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Arch_Angel
Trad climber
Boulder, CO
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And condolences to all of the witnesses and responders.
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Marlow
Sport climber
OSLO
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My condolences to family and friends...
When a climber is pushing the limits of what is possible to him-/herself, luck is part of the equation...
A chance of survival equation in exposed situations when one is on the limit of what is possible (to oneself) could include these elements:
Skill x Luck / Risk x Uncertainty
Skill, Guardian Angel or Crows, Calculation, Scenario Preparation
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Gunkie
Trad climber
Valles Marineris
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Geez, so sorry for the family and friends left behind and to the first and subsequent responders and all witnesses to this tragic event.
A lot of us on this forum have climbed El Cap or other large piece of rock. And stuff coming off big tall cliffs generate a lot of energy. How many of us have had rocks or gear buzz by us? I have had plenty enders go by me and impact like a mortar shell. In the middle of the night while sleeping (read: laying wide awake) at Camp 4 on the Nose I heard some object building speed for quite a long time and it was getting louder and louder and louder. Then POOF, I got hit right in the nuts with a large pine cone. Had this been a fist sized rock or #4 rigid stem Friend (BITD) I would have been in trouble, Had this been a haul bag or a big rock, goodnight.
The point is, we all put ourselves in more dangerous situations just being in the vicinity of large and tall rocks. Objective dangers are the things we cannot control. Speed climbing actually reduces objective danger by drastically limiting exposure to object dangers. However, speed climbing probably increases the subjective dangers by a significant amount. Subjective dangers are the things we can largely control.
Be as safe as reasonably possible and watch out for each other.
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August West
Trad climber
Where the wind blows strange
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Sad news for sure.
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
When elite climbers are killed, it generates a lot of attention. It may be that elite climbers need to reconsider their attempts to beat somebody else's record.
I'm not sure that really has anything to do with the safety of the average joe climber who is never going to beat any famous record.
I did plenty of simul-climbing. Initially to get up longer routes in single push and then just because it was fun. I may well have been closer to being part of a double fatality than I realized at the time, but when I look back on my climbing career those are not the moments that make me shiver.
I had far more close calls (that I am aware of) during the un-roped stages of approaches and descents. Than there was: Getting off route and doing X rated moves on dirty rock, close calls with rockfall, running out of the right size gear to protect the last stages of a hard lead, getting caught by weather, raps and getting ropes stuck. And that is without counting all the close calls I had in the hundreds of hours driving to and from Yosemite...
Weigh all the risks and try to stack the odds in your favor.
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Andy Fielding
Trad climber
UK
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So sad to read all this. Condolences to family and friends.
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CarolKlein
Ice climber
Chamonix
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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
Speed climbing? I get why you sometimes place next to no gear and race to escape a storm, But foregoing second-chance gear placements as a central strategy to racing some clock?
It’s beautiful to move efficiently, using elegant systems that offer a nice margin for errors, while still enjoying the movement, clean ethics, and the time being spent active. Ditch the stop watches, leave them to orher sports.
Empathy for those feeling the loss.
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CarolKlein
Ice climber
Chamonix
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^^^ Ueli Steck took a big whipper up there.
The HuberBaum too?
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Highlife
Trad climber
California
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Adding to the list above, Jordan Canon took a 140 foot fall on the first 4 of the nose last year speed climbing. Was beat up pretty bad but miraculously walked away.
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looking sketchy there...
Social climber
Lassitude 33
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My heart goes out to the families of these climbers. Obviously, two bright lights and thoughtful individuals were lost.
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rgold
Trad climber
Poughkeepsie, NY
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It is heartbreaking to see people struck down in the prime of life like this. There is no way to sugar-coat such tragedies for the families now bereft, and I find the hope that the climbing world will learn something is a pitiful price to have paid.
I think speed climbing is getting a bit like my view of wingsuit flying, in which expertise seems to be of little use in preserving life. It might actually correspond to increased risk, as one gets to a point where risks considered acceptable by experts carry with them probabilities which, unlike a lot of climbing, are not small.
Personally, I've done some simulclimbing and a lot of soloing (although of course at levels not even recognizable as challenging in today's context), and concluded that I was safer soloing. The reason is that I think I really need a soloing mindset when simulclimbing (with widely-spaced gear), but the presence of the rope and the fact that somewhere between you is a piece or two or three makes it exceptionally hard for me to operate with the appropriate level of care and control and embrace appropriate options in moments of stress.
