Accident Report and Analysis after a 30ft trad fall including a broken wire and two ripped pieces.

The Story: 

    On July 17th my girlfriend Hannah (29) and I (30) went out for a day of cragging in an obscure climbing area, just southeast of Lake Tahoe, called Cloudburst Canyon. On my third climb of the day, I fell at the crux, ripped three pieces of protection, and ended up falling 30 feet to the ground. I have been climbing for 6 years with most of my experience on multi-pitch trad moderates. Ready to push the grades, train harder, and be okay with taking more falls on trad I jumped right in and looked for some 5.11 trad routes. I had heard of a new climbing area, Cloudburst Canyon, from a new friend, Nate S. He said the area was not in a guidebook and the only beta was on Mountain Project. Before Hannah and I left we looked on the site and saw several classic climbs in the area including a 5.11- for me to attempt. We arrived, met Nate, and headed up into the canyon. 

The approach ended up being rather treacherous with several stream crossings, lots of stinging nettles, and what seemed to be no trail and just a bunch of loose granite, ledges, and sand. After the loose and technical approach we spent the first two routes warming up, 5.9, then a 5.10-. Both routes felt solid, so I turned my eyes towards an obscure route called “Uknown 11-”. Before getting onto the route I saw that there was a 10- directly to the right that shared the same anchors, which gave me the option of setting up a top rope for the 11. I decided against this because of my new mindset, I was ready to lead harder climbs, and was willing to take a fall. Looking up at the route, the main feature was a lightning bolt crack zig-zagging up the slightly overhanging face. The first piece of protection was a bolt that I was able to reach from the ground, after that it was going to be gear placements through the crux and then 3 bolts to the top. Before putting my hands on the rock I took a deep breath.

A few moves into the climb and I had placed a horizontal .3 BD C4 in a shallow crack. Considering this route was at my limit I didn’t have a lot of time to make sure it was perfect so I moved on and kept climbing. After about 5 more feet of climbing, I placed a small offset nut. The gear was already getting harder to place at this point, the nut passed a few tugs and looked decent, so again, I moved on and kept climbing. I reached a bit of a rest and got another small offset nut in above my head placed with the same level of scrutiny as the last two pieces. I fired off into the crux and got about 2-3 ft above my last piece when I couldn’t move up safely anymore. I did not want to come off the wall dangerously, desperately reaching for holds, so I yelled “Falling!” as I let go of the wall. I felt tension in the rope and then a felt a “SNAP” and the next thing I knew I was on the ground about 15 ft. downhill from the start of the route. The only thing keeping me from continuing down the loose talus field and into a garden of stinging nettles was Nate who arrested my fall with the last and the only piece left attached to the wall, the bolt at the start of the route.

    I landed standing up, shattering my right calcaneus bone and fully fracturing the talus bone in my left foot. After I calmed down from the pain and initial shock I was able to stabilize myself enough on the loose slope to get off belay so that Nate could start assisting. We quickly realized that our efforts to get me out of this remote canyon were not realistic; the injury was too painful and the terrain too complicated. Nate went looking for assistance from some climbers we spotted in the canyon on the way up. As he was gone, with Hannah holding my right leg up, I continued slowly sliding and crawling my way down the loose rocky slope. Nate came back with three other climbers: Matthew Wasserman, Peter Murphy, and Raines Demint. As a team of four, they slowly moved me down the talus, loose rock, ledge systems, stream crossings, and stinging nettle. We developed a system where the front two held my lower body up with a stick placed under my knees, and the back two lifted me up with my arms around their shoulders. Foot by foot we lifted and rested our way back to the car, while Hannah shuttled all our gear. The full rescue effort took 3 hours. I made it to urgent care and had surgery two weeks later. Three weeks out of surgery now I am in a wheelchair, but am poised to make a full recovery and be back to climbing in 6 months. I am so grateful for Nate, who stayed super calm and organized the evacuation. Hannah for keeping me calm and shuttling the heavy gear back to the car. And Raines, Peter, and Matt for stopping their day of climbing to make an evacuation possible. 

Analysis:

I made three placements that failed on this climb. The piece I initially fell on was a #2 or #3 DMM Peenut Offset Nut (Rated to 5kn) whose wire broke leaving the head of the nut still stuck in the rock. Next down was another offset (a #1 DMM Peenut 4kn) that ripped out of the wall which was then followed by a .3 BD C4 Camelot. The first lesson for me was to schedule a routine gear safety assessment because there might have been something wrong with the wire that I was completely unaware of.  Second, as I weigh over 200lbs with my rack, I need to start nesting the gear when it gets small in order to disperse the force. Third, not to accept gear as “good enough.” The .3 Camelot was in a very shallow horizontal position and most likely rotated out of place and pulled out. Ultimately the cause of this accident was trusting inadequately placed gear. Due to the difficulty of the route and my overly optimistic belief in my placements, I rushed.

