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Franco909
Trad climber
SFO
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Sincere condolences.. :-(
These guys were strong and experienced:
“This would have been Tim’s 107th [in a day] El Cap ascent,”
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MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
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Horrible. My dearest condolences to friends and family. Very very sorry to hear this.
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Lambone
Big Wall climber
Ashland, Or
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El Capitan hero’s have fallen. Husbands, fathers, mentors, and friends of many. I’m so sorry to hear this and my heart goes out to friends and family and our tribe.
It’s hard not to spectulate what went wrong to bring two giants down off the wall. Without more details from Yosar we can only assume it was a simple slip with pulled protection. Those upper pitches of the Freeblast are relatively easy and they might have been running light with minimal gear. Perhaps loose rock was a cause...either way it’s a tragic end for two Yosemite Monkeys. :( ....
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Fritz
Social climber
Choss Creek, ID
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I've never met Tim Klein and Jason Wells & my life is poorer for it. From what I read, they were wonderful people.
My condolences to their friends & family.
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Big Mike
Trad climber
BC
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my condolences to family and friends. what a horrible loss. :(
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Roadie
Trad climber
moab UT
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so sorry to hear. be good to yourselves.
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SC seagoat
Trad climber
Santa Cruz, Moab, A sailboat, or some time zone
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It just makes me ache.
I can’t even begin to fathom the agony their families are facing.
Sincere condolences.
Susan
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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This is basically a climbers-only site and not a public forum, so us climbers are first and foremost very sorry, but the second impulse is: How did THAT ever happen? Addressing that helps us try and make sense of the tragic.
The issues of falling haul bags and especially the rumor that they were a party of three made the tragedy impossible to unpack. No scenario seemed remotely possible. As mentioned above, given they were simulclimbing, if true, a fall from either end could pull off both and ripped pro would drop the curtain. Chances are if they were on the pitches above the Half Dollar, which are simple compared to the terrain below and above, the leader was slotting minimal pro. The rest hardly needs explaining.
I mention this because if even a crusher like Tommy Caldwell can take a 100-footer while practicing for the NIAD record, as reported, the huge ripper potential is right there even for the best professionals. Quinn Brett also comes to mind, and Brad Gobright's words after setting the Nose speed record last year, that it was the most dangerous thing he'd ever done. Potter said the same.
It's starting to be clear that speed climbing - which I admittedly loved to do BITD - needs to be reconsidered.
I'm relieved that the team on The Shield weren't involved, but feel plain awful for the climbers, their families and friends.
I offer no solution or even recommendation per speed climbing but if it keeps maiming and killing the best among us it deserves a close look.
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thebravecowboy
climber
The Good Places
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Thanks Largo. This stuff is just awful, and it will take well-reasoned words from old salts like you to help turn the tide of these avoidable losses and injuries.
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axle
Trad climber
San Francisco, CA
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My deepest condolences to family and friends of the lost. I was sadly a partial witness, viewing the incident from the meadow. The above photo was taken from my vantage point at 8:05am yesterday, shortly before the accident. I will try to relay what I saw and heard, although even after many mental replays I still don't really know what I saw, since it all happened quite fast.
I was in the meadow to watch what I hoped would be a nose speed attempt, and at about 6:30am we saw a very fast party of 3 moving up freeblast. They quickly made their way above the half dollar and I would look over their way occasionally to check their progress. At around 8:10 or 8:15am, I heard multiple people yelling loudly in a back-and-forth manner from the heart ledges/mammoth terraces area, which drew my attention. I then saw what looked like a haul bag drop from that area, impact the wall, and start to accelerate downwards. Two other dark objects were falling with it, and there was a rope connecting them. In the moment I assumed it was a series of haul bags, because I could clearly hear what I thought was the sound of polyurethane or durathane coated fabric running against the granite. I wasn't clear on what exactly I saw and it wasn't until later that I learned of the loss of life.
Again, so sorry to see this happen and I hope a thorough YOSAR accident report can help educate and prevent a tragedy like this from ever recurring.
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AP
Trad climber
Calgary
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This is so tragic. My condolences to all the family members and friends.
We all know that climbing is inherently dangerous yet we frequently underestimate the situation. Will Gadd wrote a great essay on this subject a few years ago.
All it takes is a bit of bad luck to negate all the skill and judgement of the people involved.
