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Fatality at Arapiles 11/11/14 17-Nov-2014 At 9:50:52 PM Sabu

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On 17/11/2014 patto wrote:
>For the benefits of those of us who are unfamiliar with the King Rat Gully
>descent could someone shed light on it for us? Why is it so dangerous?
> Is it more dangerous than dozens of other descents at Arapiles? Is it
>more dangerous than rapping?

Short answers are no, no and no. The vast majority (if not all) routes there have lower offs or access to bolts for descending. There is a bit of a scramble to get up to two popular routes on the left hand side of the gully but if you're heading for those routes (both graded 18) you shouldn't have any difficulty with it. There is also a scramble decent to get off some routes on the right side but you'd walk past several sets of bolts to get there so if you were hesitant you are not limited on options. There's a note in guide about it being dangerous in the wet but so is half the mount when its wet.

In my opinion there is nothing more dangerous than the norm up there and the whole area is certainly a far cry safer than the decent of alis, for instance.

>Regarding the actual incident. Did this happen on the actual decent route?
> Or did the climbers get lost?

No idea about where it specifically happened, I could only speculate, although I will say you'd have to be very navigationally challenged to get lost in that gully.