"Climber Cut The Rope To Save Them After Making A Big Mistake"

I have a challenge understanding the following situation.
Specifically, what is the meaning of the his tail end of the rope?
I have a perception that Bob was tied in the middle of their rope.

https://www.climbing.com/news/accident-cut-climbing-rope-shawangunks/:
The followers got off to a good start. They cleared the initial roof and headed up the 100-degree wall, with the climber tied highest on the rope cleaning the gear. Then, the bad news: the lower climber fell, pulling the higher climber off the wall. This was witnessed by David Snyder, who was also on High Exposure and who supplied the details for this report and the diagram that shows the situation after the fall. The two climbers, says Snyder, both dangled “in free space 10 feet from the wall with no way to get back on.”

Bob, now holding two climbers in midair—an undesirable situation—was unable to help the climbers back onto the rock, and couldn’t lower them to the ground because the rope was too short. What to do?

In a moment of inspiration or perhaps desperation, Bob tossed his tail end of the rope over the side where it was latched by the suspended climbers.

“Tie in to the rope,” he yelled, or something like that, to the lower climber, who followed orders.

What happened next defies imagination unless you’ve just read Joe Simpson’s harrowing Touching The Void, and happen to have a knife somewhere in your team kit.

“Cut the rope,” the guide yelled to the higher climber.

Amazingly, the top, higher climber had a knife and, more amazingly, was willing to use it. He slashed the rope.

The lower climber “dropped another 10 feet,” says Snyder, “screaming and hollering, swinging in the breeze, 15 feet away from the wall.”

He had the two followers both at the end of his rope, spaced apart some. So after belaying them up a bit and taking up all the slack he was able to untie himself and throw down his end to the girl at the bottom.

Having climbed high e at least 20 times myself I'm thoroughly impressed that he was able to communicate and get some rope down to them from the top of high e while simultaneously being a god awful guide/leader. Visual to the followers is very difficult from the top and audio is also usually terrible due to the way the top of the cliff is sticking out and also rounded off with the belay opportunities off to the side a bunch.

What a clusterfuck. A mohonk ranger or fellow climber is never more than a few minutes away, this cut the rope thing is completely insane.

Silly scenario and poorly written. They were end roping, with two followers tied in to the end of one rope, The higher presumably on a cow tail (like you might do short roping/short pitching 4th class terrain or on glaciers). 

The leader lowered down the extra rope he had at the top of the pitch presumably by untying and lowering the end he’d been leading on to the lower follower. The upper follower then cut the rope running between them and the lower follower.

JFC of course there's going to be some Vertical Limit epic on High E... 

Peter Thomas wrote:

Silly scenario and poorly written. They were end roping, with two followers tied in to the end of one rope, The higher presumably on a cow tail (like you might do short roping/short pitching 4th class terrain or on glaciers). 

The leader lowered down the extra rope he had at the top of the pitch presumably by untying and lowering the end he’d been leading on to the lower follower. The upper follower then cut the rope running between them and the lower follower.

Ok, so how did that help? Instead of having two climbers dangling from the same end of the rope, there are now two climbers dangling from separate ends of the rope. What am I missing...seems like they’d still be in the same predicament, two climbers hanging in space?

csproul wrote:

Ok, so how did that help? Instead of having two climbers dangling from the same end of the rope, there are now two climbers dangling from separate ends of the rope. What am I missing...seems like they’d still be in the same predicament, two climbers hanging in space?

Ha! You’re not wrong. From the article seemed the higher person was then able to swing themself back to the rock, and couldn’t with the person hanging below them. The lower person was pulled in by another party. In reality, they were in little better shape than before. If the leader were competent it may have put them in a better position to haul, but if they were more competent they’d have never been in that scenario in the first place. The whole thing is crazy, and shouldn’t have happened. 

csproul wrote:

Ok, so how did that help? Instead of having two climbers dangling from the same end of the rope, there are now two climbers dangling from separate ends of the rope. What am I missing...seems like they’d still be in the same predicament, two climbers hanging in space?

Allowing them each the independence from the other's weight may allow them to get back on the wall and continue up?

Just a guess.
JCS

csproul wrote:

Ok, so how did that help? Instead of having two climbers dangling from the same end of the rope, there are now two climbers dangling from separate ends of the rope. What am I missing...seems like they’d still be in the same predicament, two climbers hanging in space?

The article says that the top climber, free from the weight of the other, was able to get back on the rock.

This was written up on rc.com and gunks.com at the time it happened in 2008. A lot of people who were there chimed in. The account on climbing.com does not match what I remember was posted at the time.

Here's your friendly neighborhood reminder that we should all know how to prusik up the rope when we're hanging in free space. Give your newbie friends a gentle nudge to learn some self rescue skills because we all know we don't want to have to haul them. In this case the lowest climber could have ascended to the higher climber and then 'passed the knot at the higher climber's belay loop.' As she continues up, the now lower climber can follow her up by ascending the same rope.

