Trad fall at Indian Creek Crag RRG 4-27

Anyone have any info on the climber who fell at Indian Creek Crag in the north gorge at the Red River gorge? It was around 2pm (4-27) we were coming down from Pebble Beach and heard the sirens and trucks speeding through. Talked to some mountain bikers and they said that a climber took a 40ft fall, zippered, and decked. Truly hope for the best

My brother was on belay and said the climber was pretty lucky to be alive. In short, some cams ripped, a carabiner snapped clean in half, and the rope unclipped from the bottom piece that would have kept him off the ground...

Post on FB "Wolfe County Search & Rescue Team" - https://www.facebook.com/WCSART 

On Sunday afternoon, WCSAR was contacted by Menifee dispatch for a climber who had taken a 35’ fall at an Indian Creek crag, Fibrulator a 5.11d trad route.  The subject was leading the route when a hold broke, and he began to fall. His personal protective equipment failed to arrest him, and he fell to the ground. During the fall, some of his equipment became unclipped or otherwise dislodged from the rock, and one of his carabiners broke.  Incidents like this one illustrate how multiple elements can come together to lead to an accident.  The exact reason for the carabineer failure is unknown at this time.
Fibrulator Direct is known to have small gear and difficult to protect. While rare, equipment can fail or become inadvertently unclipped during a fall. Small trad gear requires extra care in placement and can be less reliable than bigger gear on the RRG'S Corbin Sandstone.   Common culprits for a carabiner failing include being loaded on the nose, or being loaded over an edge.   A fellow climber, who happened to be a Wilderness First Responder, provided initial care while waiting on Search & Rescue to arrive on scene.  The subject was transported to the trailhead and then to the University of Ky hospital by Powell County EMS.

The route - Fibrulator Direct

A carabiner BROKE?!? As in snapped or bent gate sideways?

Climbing Weasel wrote:

A carabiner BROKE?!? As in snapped or bent gate sideways?

Carter Fulton wrote:

Holy shit. BD carabiner....

Maybe light weight carabiners aren't the way to go. 

grug g wrote:

Holy shit. BD carabiner....

Maybe light weight carabiners aren't the way to go. 

The above is screen capture from FB - same carabiner, different perspective.

grug g wrote:

Holy shit. BD carabiner....

Maybe light weight carabiners aren't the way to go. 

Almost every aluminum biner on the market will break if nose hooked. I’ve done it too.

The lighter ones may be more to flipping into bad positions based on their weight and spine geometry.

30 years ago there was a type of biner that had an offset disc inside that rotated to a locked position. This effectively would prevent all this with the serious downside of getting one shot to clip before needing 2 hands to reset.

grug g wrote:

Holy shit. BD carabiner....

Maybe light weight carabiners aren't the way to go. 

Maybe don't blame the carabiner based on just this info...

I had, once, broken a carabiner in the same place. It was a bolt-side carabiner on a Petzl Spirit quickdraw, about 1 year old. The location of the break was consistent with "nose-hooked" failure, same as it looks on this biner.

Obviously, I wasn't there, I know nothing about the details of this particular accident, the history of the gear, etc-- all I am saying is that a perfectly-good not-in-any-way-defective carabiner can break under very light load (like a typical sport climbing fall) if you got it nose-hooked, and it is not the fault of the carabiner, it is performing to specs. (And yes, I still climb on Petzl Spirit draws, as well as BD draws, and many others).

It sounds like a lot of things went badly at the same time. The climber is lucky to be alive, and I wish him the best recovery from this accident. Big thanks, as always, to the Wolfe County SAR.

Lena chita wrote:

I had, once, broken a carabiner in the same place. It was a bolt-side carabiner on a Petzl Spirit quickdraw, about 1 year old. The location of the break was consistent with "nose-hooked" failure, same as it looks on this biner.

I remember that story! Was the gate on your carabiner as mangled as the one in the above photos? This one looks forced to the side/folded over.

Can someone please post a photo of a "nose-hooked carabiner" on a bolt that would potentially fail if fallen on? Would it be obvious as you climbed past, or is it by definition something more likely to to happen after you pass it and are near the next bolt and therefore likely not even able to see the issue? is this a preventable problem, or just bad luck?   

amarius wrote:

I remember that story! Was the gate on your carabiner as mangled as the one in the above photos? This one looks forced to the side/folded over.

No, the gate on mine was not mangled. I am not implying that the mechanism of the break was the same. Only the location of the break.

