Is it just me or is this a scary sight... beginners inverted rapping...
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at least they are wearing helmets and are being backed up from below (kinda)...my buddy did this with no backup and flipped head-first, no injury luckily

they both look like they don't have left arms, what are they doing with the other arm?

It would only bother me if they were rapping down where I want to climb. They look pretty safe to me with helmets and fireman's belays. I've seen climbers do much, much worse.

The purpose is so you can shoot people on the way down. It is kind of stupid otherwise.

Correct, harnesses are not meant to be loaded in this manner and some have haul loops which are not meant for load. I would hope this was clarified to the beginners, otherwise, yes death sentence.

How do you tell a beginner rappeller from an expert...?

one way is when they say, this is my first time rappelling or climbing... ever...

I had my first encounter with "Sport Rappellers" about 2 months ago. They were all using some variation of a swiss seat tied with 2" webbing and rappeling like this at a local TR crag. The tall point of the cliff is 110 feet. The "guide" among them was wearing what I would takes a fork-lift full body harness, and would make it down that 110 feet in about 5 seconds. He's there trying to teach these 18 year olds to "do it right" by jumping out from the rock in HUGE bounds, throwing the brake end of the rope up & out, basically in free-fall between bounds. No firemans belay.

The climb they were occupying has a bolted anchor, but he didn't trust that, so he had it primarily anchored on a 2' diameter tree 20 or so feet back, backed up on the bolts, and also backed up on the next anchor over (so 4 bolts), Whole anchor built with something that resebled old "gold line"

To top it off, he thought we were insane for using cordolette to extend my anchor over the edge. Spoke up to me about it and said he didn't think i should trust just two bolts or use cord so small (8mm)

I saw something similar at the New this past April. These guys were just running laps rappelling as quickly as possible off a 40ish ft overhang meanwhile chain smoking reds. Was pretty rad.......

Regardless of their proficiency at rappelling, sport rappellers deserved to be mocked.

As long as I don't have to carry it out or give it CPR or hold part of it together, it doesn't bother me.

The sketchy soloists I could do without, and the blabbermouths.

no.

dude... you're gonna offend some fat redneck.

Looks Awesome

More like rappellers at a climbing area in general.

Bound to have something stupid happen when mixing those user groups, one going up and going down.

can't help but laugh at the video.

Wow...that video is classic. Physics wins again.

A) it's abseiling if you're an Aussie,B) if done correctly it's no big deal and C) if you're gonna be a climber you're gonna see some weird sh!t, get over your xenophobic self.