When you add speed to the equation, you have a pressing goal that basically conflicts with all the other types of safety considerations and procedures, and it only takes an instant of rushing things in pursuit of that goal to produce a serious event. Moreover, it is one thing for a party to try to go as fast as they can---this even has safety aspects in some situations--- but when there is a rigid time goal in mind, a threshold constantly pressuring the party's actions and decisions, then the chance for a momentary misstep seems to me to be substantially increased, and the speed for safety argument goes out the window.
Frankly, I see little chance of making much headway with Tom's aerospace-type protocols, because at the end of the day such practices slow things down, and people in pursuit of hard-to-achieve records are not going to slow anything down.
Since all climbing involves a voluntary acceptance of risk, I think climbers are on very shaky ground when they suggest that their risks are ok but someone else's are not. Climbers have been going to the Himalaya for years in spite of daunting survival statistics, for example. It's a choice a person makes, and it is different in severity, but not different in nature, from the choice to go cragging for an afternoon.
I don't think the message of such terrible tragedies is to invoke more procedures, and I don't think the message "don't do that sh#t." I think the only thing we can extract is a clearer sense of both the risks and very real consequences of the game. Play it if you will, but go in with eyes wide open.
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Trump
climber
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Layton Kor: ‘The best climber is the one having the most fun!’
And
’The great mountaineers die in their rocking chair.” - Walter Bonatti
We each say what we have to say. I’m glad those guys said what they had to say. But I’m sorry for their friends and family.
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AP
Trad climber
Calgary
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I think this incident has a lot of people thinking.
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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To what Rich said, if nothing else this and recent accidents will make perfectly clear what those risks are. Then the choice is yours.
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Reilly
Mountain climber
The Other Monrovia- CA
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at the end of the day such practices slow things down
No they don’t. Aviation safety protocols are designed for speed and safety. I always had a
‘cockpit checklist’ for rappels: touch and name each critical gauge/component. It takes what,
5-10 seconds?
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TomCochrane
Trad climber
Cascade Mountains and Monterey Bay
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Most risk management planning happens well in advance of the commencement of activities.
My early lessons on this came from Walter Bonatti, who would spend months or years prior to one of his major climbs in mentally visualizing everything that could go wrong and how he would cope if it happens. This made him mentally prepared for whatever might happen, but also tuned up his critical awareness for what to be paying attention to during the actual climb. These lessons learned from Bonatti translated into an entire career for me at NASA and other agencies.
Astronauts practice this same principle, drilling daily for years before a mission. The Sim Sups (Simulation Supervisors) are regarded as having god like qualities for imagining what might go wrong on a mission and throwing it unexpectedly into a training simulation. These training simulations are quite expensive, involving the largest swimming pool in the world for weightless training, and some of the biggest full motion flight simulators and a large building with full scale space station components. Picture an indoor climbing gym featuring a full scale mock-up of El Capitan.
Several of my projects at NASA involved full-motion-capture suits for the entire procedures of complex missions; translated into 3D simulations using video game technology. For example we did the complex changeout of the big control moment gyroscopes that stabilize the Space Station. And we similarly did the Hubble repair mission. You can see these online. These simulations could then be played over and over on their personal laptops by the crew and the flight controllers to grow mental familiarity with possible scenarios aside from the expensive multi-person training simulations.
We don't have NASA's millions to make full motion simulations of climbing The Nose, but it is reasonable to capture very detailed beta. Hans would seem well situated as the domain knowledge expert to invest in such a project for a few months.
Avatar modeling keeps getting easier and cheaper. In fact someone like Hans could build the entire simulation online in Second Life. I think it would be especially valuable to capture the consequences of a fall at every point in the route, as well as placement of pieces to mitigate the risk of injury. This could lead to a mental checklisted sequence of anchor placements for each segment of the route. I know some of this is already being done ... this would just formalize the planning and training process and minimize wasted time and effort and consequent risk factors.
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Rich makes a nuanced point.
Basically, modern speed climbing amounts to a leader roped soloing, placing as little pro as they feel they can get away with (meaning something will hopefully stop them in the event of a fall -- which is certain to be a big one), while the second is climbing with a theoretical top rope, often with gigantic loops of slack in the line.