The statement about this location being commonly associated with "nose-hooked" failure comes from something I had read a while ago.  The BD QC Lab

bryans wrote:

Can someone please post a photo of a "nose-hooked carabiner" on a bolt that would potentially fail if fallen on? Would it be obvious as you climbed past, or is it by definition something more likely to to happen after you pass it and are near the next bolt and therefore likely not even able to see the issue? is this a preventable problem, or just bad luck?   

This is a good link with this info.

It is obvious, however... things can happen AFTER you climb past the gear, or during the fall.

Lena chita wrote:

This is a good link with this info.

It is obvious, however... things can happen AFTER you climb past the gear, or during the fall.

Thanks, Lena, for that link. So if the hooking does not occur at the time you clip, do we know why the hooking would later occur? Since you say (and I agree) it's obvious "things can happen AFTER you climb past the gear," is nose hooking more likely to occur when you traverse to the next bolt, for example, instead of straight up? 

I fully get that often we don't know or will never know some things - last year I pulled the rope up to clip, and when I looked down I saw the rope waving freely, no longer through the quickdraw I was positive I had clipped it to. I had hung the lower draw myself, I'm positive I clipped it, I had led this route previously - so how did the rope unclip itself? I'll never know, but somehow it unclipped itself, the first time this happened to me in 25 years of leading (and has become yet another reason I try really hard to keep 2 pieces between myself and the deck, at least when leading trad routes)

This incident reminds me of the Goran Kropp accident at Vantage: https://web.mit.edu/sp255/www/reference_vault/VantageReport20040530_martin_nilsson.pdf 

http://publications.americanalpineclub.org/articles/13200309500/Fall-on-Rock-Protection-Pulled-Carabiner-Broke-Exceeding-Abilities-Washington-Frenchmans-Coulee-Air-Guitar 

Lena chita wrote:

Maybe don't blame the carabiner based on just this info...

I had, once, broken a carabiner in the same place. It was a bolt-side carabiner on a Petzl Spirit quickdraw, about 1 year old. The location of the break was consistent with "nose-hooked" failure, same as it looks on this biner.

Obviously, I wasn't there, I know nothing about the details of this particular accident, the history of the gear, etc-- all I am saying is that a perfectly-good not-in-any-way-defective carabiner can break under very light load (like a typical sport climbing fall) if you got it nose-hooked, and it is not the fault of the carabiner, it is performing to specs. (And yes, I still climb on Petzl Spirit draws, as well as BD draws, and many others).

It sounds like a lot of things went badly at the same time. The climber is lucky to be alive, and I wish him the best recovery from this accident. Big thanks, as always, to the Wolfe County SAR.

Yes good point. But trad placements aint nosehooking on anything. 

Along the lines of your thinking: perhaps the carabiner was loaded in a flat orientation around a rock corner. 

grug g wrote:

Yes good point. But trad placements aint nosehooking on anything. 

Along the lines of your thinking: perhaps the carabiner was loaded in a flat orientation around a rock corner. 

Not true. The cam sling can easily get nose hooked. Will post a photo soon

Edit: a nose-hooked cam. Based on comments below, I agree that this might not fully explain how the gate  captured the sling in the carabiner after failure, therefore some other factor could have been at play.

Edit 2: from BD Labs linked above “a nose-hooked carabiner will most often break at the top of the spine, while open and closed gate failures typically occur at the bottom of the spine”. The carabiner in this event broke at the top of the spine. Nose hooking caused by gate flutter seems possible. Unsure about the crazy bent gate and how the sling ended up trapped beneath it, though.

Gate deformation looks like it could have possibly been loaded over an edge.

With repeated gear pullouts, the rope does some crazy things with each sudden unloading, whipping the carabiner around and perhaps coiling awkwardly around the carabiner. The gate could easily have come open and lodged on the sling. 

dave custer wrote:

With repeated gear pullouts, the rope does some crazy things with each sudden unloading, whipping the carabiner around and perhaps coiling awkwardly around the carabiner. The gate could easily have come open and lodged on the sling. 

A similar example is this somewhat well-known and incredibly improbable accident: http://publications.americanalpineclub.org/articles/13201213512/Fall-On-Rock-Lead-Rope-Unclipped-From-Protection

dave custer wrote:

With repeated gear pullouts, the rope does some crazy things with each sudden unloading, whipping the carabiner around and perhaps coiling awkwardly around the carabiner. The gate could easily have come open and lodged on the sling. 

Yeah, this! So many different vibrations/flutter with the rope going tight-slack-tight… It would be impossible to replicate the conditions