The main lesson I learned from this accident was that I needed to approach the sport of climbing with a more focused and safety-oriented attitude. Over the last six years, I had numbed that sense of caution by climbing mostly within my onsight ability, which progressively built up to 5.10+. Because I was not taking any trad falls and nothing serious was ever happening, I slowly built up a false sense of security both in the gear I was placing and my climbing abilities. I started to take on significant risk without properly acknowledging what I was actually doing. This Laissez-faire attitude was the reason I skipped many safety checks that day, which could have made this accident much worse and possibly even fatal. Considering all the following mistakes I made, I feel extremely lucky with how the accident turned out.

I skipped the opportunity to climb a much easier route and set up a top rope on the 11- in order to get gear and movement beta for a route that was at my onsight limit.

I was in a new climbing area and did not consider examining the rock quality before climbing. I found out after the fact that the granite in this area and the climbI was on specifically was known to be crumbly at the surface.

I didn’t think to simply down climb to my piece and rest on it before just taking a fall. I could have taken time to assess and possible back down.

I chose not to wear a helmet. I had convinced myself that the situation didn’t call for it: no climbers above, not a multi-pitch climb, and overall I chose comfort over safety. If I had landed in any other orientation other than standing up I most certainly would have hit my head on the rocky uneven ledge.

I chose to skip basic safety checks with my belayer who was also a new climbing partner. While nothing bad happened because of this, it is a step no one should skip.

None of us had a first aid kit, which would have been critical had my injuries been worse.

Discuss!

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You've already got this in the injuries section, please delete one of them.

Sounds like the fundamental issue was running it out, from the ground up, on small gear which is finicky as well as having lower load strengths. However, I’m a little surprised the top piece broke since it sounds like a low fall factor fall.  What kind of belay device was the belayer using and did they merely hold the rope, give a soft catch, or drop back to shorten the fall? Was there much slack?

Post on Accidents and Injuries has been removed

@bill My belayer was using an ATC. However, since I yelled "Falling" I'm sure he took in some slack and locked the system before I let go not allowing for rope slippage. I my tie-in was roughly 6 feet from my last piece, would you consider this runout? 

Probably not run out, no, but for fall factor how much rope was between your belayer and the last piece and was it running freely or was there any rope drag going on?

Kyle if you and your gear weigh more than 200 pounds then you'll exert a force of around 2kN just hanging on a piece. It's going to be higher in a fall and if the wire on the nut was kinked or damaged your safety margin on a piece rated at 5kN is going to be pretty small. I'm glad it wasn't worse and good luck with your recovery.

Emil Briggs wrote:

Kyle if you and your gear weigh more than 200 pounds then you'll exert a force of around 2kN just hanging on a piece. 

I guess my definition of 2kN (~450 static pounds) is different than yours.

Marc H wrote:

I guess my definition of 2kN (~450 static pounds) is different than yours.

F=ma. In this case a is the acceleration of gravity which is 9.8 m/s^2 and m is his mass which is more than 90kg. That gives a force of around 0.9kN but that's in one side of the rope. When hanging you'll have an equal force on the other side which doubles the force on the protection. So 1.8kN but he said he weighs more than 200 pounds so roughly 2KN. 

Marc H wrote:

I guess my definition of 2kN (~450 static pounds) is different than yours.

Basic statics - it’s twice the weight of the climber, ignoring friction.

My 2c - I’ve seen a lot of 180+ lb guys break gear in falls.  IMO - you’re too heavy to trad climb hard routes on small gear.  Between finger and gear strength - strength in the field, not in a laboratory test fixture - it doesn’t work out - my empirical observation.  Heard a story of ripping gear and almost taking out the belay too in the Black - no thanks.  50 lbs less and a bit more skill in placement and you’d have taken a routine fall - gone back up and finished.  Slightly worse case and you and your partner get ripped off the wall.

The peenuts you placed are pretty small, not surprised one broke and another ripped. Opt for bigger gear if possible. I see some people going for small gear when bigger gear will place more easily and more solidly. 

So you’re saying that a climber hanging by a rope clipped through a piece of gear (standard lead setup), is putting twice his weight in force on said piece? Am I understanding this correctly?

