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Accident at climbing gym 19th May 23-May-2004 At 9:22:06 AM SteveH

Message

On 22/05/2004 kieranl wrote:

>Isn't there some onus on the gym to make sure their systems are safe?

Just because ropes are new, doesn't constitute an unsafe system. If people belayed the way they were instructed and didn't develop, lazy hybrid versions of belaying, the set up of any system, (gri gri's - atc's - go-slows - new/old ropes), would not be an issue anywhere.

Belayers do need to take responsibility for their actions (especially in an indoor facility, where the gym operators should have correctly demonstrated and assessed individuals competancy in belaying - unlike outdoors where sometimes it is like the blind leading the blind.)

In no way do (majority) of Australian gyms try to promote or enforce an 'fail-safe' or 'idiot-proof' systems. To do so and have an incident would leave themselves wide open to negligance cases. The general public enjoy and undertake indoor climbing because they think it is cool, or daring and exciting - they need to sign a waiver form (which some argue isn't worth the paper it is written on), but this form, also alerts the patrons that they are undertaking an activity which has risks involved. This says to me, 'pay attention' and I'm not a smart man!

I know I am going off on a tangent, but week in, week out I see people start to or attempt to do ridiculous things whilst belaying. Unfortunately the majority of these are parents at parties, or blase 'climbers'. I see parents trying to haul their kids up the wall with both hands on the wrong side of the belay device ('I'm just trying to help them') - Parents deciding to belay other parents and not registering their may be a difference between belaying their 6 y/o to 90kg mate. I 'love it' when business dads bring their kids in, and answer the phone whilst the kids are on the wall - I always try to loudly inform them that it isn't very safe or responsible to be on the phone when their child is on the wall ( I just hope there is some executive on the other end putting a big cross through their name).

Climbers - I'll get started on them later!