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25-26/12/2019 Candlestick accident 7-Sep-2020 At 2:23:14 PM gordoste

Message

On 5-Sep-2020 patto wrote:
>davedave, thank you for posting about the incident.
>
>I think people should tone down some of the rhetoric here. It is hardly
>encouraging for people to post incident report if people start getting
>stuck into the participants or groups they represent. Most of us here
>have had an epic of some nature. Sometimes from the unexpected, sometimes
>when we've known that we were pushing the limits.
>
>Yep some mistakes were made. (In particular the group size/experience
>and the 6mm rope) But from my understanding is that the group did have
>some people of notable experience. They did manage to mostly self rescue
>by swimming, tyroleaning and then aiding out. From my understanding they
>would have gotten back to camp early that morning themselves had the PLB
>not been triggered.
>
>(The group had mobile reception. I was hearing about this epic as it
>was occurring. Yes they bit off more than they could chew, but they seemed
>like they handled the situation appropriately. This has also been posted
>and discussed here before, but not in this amount of detail.)

I agree some people do go overboard and I have done some stupid things too... well, really stupid in hindsight. They gave the Tyrolean a try and realised it wasn't going to work, which is fine - this wouldn't be a big deal if (for example) everyone involved knew how to abseil and jumar. If a serious accident occurred to one of the leaders, this can make the difference between a single casualty and multiple casualties.
The biggest problem (IMO) happened before anyone got on a rope here. Beginners should only be taken to controlled environments where weather and access are not an issue, and you can take your time with proper instruction.
One of the reasons clubs exist is to give people interested in climbing the opportunity to learn safely. That clearly didn't happen here and the reason I'm posting is that if people just focus on the obvious technical issues, then this point could be missed in whatever findings come out of the club's review of the incident.
Clubs can't stop people trying to Tyrolean on 6mm cord, but they should be able to stop them taking beginners along with them when they do it :)