Do things change if you’re staticly hanging from a no-stretch sling off of a piece of gear? Is the climber putting twice his weight in force on the sling, ‘biner, piece of pro?

Yikes. Will you be using brass nuts for smaller sizes from now on for their higher breaking potential?

Marc H - Emil is correct.

But your other scenario - statically hanging directly from a sling off of a piece of gear - that is just the hanging weight/mass of the climber plus gear. 

Kyle:  Thanks for your analysis.  I think it is pretty good.  In your recovery, factor in the mental recovery.  Everyone is different.  But, for some, it may take some time for your mind to adjust which is perfectly within normal.  Real head cases like myself can take more than a year.

Some thoughts:

"Considering this route was at my limit I didn’t have a lot of time to make sure it was perfect so I moved on and kept climbing."  Honestly, this mindset is your first mistake.  Good trad climbers can still place good gear when climbing at their limit and are pretty gun-shy about redlining it above gear they don't trust or haven't properly assessed.  It only works if it's placed right, so ensuring that should always be your first priority. 

"...the nut passed a few tugs and looked decent, so again, I moved on and kept climbing. I reached a bit of a rest and got another small offset nut in above my head placed with the same level of scrutiny as the last two pieces."  Two thoughts here.  Firstly, (as has been said) the nuts you placed are super small and asking them to catch any sort of real fall is questionable even when they're  placed perfectly in good rock.  Let alone by a climber newer to pushing grades and placing gear on the fly.  Also, 'passed a few tugs' is a worthless test and doesn't actual assess the quality of a placement in any real way.  It can be encouraging for you to feel it be solid and it can help seat the nut better in the placement, but there's a *huge* margin of error between the amount of force you put on a placement by tugging on it and the amount of force you put on it when you actually fall on it.

Hope you heal up quickly and are back at it soon.

Marc H wrote:

So you’re saying that a climber hanging by a rope clipped through a piece of gear (standard lead setup), is putting twice his weight in force on said piece? Am I understanding this correctly?

Do things change if you’re staticly hanging from a no-stretch sling off of a piece of gear? Is the climber putting twice his weight in force on the sling, ‘biner, piece of pro?

Right. The force is doubled in the first scenario which is what applied with Kyles fall.

I also recall a set of tests that someone did with small wires where they found that even minor kinking or damage caused a significant reduction in breaking strength. That's something we all need to be aware of but doubly so for heavyweights.

Emil Briggs wrote:

Right. The force is doubled in the first scenario which is what applied with Kyles fall.

Ok, but assume there is no fall involved—just a climber  hanging on a piece of gear with a rope passed through a ‘biner. For simplicity’s sake, let’s also assume the rope is a zero-stretch static line. Is the gear still holding twice the climber’s body weight in force?

Marc H wrote:

Ok, but assume there is no fall involved—just a climber  hanging on a piece of gear with a rope passed through a ‘biner. For simplicity’s sake, let’s also assume the rope is a zero-stretch static line. Is the gear still holding twice the climber’s body weight in force?

Yes

Marc H wrote:

Ok, but assume there is no fall involved—just a climber  hanging on a piece of gear with a rope passed through a ‘biner. For simplicity’s sake, let’s also assume the rope is a zero-stretch static line. Is the gear still holding twice the climber’s body weight in force?

If no friction, then it would be 2x. It depends on how much friction in the system. I think you could expect around 1.75x if it's just 1 piece, less if the rope is running through more gear/around rock edges, etc.

[edit] depends on the friction between the top carabiner and your rope

Marc H wrote:

Ok, but assume there is no fall involved—just a climber  hanging on a piece of gear with a rope passed through a ‘biner. For simplicity’s sake, let’s also assume the rope is a zero-stretch static line. Is the gear still holding twice the climber’s body weight in force?

Yes, if you ignore the friction of rope over karabiner. The suspended climber is essentially applying a 2:1 mechanical advantage to the gear on which s/he is hanging. This is the reason why, if forced to bail off a really dodgy placement, it might be better to rappel rather than lower; rapping just applies your bodyweight to the piece, lowering doubles it.

ScoJo wrote:

If no friction, then it would be 2x. It depends on how much friction in the system. I think you could expect around 1.75x if it's just 1 piece, less if the rope is running through more gear/around rock edges, etc.

One minor note: Since we're talking about force at the top piece, only the friction at that piece is relevant. Other gear, rock edges, etc would lower the force on the belayer, but not on the top piece.