Weekend Whipper: Grigri Explosion

We are not totally sure what happened,” says Grant, who was filming the video. The two were exploring a cave on the side of a cliff near Truman Lake, Missouri.

“We didn't have an ATC”—the one dangling on the biner connecting the two daisy chains they found while exploring—“so we just used the Grigri, which I now realize was a bad idea,” says Grant.

So what happened? Grant had tied a double bowline around a “really big tree” 50 feet above. The daisy chains—one girth hitched around the rope and the other around a tree, connected by a locking biner—were “just to keep the rope close to the cave while we sat there,” says Grant, and were not weight bearing.

The anchor held, the harness was intact, and the Grigri was still attached. But Grant’s friend took a 25-foot plunge.

Except for some minor cuts, his partner was uninjured. He landed on a thick pad of moss that cushioned the fall.

“We think the GriGri slipped due to the rain,” Grant says. The rope was the right [diameter] and the anchor held. The rope was still in the Grigri at the bottom so that is why we suspect it slipped.”

vimeo.com/139661897

rockandice.com/weekend-whip…

edit ... rock and ice deleted their article and the vid because they got it wrong ...

but da intrawebz comes through again !!!

youtube.com/watch?v=4A8-jsL…

Damn, lucky he wasn't hurt worse.
It's hard to tell ...but, did he pinch his brake hand(shitty technique) thus causing him to open the lever in a pain reaction and dropping himself. Or actual gri failure?

bearbreeder wrote:We are not totally sure what happened,” says Grant, who was filming the video. The two were exploring a cave on the side of a cliff near Truman Lake, Missouri. “We didn't have an ATC”—the one dangling on the biner connecting the two daisy chains they found while exploring—“so we just used the Grigri, which I now realize was a bad idea,” says Grant. So what happened? Grant had tied a double bowline around a “really big tree” 50 feet above. The daisy chains—one girth hitched around the rope and the other around a tree, connected by a locking biner—were “just to keep the rope close to the cave while we sat there,” says Grant, and were not weight bearing. The anchor held, the harness was intact, and the Grigri was still attached. But Grant’s friend took a 25-foot plunge. Except for some minor cuts, his partner was uninjured. He landed on a thick pad of moss that cushioned the fall. “We think the GriGri slipped due to the rain,” Grant says. The rope was the right [diameter] and the anchor held. The rope was still in the Grigri at the bottom so that is why we suspect it slipped.” vimeo.com/139661897 rockandice.com/weekend-whip…

The explanation of the rope slipping makes no sense at all. Granted it's hard to tell from the video, but you can see him actively feeding rope through the grigri as he is going down, so it would appear that he was completely controlling the rate of decent with the grigri lever, not his brake hand. My guess is that he wanted to go faster, so he pulled the lever back all the way while still not having his brake hand solidly on the rope.

having rapped in the rain with a grigri before--

perhaps he finally hit a part of the rope that was actually wet?

It is quite tricky to control the rate of descent with a grigri on a wet rope...

alternatively, the whole anchor may have shifted/failed?

Weird and scary, hard to tell what happens.

Slow motion looks like he pulls the break hand up and behind the device and the whole things shoots out and he instantly plummets. Once he stars falling it looks like he lets go of the break hand (understandably) and hangs onto the lowering lever long enough to avoid it locking. Lesson learned, falls happen in a split second.

Glad to hear climber came away to enjoy another day.

That gri gri is always getting into trouble! I'm curious, of all these gri gri accidents, what is the mean time of use before the accident? Do these failures happen to new gri gri users, experienced gri gri users? Does it matter? Is it simply situational?
Haven't needed one yet. And I have no desire to start soon. These threads freak me out.

there was some discussion elsewhere about the biner not being through both holes ... as you can see it is setup correctly ...

both holes

assuming no anchor failure, according to the story ... then it must be some sort of loss of control ...

Pretty misleading title. It reads like the Grigri came apart, i.e. catastrophic mechanical failure. Glad to hear it wasn't so.

I don't understand what happens with the daisy chains as he falls. It looks like the anchor slipped, pulling them somewhat as it happened.

I wonder if the knot on the tree anchor slipped, he started to fall, panicked, and pulled the lever all the way because of it.

Oh, maybe that's just the rope stretch retracting as it starts to slip through the Grigri.

bearbreeder wrote:there was some discussion elsewhere about the biner not being through both holes ... as you can see it is setup correctly ... assuming no anchor failure, according to the story ... then it must be some sort of loss of control ...

Even if it wasn't through both holes, the R&A article states that the rope was still going through the grigri once he was on the ground, so that debunks the theory of the rope somehow coming out of the grigri.

Looks simple to me.

