Near Death

While up at Avalon today me and my partner witnessed a "bro" climbing Strange Science who, while at the anchors, called off belay then took forever to clean the anchors and proceeded to lean back and weight the rope without calling to be put back on. Luckily his belayer still had the rope in his hands even though he wasnt on belay and after falling about 10ft was saved by his partners hands. The guy gets down jokes a bit about the ordeal and goes right back to goofing off. All the while me and my partner are stunned at what we could have witnessed. Just reiterates for me how very important communication is while climbing and how simple mistakes can be the line between life and death.

Thank you Andrew for that little gem of info although I fail to see how this was a near death experience. Sorry that you had to witness this horrible and egregious violation of the rules of "safe" climbing!

On a completely unrelated note... Today I saw someone smoking a cig while going through a mcdonalds drive up window with their gas guzzling hummer which was still plastered with McCain/ Palin stickers. I was reminded how much smarter, better, and more awesomer than everyone else I was, so I came right home and posted it on the internet so that others could share of my cup of overflowing wisdom.

This public service announcement has been brought to you by a couple of self righteous douche nozzles. Thank you.

Yarp wrote:Thank you Andrew for that little gem of info although I fail to see how this was a near death experience. Sorry that you had to witness this horrible and egregious violation of the rules of "safe" climbing!

You fail to see how someone leaning back on the anchors when off belay, and being saved by his partner just coincidentally having the rope in his/her hands and being able to hold on is not a near death experience? Would you at least concede it was a near catastrophic injury experience?

I'm constantly amazed, that as climbing keeps growing, there aren't more fatalities.
Given the landing at the base of that route I'm sure his decking would've been spectacular, not in a good way.

Yikes. And Mark Flood wasn't even there to catch the rope!

Yarp wrote:Thank you Andrew for that little gem of info although I fail to see how this was a near death experience. Sorry that you had to witness this horrible and egregious violation of the rules of "safe" climbing! On a completely unrelated note... Today I saw someone smoking a cig while going through a mcdonalds drive up window with their gas guzzling hummer which was still plastered with McCain/ Palin stickers. I was reminded how much smarter, better, and more awesomer than everyone else I was, so I came right home and posted it on the internet so that others could share of my cup of overflowing wisdom. This public service announcement has been brought to you by a couple of self righteous douche nozzles. Thank you.

It seems like I am noticing more and more "jerk" postings here on MP, which is too bad. I almost wish there was a delay, like if you post, you get an email a day later asking if you really want to post that before it goes up, to give people a chance to ponder if it is something useful or fun, or just another snide comment coming out of a neurosis, that pukes up negativity all over everybody. I wish some people would be a little more aware while posting and we could keep MP the best site around.

Maybe a small comfort, I'm close to developing the patent on fixing stupid. The royalties collected from Boulder alone should put us in competition with Apple and Ben & Jerry's combined.

I've noticed the jerk posts come pretty often from a select few though. It's not everyone, and luckily I don't think it's spreading.

One way to fix "jerk" postings is to prohibit alias names when opening accounts on here... wouldn't fix all of it, but probably 2/3- easier to behave like a moron when you have anonymity. Of course, some of the "names" people would then make up would be entertaining in and of itself... oh, wait, that's what we have now... never mind.

Peter Stokes wrote:One way to fix "jerk" postings is to prohibit alias names when opening accounts on here... wouldn't fix all of it, but probably 2/3- easier to behave like a moron when you have anonymity. Of course, some of the "names" people would then make up would be entertaining in and of itself... oh, wait, that's what we have now... never mind.

Do you work for Google Plus? :P

A quick English lesson for the op. That should be I and my partner, or better yet, my partner and I--not me and my partner.

We could do with a few less bros in this world anyways.

i've been seeing new climbers do this more and more lately. pretty horrifying.

This seems to be the accident scenario most commonly coming up. I think a few of the rags accident reports were about this mistake, as well as the aac directors accident.

Peter Stokes wrote:One way to fix "jerk" postings is to prohibit alias names when opening accounts on here... wouldn't fix all of it, but probably 2/3- easier to behave like a moron when you have anonymity. Of course, some of the "names" people would then make up would be entertaining in and of itself... oh, wait, that's what we have now... never mind.

Great idea! I'll assume a secret identity...maybe like "Andy Lickter" or "Dick Guzinya"

Maybe they didn't have a guidebook, thus didn't know that climbing is inherently dangerous.

It's kind of like driving bad. We all do it, and sometimes don't even think too deeply after the fact that we could have died. However, as I get older, I really take to heart the dumb things I do while driving, and commit to trying not to do them again and to being more aware next time.

There was an interesting article about how when we see other people making mistakes, we attribute it to some character flaw... they are just "dumb people" (internalizing the fault). But when we make a mistake ourselves, we chock it up to "circumstances" (externalizing the fault).

I've done a lot of stupid things while climbing, as I'll bet every climber has. However, I try to do less stupid things as I get older. As long as those "bros" learn from the mistake, then it is good. Maybe it seemed liked they weren't taking it serious, but surely they value their life. Thankfully, lady karma was on their side this time. I hope they are more careful next time, using their intelligence rather than one of their nine lives.

It seems like it is a result of bad mentoring from people taking new climbers out. They are not stressing the seriousness needed in paying attention to safety issues so they can have long climbing careers and not get killed or smashed all up. There is a big difference being aware and pushing the edge, to just being oblivious and doing stupid dangerous things.

I wonder if it is partially a result of more young climbers taking their friends out. I by no means mean to be down on kids, there are plenty who have their shit together, but just by their natural makeup and lack of experience, risk taking and avoiding anything that even remotely smacks of rules hasn't been tempered. So they dive right in to climbing hard and having fun, while forgetting to form basic habitual safety ruetines. When you are taking somebody new out, you have to stress this stuff over and over, even if it makes you feel pedantic.

Ed Wright wrote:A quick English lesson for the op. That should be I and my partner, or better yet, my partner and I--not me and my partner.

Thanks for those pointers on how I constructed my sentence on an internet forum. I'm glad my internet forum 101 professor hasn't graded it yet so I can go back and change it!

Andrew Shoemaker wrote: Thanks for those pointers on how I constructed my sentence on an internet forum. I'm glad my internet forum 101 professor hasn't graded it yet so I can go back and change it!

Just learn that English lesson and not do that ever again. Ever.

But I can write sentence fragments because I am mimicking a conversational style.

Josh Kornish wrote: You truly are the most worthless MP contributor

I wouldn't say his posts are very constructive, but they're certainly not worthless. Most of his posts make me laugh; that's worth something!

--Marc

kinda like a Frosty from Wendy's; smooth, cold, yet full of shit