A good example is the death of Catherine Freer and Dave Cheesmond on Mt Logan back in 1987. All of their skill and experience was for nought when an earthquake sent the Hummingbird Ridge cornices falling down.
This doesn't mean that we should not push it but rather we have to recognize that the more we do the greater the chance of a freak occurrence.
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Trump
climber
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I’m so sorry to hear. My condolences to family and friends.
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rookers
Trad climber
Boulder, CO
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My condolences to their family and friends. I have seen this too many times in my years climbing and more recently technical/cave diving. I have lost close friends (Andy Burnham) in climbing and have been the second victim in a technical diving accident that took my partner's life.
It's unimaginably hard for the family, friends and survivors.
For the climbing community, hopefully we will move past the rumor stage quickly and start to understand the causal chain. Despite some looseish blocks on the route, Freeblast should have been a triviality for this party.
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Bill
climber
Petaluma
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Jason was a fine person, so stoked on climbing and on life, and I've heard nothing but great things about Tim as well. This is very sad, beyond sad. Condolences to their families and friends.
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TomCochrane
Trad climber
Cascade Mountains and Monterey Bay
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Seconding John Long's comments ... so sad and so sorry! ...
The skill levels demonstrated by these guys and their community are way beyond anything we were doing or even imagining in the 1950s and early 60s ... hardly even seems like the same sport
Layton Kor: `The best climber is the one having the most fun!'
I think that formula includes constant attention to avoiding disaster, a lot of which involves attention to ropes and hardware, forces and moments, with attention to possible flight paths and consequences
Aerospace Continuous Risk Management consists of identifying every risk with its likelihood and consequence so as to prioritize available resources to optimize risk mitigation. This IS rocket science and represents a mind set that is entirely appropriate to rock climbing as speed climbing can thereby be made relatively safe. This includes Failure Modes and Affects FMEA analysis, fault tree analysis and analyzing cascading effects in energetic systems. These were all developed by aerospace engineers who were heart broken over losing friends in unforeseen circumstances.
Risk analysis doesn't need to involve a bunch of expensive suits sitting around a conference room with a long polished wood table. But it does need to involve continuous detailed analysis, documented operating procedures and attention to detailed checklists. It used to be the wild west up there, but no longer when you are pushing two hour ascents with El Cap looking like a climbing gym on a holiday weekend.
Obviously some of this analysis is already being done to achieve the sorts of results being demonstrated. I'm just suggesting taking the analysis deeper into the realms of layers of risk and unlikely circumstances.
I am in awe of the current generation of expert climbers, but the loses are gut wrenching. Please learn from some of our harder lessons in aerospace
We love you guys and girls!
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Dapper Dan
Trad climber
Redwood City
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I keep thinking about these two as I go through the humdrum weekend routine, getting coffee, washing the car, taking the kids for a walk. Maybe it's because one of the fallen was a school teacher and father of two boys, like myself.
But I think it's because these two were average working dudes, out there living life to the fullest, pursuing a passion they were obviously expert at, and tragedy just plucked them away.
To the families, please know that there are many out there, like myself, who marveled at their graceful mastery of the stone, and who now grieve with you at their inexplicable, sudden, passing. "Thoughts and prayers" seems so inadequate to capture the measure of the loss...
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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This is the kind of loss that can make pretty much everyone sit up and reconsider our lives, loves and dogged pursuit of the quintessential we find in the vertical realm. I'd agree with Largo maybe speed climbing needs to be reconsidered in the way extreme skiing was in the '70s, but we have now come so close to the two-hour mark on the Nose I have to wonder if we haven't already crossed the Rubicon where we collectively can't and won't stop until the deed is done. If that's indeed the case, then I hope it can put it to bed sooner than later with no further tragedy.
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Rieup
Trad climber
France
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Such a tragedy.. My deepest condolences to their family and friends. I remember reading Tim and Jason's trip reports not too long ago and being so blown away by their passion, skills, fitness, and what they accomplished all while having full time jobs. Inspiring.
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Healje is of course right: the mythical two-hour mark will pull at people like the gravity of the sun till it's a done thing. In the meantime we might look a little closer at risk management so our heroes stop burning up. There's nothing to do to bring those people back, which is the hard part. The other part we can do something about. What TomCochrane said.
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