Watch the right hand. He seems to be "feeding" the rope into the device, up and down, up and down. Not just holding his hand tight around the rope and letting the rope slide through it. I'm guessing he is almost letting go of the rope each time the hand moves down.

At one point whilst the right had his applying little friction he pulls on the handle a bit more: he was rapping very slowly to start with as he was nervous, and then I guess tried to go a little faster.

Nice spray from the rope as it moves through the grigri at high speed.

Bill Czajkowski wrote:Pretty misleading title.

It really is a BS clickbait title. Major pet peeve.

One weird trick to make your grigri explode!

David Coley wrote:Looks simple to me. Watch the right hand. He seems to be "feeding" the rope into the device, up and down, up and down. Not just holding his hand tight around the rope and letting the rope slide through it. I'm guessing he is almost letting go of the rope each time the hand moves down. At one point whilst the right had his applying little friction he pulls on the handle a bit more: he was rapping very slowly to start with as he was nervous, and then I guess tried to go a little faster. Nice spray from the rope as it moves through the grigri at high speed.

alot of folks feed the out devices as we rap or lower, with thick fuzzy ropes you basically need to ... the difference is that with ATCs we have both hands below the device when rapping, and even a smart has a hand and a half if you will

you can see after the initial fall the climber panic yanking on the lever ... if that didnt happen the grigri may well have stopped

ive never been a fan of using the full hand on the grigri lever ... just use 2 fingers so you dont gank it open by mistake

i believe the brake hand is still on the rope after the slippage as well ...

well if anything else i guess this settles whether one can reasonably expect to hold a fall on an open grigri ...

and that one should learn proper brake hand control before transitioning to a grigri ... the hand should have been near the hip

the interesting thing is that i see folks rapping and lowering like this all the time

It looks like pretty obvious user error to me acerbated by a wet rope. The Grigri becomes pretty herky-jerky with a wet rope, so extra care is needed. A lot more control of the feed from the brake hand is needed and a much more solid holding of the brake hand and a light touch on the Grigri lever while being very consious to be ready to release it. The rope slipped through unexpectedly fast and instead of relying on the brake hand, the guy pulled down on the handle rather then letting go. It was probably an involuntary reaction, but it should have been negated by prior training and practice.

Warrior wrote:Looked like user error 100% and now video is private. Title is completely misleading and should be redacted.

thats the title rock and ice gave it in the link i posted ... they need to get click views somehow

it seems like rock and ice deleted their entire article after they realize that the grigri didnt "explode"

NOTHING is every "private" on da intrawebz once it has been publicly posted ... just like those guys and gals who had bragged about "going for it" on a climb with the lightning rolled in, had to call in "rescue services" and then made a "cool" video about it .... and tried to delete the vid

heres the video again ...

youtube.com/watch?v=4A8-jsL…

shame on you R&I for posting a "weekend whipper" article and then deleting it because you got it wrong !!!

;)

Hard to tell from the video but at the start of the fall it looks like he pulled the entire release lever down. So what caused the original jump I don't know but my guess is (and hard to say because he goes out of video right at the start of the fall) something happened maybe it slipped or something and he grabbed the lever which caused it to not be able to relock the rest of the way down.

ViperScale wrote:... So what caused the original jump I don't know but my guess is (and hard to say because he goes out of video right at the start of the fall) something happened maybe it slipped or something ...

Wet rope most likely. It was hanging off the lip of an overhang while it was raining. Guy was likely inexperienced descending a wet rope and reacted incorrectly when he felt the unexpected slip. It is pretty simple to see if you observe.

Here is another link: goo.gl/BFjFRZ (used a google link as the auto embbed didn't work properly)

Hit the gear (settings button) in youtube and you can slow it to .25X speed. You can then use the spacebar key to step through the video frame by frame.

The locking plate does appear to "explode" open, which I would think could only happen if the plate was not clipped by the carabiner. However, it does appear that the locking plate is clipped at the beginning of the video.

Looks like the rope shifted. You can see it with the daisy getting pulled up a fraction of a second before he drops. It may have been hooked on a rock or something. Once the rope unhooked there was slack in the system allowing him to drop a few feet/meters. At that very second he doesn't have a good grasp of the brake stand. He pulls the lever in panic and at that point no amount of brake will stop him as long as he has that lever pulled.

Just my opinion but it's the only thing that makes any sense.

It seems like something snapped or the anchor shifted drastically. As he starts to fall there's a significant amount of slack above. In the slow motion it looks like he is holding the brake lever and the gri gri is loose (not under tension). Almost waving around. With that much slack the gri might rotate closed even if he's holding the handle. Just an idea.

Yes but in that moment where the GriGri goes slack he fumbled to grab the brake but never lets go out the lever. In that panic situation he most likely applied more lever action not less. If he just let go of everything, it would have stopped.