The only thing that makes this a team ascent is they are connected with a rope, sometimes running free, with a few meager pieces of pro clipped off between them; other times, at a few crux sections, the leader short fixes, providing both a leader and the second an anchor point that might arrest a fall should either pitch. But again, with so litle pro ever placed, any fall is likely to be a 100-footer or more.
In a sense, the only purpose served by a rope and a second is that the "anchor" keeps getting moved upward so the leader doesn't have to descend to clean it. And for the most part, that anchor is not a fixed one, but is merely a protection point which the leader will bang onto if he falls, with the second acting as a moving, counterweight "belay."
It's hard to contrast these techniques with either station-to-station climbing where the leader is always belayed from a second who's anchored off, or with soloing, where there is no gear. Speed climbing is not LIKE any other mode so the contrast with other styles is sketchy.
Maybe it's a little like speed soloing, which few ever do.
So if a team were to look at exactly what they were doing in terms of the systems, perhaps there might be something relevant from industrial safety models.
The stat that needs to be known is: Of all the people who have fallen while roped speed climbing with a partner, what have been the consequences? We know what happened with Quin, Hans, Tommy (100 footer) and with this last tragedy. But I have no data on others. But ironically it looks like the modern practice of speed climbing is thrusting us back to days of hemp ropes, when "The leader must not fall." Or the second...
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E.L. "One"
Big Wall climber
Lancaster, California
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I met Tim some time ago. We were among a handful of climbers from the Antelope Valley ( Palmdale-Lancaster area). I was an aging climber who had a couple of El Cap routes under my belt, and he was an inspired and talented climber who was very motivated. We also both shared the same career....education. Tim invited me out for a few local climbs, but he was way out of my league. We both shared the same philosophy of education which placed students first and focused on learning opportunities with real world application. Tim was an exceptional teacher who saw “human potential not yet reached” in every student who walked into his classroom.
I remember running into Tim and his family in Yosemite a few years ago. I was there with my brother and friends and we were hiking up to the base of the Nose. I ran into Tim at the base of Pine Line where he was coaching his kid up the climb. Tim immediately tried to talk me into a night time push of the South Face of Washington Column. Aging climbers with a shitload of gear are targets for such proposals, but for one of the first times in my life I used proper prudence and judgement and declined. Tim was very understanding, and I’m sure he was just topping out on the Column that night as I was taking my last shot of Fireball around the campfire with my brother and friends.
I am so sorry Tim. My Condolences to your lovely wife, children and extended family...........and to the many future students who will never know the gift you provided so many. Thank you my brother !
Cracko
AKA Bob Porter
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clifff
Mountain climber
golden, rollin hills of California
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Aerospace safety protocols were all for naught when the pressure to go-go-go overrode all safety considerations - with the death of 14 astronauts the result. Racing the clock will always greatly comprise safety in aerospace and climbing.
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TomCochrane
Trad climber
Cascade Mountains and Monterey Bay
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Largo, I developed and practiced a technique for doing this decades ago and have been holding out on the community.
This makes use of a device I invented called The Snatch which allows self-belay leading hands-off with no moving parts.
I've been holding out for several reasons:
Partly because it seems very non-intuitive to some people (but i do think it is safer than what people are doing)
Partly because it was my secret weapon for soloing or simul-climbing walls. (clearly too old and decrepit to pursue such ambitions now)
Partly because I didn't want to be assigning risks to others that I was willing to take myself using gear that has only been tested by me.
Partly expecting to see someone else come up with similar or better innovations. (hasn't happened)
Partly because I've been doing other interesting projects professionally and wasn't tempted to follow Yvon into the domain of liability lawyers.
And partly because of thinking one day I'd tag up with someone who would get excited about the technique and run with it.
Mike Hoover knew about it, but never saw it. While I was out of touch at sea during post-production for my autobiographical movie 'Solo' he put in a clip of a heavy awkward device that he and Bridwell invented that had multiple moving parts and didn't work.
So I'm still in kind of a quandary about it. Only one active climber in the community has been let in on this technique, and he only has part of the story and hasn't pursued solo or speed climbing.
Before being released into the wild, it should be tested more formally and a manufacturing process developed.
I've been imagining that if this is adopted for speed climbing that it would quickly become standard practice for most climbing as it combines the safety of swinging leads from fixed belay stances with the freedom of motion of simul-climbing.
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