Ever dropped the rope?

The 'Knocking on Death's Door' thread got me thinking...

It hasn't happened to me, but there was one time I was cleaning an anchor and caught the last 18" of rope before it zipped through the anchor. I always do a quick backup knot now, but I wonder if anyone here has ever stranded themselves at an anchor.

Bonus points if it was at a popular sport crag and you were in humiliatingly close proximity to other climbers.

Also: what is the appropriate amount of time to leave a friend who has dropped the rope from a 1-pitch sport route? It goes without saying that one must not be too hasty-- lunch should be served, beers consumed. How do I know when I've gone too long?

There has been at least a couple of close calls in my world as well, but never came super super close to dropping the rope either. However I am super super curious to here the stories of others that have. So I can only hope someone shares, be it serious or comical.

Peter Franzen wrote:Also: what is the appropriate amount of time to leave a friend who has dropped the rope from a 1-pitch sport route? It goes without saying that one must not be too hasty-- lunch should be served, beers consumed. How do I know when I've gone too long?

Speaking of a beer run; we did string up some guy to give him a little humility, does that count?

It was a good bbq after all, till the sheriff showed up; then it was a party.

Back in 1979 I climber Baxter's Pinnacle in The Tetons (for the 2nd time) with my pal Dave Halls.
After leading and topping out on the pinnacle I had to pee so bad that I haphazardly untied from the rope and tied it off to a little pine tree so that I could relieve myself.
While I was answering nature's call I watched my rope disconnect with the tree and drop over the edge. Boy, did I ever feel like a moron.
Dave was not up to leading the pitch and he was certainly not up to soloing it, so I knew I was hosed.
Thirty years ago Baxter's Pinnacle was not climbed as often as it is today and the odds of another party on the route the same day as us was highly unlikely.
Fortunately, I noticed that there was a rope being pulled through the rap anchors on the north side of the formation by a party who must have summited just before my arrival.
I ran over to their rope and grabbed it just as the end of their cord slipped through the anchor.
I yelled down and explained my predicament and asked if they would mind waiting for me to use their rope to bring up my buddy (as if I would've taken no for an answer).
Luck was on my side that day!

Never dropped the rope, but ive got a story.

i was teaching my friend some things about climbing, and on the last climb of the day, i chose to do this 5.8 with a super exposed anchor. i showed him probably 3 times that day how to clean an anchor, but as soon as he got up there he started sketching and completely forgot everything. he was dasied with a QD backup, so he was safe. i was taking my shoes off when i hear a loud f-bomb and i see the rope coming down through the draws. me and my other friend looked at eachother, then at our friend at the anchor. once we realized he was safe, we started laughing our asses off. took us a good 5 minutes to regain enough composure to reclimb the route. this was not aided in any way by our friend who was freaking out the whole time. needless to say, when we got back into town, we had a couple beers and laughed it off, on his dime of course!

whenever i clean an anchor, i make sure the rope is tied in with a figure 8 somewhere on my harness, whether its on a quickdraw or another biner. better to be safe than sorry.

I did at age 16. Three of us had climbed the finger crack "Lean Years" on the Apron. I was with two older and experienced climbers, John Harlin and "Zappa"Dave Austin. Anyhow I was the last one up, I was at the anchors clipped into them with webbing. As I started feeding the rope through the rings I somehow let go of it....so there I was 75 feet off the deck clipped into a semi hanging belay with no way down. John and Dave toyed with me a little, acting like they were going to leave me there to teach me a lesson. After a minute or two of scaring the punk, John tied in and led the pitch a second time and down we came. Lesson learned.

Yeah, 2001, me, six months into my climbing career. a buddy and I climbed up a local sandstone tower in WI, called Shiprock. Rarely was anyone else there, horribly chossy rock, probably wouldn't have held a lead fall, but someone drilled on rpa anchors at the very top. We set up the rappel anchors, extended with webbing, ran the rope through a locking carabiner, made sure it was at the center point mark that my friend had on his rope, and tossed it off the side. We couldn't lower the ropen, due to trees and outcroppings. My buddy watches it drop, then looks at me, looks down, and looks at me again. "The rope fell" were his only words. We then ended up rapping off one bolt, 20 feet of webbing and 100 feet of old 11 mm rope that my friend retired but used as a makeshift haul line. Since then, we've either lowered the rope for rappels, or tied an end to the person not throwing the rope. Lesson learned!

Dave

Yeah, I did it once. The real ironic part is that on the climb just before that, I was teaching a fairly new climber that fine art of safely cleaning an anchor. It was a bit embarrassing to call down to my other friend to have him lead the climb to rescue me, stranded, just hanging out. Surely the other climbers at the crag were laughing at the gumby who dropped his rope.

I learned a valuable lesson on that one. :) Now I clove hitch the rope to something that is attached to either me or the anchor before unthreading it from the anchor; every time.

Bonus points for me!

never dropped one... but i threw one off a climb once!

I use the "always tied in method" where I tie an eight on a bight and attached it to my belay loop before I thread the rope. Too big of a risk dropping the rope, especially if there isn't a walk off!

Never dropped a rope but that may be because I usually tie a clove hitch around my arm while I am threading the rope through the anchors. Any one else use this technique?

Never dropped one. I did get stuck on a climb when then rope got stuck and the wind blew one end of the rope to the side. Wasn't about to climb up a single stuck strand and hope it holdes. Luckily we were at Garden of the Gods, so we just kinda stood at the belay with loads of tourists gawking at us till some one realized we were stuck and told another group of climbers.
I usually just make a clove hitch and clip it to an extra draw on my harness to avoid dropping it.

I was a witness to such an occurrence in Garden of the Gods on Montezuma Tower - North Ridge route.

There were two guys doing the route and two guys waiting for them to finish. it looked to me that they had set up a single rope rapell for the first climber and were planning to double rope it for the last guy. It was hard to see exactly what he was doing, He let the first line hang and started feeding the second rope which I had assumed he had fed through the anchor/piton what have you. He started feeding the second line down and right about the time you would have through it was all the way down, both lines, "KNOTTED" together, slid down.

Everyone was super quiet. 3 seconds had to have passed when we heard "I think I fucked up".

He was very lucky however, since the two guys at the base were just getting up to leave. A TStorm was brewing and they decided to take off, just as the rope started to fall. They worked out the manner of payment, beer I think, and started up the route..

Garden of the Gods. Land of the noobs showing off their raw talent for the world to see.

Hey now, if it weren't for all those noobs then I'd never have anything interesting to talk about with climber's in Colorado Springs. Noobs ain't just in our town anyways.

I dropped the rope off of a 5.7 spire in the Needles in SD. I was young and stupid and not paying much attention, and to make matters worse I was teaching my dad to climb that day. There was no one else around since it was foggy and cold, so he had to get to a pay phone and call my brother to come rescue me. I was frozen when they finally got me down from there.

The incident got written up in John Long's Close Calls book. He tells the story much better than I ever could, and reading that made the whole humiliating fiasco worthwhile.