2 Climbers Dead after Fall from El Cap

So I am still confused as to what exactly made them fall. No gear? Rope break? Harness break?

mpech wrote:

Dude, these guys have climbed el cap, in a day, over 100 times. Thats 3000 pitches worth of experience on el cap alone. You don't think these guys have thought about all those questions before? Is having shit happen once every 3000 pitches the sign of a bad system or a good system? 

When the system means you die it's a bad one

I've climbed the Salathe and Freeblast twice. I'm not in the same league as Jason and Tim or even remotely close. The two 5.7 pitches that Jason and Tim fell from are very easy and mostly 4th class terrain with a few 5th class moves. There is plenty of good pro available on the pitch. Given the style that they climbed the 5.9 pitch below the half dollar pitch I imagine they may have had a piece or two of gear in. Something terrible happened to two very strong and inspiring climbers. RIP

djh860 wrote:

When the system means you die it's a bad one

Like living one's life, eh.

Has there been any information from the third person in the party, Kevin Prince?  Just wondering if I missed something in the news.

Never mind.  Just found this:  "Because Prince was not attached to the same system, he survived. He was in an alcove of rock when Klein and Wells fell and couldn’t see what happened in the moment."

Source: ​Best friends and master climbers fall to their deaths while scaling Yosemite’s El Capitan​​​

Bill Lawry wrote: Has there been any information from the third person in the party, Kevin Prince?  Just wondering if I missed something in the news.

Never mind.  Just found this:  "Because Prince was not attached to the same system, he survived. He was in an alcove of rock when Klein and Wells fell and couldn’t see what happened in the moment."

Source: Best friends and master climbers fall to their deaths while scaling Yosemite’s El Capitan

https://www.climbing.com/news/eye-witnesses-recount-tragic-accident-on-el-caps-freeblast/

Yes - I had read that one ... surprising at the detail given so soon. But then it is a world class kind of place.

Bob Westman wrote: So I am still confused as to what exactly made them fall. No gear? Rope break? Harness break?

I think you are asking why they weren't arrested by their safety gear after they fell, right? Not how someone might fall while climbing on vertical rocks?

It sounds like they had no gear in while they crossed an "easy" section. One of them fell. The other got pulled off. 

This seems like it will help - you need to realize the level of control and competence that can be built up over years of hard climbing.
On very familiar terrain  that, sadly, very often leads to complacency.\, which in turn can lead to tragedy.
Try to grasp that these guys  could & did run up 11s & 12s while practicing  placing very little protection,& then, only at the hard bits.

There was an early eye witness account of a falling bag? was it a shadow? I think it’s  likely the witness saw Tim’s pack falling.
 Was this pack heavy? more than usual?

Maybe something went wrong while climbing with this pack in the 5.7 terrain*?

(*In the 1st draft  had used a grade harder, (5.5ish & 5.8ish,) - Think, hot weather  climbing in "approach shoes" A THIS IS REGULAR/ COMMON PRACTICE)

Tim was in "approach shoes", it seems more likely that he slipped,  than it does that  Jason would have  fallen on the 5.4 terrain* above.

Tim may have fallen back to the ledge where the anchor was and lost the pack, pulling Jason off,

 or messed up a move & in reversing that, was out of pace. A pace, that at that point, is being climb at near top speed. . . .

Was  the teams pack extra heavy ? lf so, maybe TK made an attempt to transition the pack off his back then lost control of it? or miss clipped it?

I can think of many  scenarios as to what & how things happened, but for sure they happend in an instant
We will never know for sure what really caused this tragedy

 - Gravity Sucks, constantly-

 We’ll never know.

edit:
true  there will be a report, but the questions & some of the opinions voiced here, now are worth responding to, here & now.

the tide of the type of people who post has become so diluted by gym inspired -Only  pre-determined out come experiences- interest me-  types, whos lack of experience combined with mediocre imagination and no natural lust for the unknown, that it makes it seem a healyjo lift to try to get the message across that; Any way you get after it- It is all good! Climbing any way you want  is what the saying -freedom of the hills used to represent- maybe not so much anymore?

their decision to simul with no gear is what caused this tragedy.
why is that even up for debate?  why would you think there is any 'mystery' as to why they died?

just because they won the lottery 100 times before does not change the fact that they were still playing the lottery with that method.

rock can break or shift no matter how 'easy' the terrain is.
accidents do not care about route difficulty ratings either.

