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General Climbing Discussion

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Seen anything scary today? 18-May-2011 At 8:37:45 AM GoUp!

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Over the last three years or so I've seen similar happen three times to my club members and heard of several others at some of the comps I've attended. Pre-flight checks should pick it up but human error.......
What has made several of the incidents pretty alarming is that many of us use steel maillons that come with our harnesses and the bar is quite thin compared to a normal 'biner (say 4mm cross section width). Without doing the gate up the bar can bend when weighted (and remember some of the moves we bust can pull several Gs)......making the chance of the webbing coming out even higher - thank god they haven't started using snag free ends to the bar as the only thing saving these people is the webbing catching on the thread.
Much like in trad climbing and carrying a set of prussiks for that 'special' occasion - I have also started carrying a metre of 3mm cord when I fly.....its amazing what you can jerry-rig with a spare bit of cord... I reckon it would have helped lower the stress levels for this poor pilot.