done when it isn't you on the sharp end of the rope. |
|
No question user error, belay devices are easy to blame ,sounds like the belayer doesn't have the "gumption " required for belaying let alone climbing. |