J Squared wrote:their decision to simul with no gear is what caused this tragedy.
why is that even up for debate?  why would you think there is any 'mystery' as to why they died?

just because they won the lottery 100 times before does not change the fact that they were still playing the lottery with that method.

rock can break or shift no matter how 'easy' the terrain is.
accidents do not care about route difficulty ratings either.

Good that Jsquared gets the no0b view, speaking so that those who dont get it, so  that they can be- better informed-, once you reach a certain stage of expertise, are climbing at very high standards, especially, when repeating well traveled routes on PERFECT VALLEY GRANITE -PVG-, The risks seem to be in the back ground, The Lottery metaphor doesn't work, for me, , , except that they were both lucky to have been born white in america , when there was no compulsory service(draft)in the land  and to have climbed at the highest standards in the 21st century.,  inmho, they lost. the game of Yo-Yo that we all play for not adhereing to the wall till gravity loosend its sucking hold, RIP Strong Fast Monkeys, We are all poorer for this loss

That we do not know more of the cause means  the gains to the community are shrouded in tragedy ,  

Bob Westman wrote: So I am still confused as to what exactly made them fall. No gear? Rope break? Harness break?

/

v?

^?
anyways...
J Squared is correct, this was a result of poor decision making that was clearly a result of complacency. The only thing to be learned here is to always anticipate a fall regardless of the terrain you're on.

Stunning amount of insensitivity and speculation going on here. Suggest some of you reel it in. Is it asking too much to wait for the YOSAR analysis?

Allen Sanderson wrote:

...

Now there is one aspect that could be discussed. It is my understanding that the second rope was clipped or tied into a gear loop that was not full strength. When the first person fell they pulled the second person off which in turn loaded the second rope. The gear loop not being full strength broke. As such one could ask the following what if question? What if the second rope was tied into the harness so that the connection was full strength? If that connection had held, would it have caught the fall and possibly prevented death and/or injury? Perhaps.

As such, the only take-a-way I see is that a "best" practice with a team is to always use full strength connections throughout the system.

Not necessarily.  You/we don't know for sure that the 3rd person's anchor would have held this kind of event.  For all you/we know a full strength connection with the 2nd could have resulted in 3 deaths.

Freedom.

Freedom is a big part of what I love about climbing. I can weigh the risks with my partner, balanced against our desires - and choose.

I would not want  it otherwise, no matter how it might grate against some recent postings here. 

Frankly I don't think the final analysis will yield any new or stunning insights of an unknown failure mode. It all seems pretty straight-forward. It really seems like people just want to know the details of what happened. Things like:

• what caused the initial fall - slip, hold breaking, hit by object, etc.
• was there any intermediary pro
  • if there was, why did it pull
• was there a third object some people report seeing
  • if so, what was it

It's entirely possible and likely that some of those questions will remain unanswered.
I agree with enough speculation - let's see what YOSAR and the NPS say.

Bill Lawry wrote: Freedom.

Freedom is a big part of what I love about climbing. I can weigh the risks with my partner, balanced against our desires - and choose.

I would not want  it otherwise, no matter how it might grate against some recent postings here. 

Climbing fast, roped in, with no gear on easy ground is risky and a calculated decision they chose. Unfortunately It went wrong in the biggest way. But that was up to them. And as stated above, climbing for record time uses this tactic. It’s a sad outcome. 

mpech wrote:

Dude, these guys have climbed el cap, in a day, over 100 times. Thats 3000 pitches worth of experience on el cap alone. You don't think these guys have thought about all those questions before? Is having shit happen once every 3000 pitches the sign of a bad system or a good system? 

Bad

Matt Jones wrote:

Bad

The point of my post was to get people thinking about the numerators and denominators in this story, because they matter a lot in terms of calling these climbers "safe" or "unsafe". 

 3000 pitches on El cap is a lot of climbing. My guess, given the age and fanaticism of these climbers, is that they've probably done 20,000-100,000 total pitches in their lives. In my eyes, this adds up to a pretty low accident rate, an accident rate i'd be happy having in my career. My guess is that there are very very few people on this forum that have a statistically significantly lower accident rate than these guys.

as i've said before: there is no such thing as "safe" in climbing. there is only ever "safe enough for me in this particular application". all else is people arguing personal thresholds of safety, and every threshold can be overcome by the tragedy of mistakes and rare or unrealized risks