Didn't this happen in a movie where someone cut the rope to save his two kids?

wivanoff wrote:

This was written up on rc.com and gunks.com at the time it happened in 2008. A lot of people who were there chimed in. The account on climbing.com does not match what I remember was posted at the time.

Probably this was covered somewhere in all that chiming, but both followers had enough rope to the level of the GT ledge (because they started there, it's about 30 feet below the crux), at which point (if they didn't just lower onto the ledge) they could have likely gotten back on, or another climber could have snagged the rope and pulled them in. Anyone know if this was this one of those "couldn't lower the follower because they were using ATC guide mode" situations? (although flipping a loaded ATC Guide with the weight of 2 climbers on it would be a real challenge, I guess) 

Optimistic wrote:

Probably this was covered somewhere in all that chiming, but both followers had enough rope to the level of the GT ledge (because they started there, it's about 30 feet below the crux), at which point (if they didn't just lower onto the ledge) they could have likely gotten back on, or another climber could have snagged the rope and pulled them in. Anyone know if this was this one of those "couldn't lower the follower because they were using ATC guide mode" situations? (although flipping a loaded ATC Guide with the weight of 2 climbers on it would be a real challenge, I guess) 

I'm not positive that guide mode had yet become the "default" in 2008. I don't remember that being mentioned at all in the accounts I read.

Going from memory: The leader had gone up above the belay ledge into the trees and was completely out of communication with the followers. Contrary to the climbing.com article, it was a separate party that "rescued" the follower by tossing a bight of rope, having her cut her rope and hauling her in. I don't think the leader up above had much to do with lowering or dropping a bight of rope.

The climbing.com article did not mention when this happened. It couldn't possibly be two separate, but similar, incidents on the same route???

possible that it could have been yet another epic Hige E  cluster ;)    Anyone who tries to bring two beginners up  a steep climb on the same rope at the same time is not right in the head...  crazy stuff. reminds me of the time we saw a dad @ Table rock SC multi pitch climbing with his two young sons on a day that threatened thunderboomers. His method was to bring one kid up and then untie the rope and try to throw it back down to the other kid he had left tied to the side of the cliff with no rope 200 ft off the deck,  have that kid catch the rope and tie in.. A lot of yelling was going on...  I tried explaining to him that this was dangerous and a better method might be to keep his pitches under 30m and have one kid tied to the middle of the rope on a bight climbing one at a time.  He had no open mind for suggestions and thought he had everything under control...   Its been so long since I have climbed high E that i can't remember if that method would have worked on high E? 

wivanoff wrote:

I'm not positive that guide mode had yet become the "default" in 2008. I don't remember that being mentioned at all in the accounts I read.

Going from memory: The leader had gone up above the belay ledge into the trees and was completely out of communication with the followers. Contrary to the climbing.com article, it was a separate party that "rescued" the follower by tossing a bight of rope, having her cut her rope and hauling her in. I don't think the leader up above had much to do with lowering or dropping a bight of rope.

The climbing.com article did not mention when this happened. It couldn't possibly be two separate, but similar, incidents on the same route???

Sounds like the article is pretty light on facts.

wivanoff wrote: The climbing.com article did not mention when this happened. It couldn't possibly be two separate, but similar, incidents on the same route???

The article is in their News section and is dated September 12, 2022, leading me to infer it happened recently and is similar to the incident you recall reading about years back.

Robert S wrote:

The article is in their News section and is dated September 12, 2022, leading me to infer it happened recently and is similar to the incident you recall reading about years back.

That was my first thought, too, because I am also old enough to remember that highly-talked-about story from 2008, and the details weren't quite matching. But the consensus seems to be that this is a poorly-written recap of the old story, NOT something that happened again.

Wivanoff summarized the old story well, that matches my recollection of it, too

Lena chita wrote:

That was my first thought, too, because I am also old enough to remember that highly-talked-about story from 2008, and the details weren't quite matching. But the consensus seems to be that this is a poorly-written recap of the old story, NOT something that happened again.

Never let facts get in the way of a good story.

Robert S wrote:

The article is in their News section and is dated September 12, 2022, leading me to infer it happened recently and is similar to the incident you recall reading about years back.

I think if it happened recently it would have been all over the "Gunks Climber" and "Gunks Climbing Partners" FB pages. And it would have been talked about among the local guides. People who climb at the Gunks would not be hearing about it first from Duane at climbing.com

wivanoff wrote:

I think if it happened recently it would have been all over the "Gunks Climber" and Gunks Climbing Partners" FB pages. And it would have been talked about among the local guides. People who climb at the Gunks would not be hearing about it first from Duane at climbing.com

That makes a lot of sense. It just seems strange that they would call this News and date it recently if it happened many years ago.