Accident Prevention
On the morning of August 27, seven friends milled about the base of the 40-foot Transporter Crack (5.6) at the New River Gorge in West Virginia. One of the members of the group, Daniel Kessler, later described the outing as “a holiday climbing excursion.”
On Sunday, September 22, a fatal accident occurred at the Summit Climbing Gym in Grapevine, Texas, when a woman fell 30 feet.
Three more climbers have died in the Cairngorms of Scotland, bringing the total of avalanche deaths in the area to seven since late January.
Three climbers were injured including an Iraqi War veteran on a fund-raising climb when an avalanche ripped down Central Gully in Huntington Ravine on New Hampshire's Mount Washington.
Robert Andrew Prosser, 60, of Edmonds, Washington, was killed January 13 in a fall from the top of an ice climb at milepost 8 of State Roue 155 near Coulee City.
An avalanche has swept six climbers off the Scottish Highlands peak Bidean nam Bian, 3,772 feet high, near Church Door Buttress, killing four and seriously injuring a fifth.
One of those nightmare scenarios.
The Triple Cracks alcove at Enchanted Rock State Natural Area near Fredericksburg, Texas, is an open space not much bigger than a good-sized living room. Shaded by huge oaks, with a natural granite bench and housing three moderate, tall, clean cracks, the alcove can be a popular site for climbers to congregate.
On the morning of June 22, 2010, Joseph Miller began leading the second pitch of the Yellow Spur (5.10a), one of the most popular routes on the Redgarden Wall in Eldorado Canyon near Boulder, Colorado. Miller’s belayer was anchored to a tree and paid out slack as Miller traversed to the base of a short dihedral, placing a nut and a .4 Camalot along the way.
On the morning of February 5, two climbers (who requested anonymity) were halfway up the second pitch of Glenwood Falls, a popular ice formation just east of Glenwood Springs, Colorado. The leader, an experienced ice climber, was accustomed to leading using a system where he would climb until he got pumped, plant a tool and yell down “fifi on,” a request for slack.
On November 21, two climbers from Canmore, Alberta, made the long approach to Planter’s Valley, a canyon on the south side of Devil’s Gap in Canada’s Ghost River Wilderness Area. They started up the first pitch of the 330-foot Weathering Heights (WI 4).
As fixed draws are becoming more prevalent at popular sport-climbing areas, instances of ropes being “sheathed” (where the mantle of the rope is stripped away from the core) by sharply grooved carabiners are also becoming more common.