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Ground fall at St Peters monday night


Pedro.c

24-Aug-2014
5:55:06 PM

On 23/08/2014 gnaguts wrote:
>
>This thread was a waste of reading, unless you are stuffed at belaying
>and need an example of why.

So this thread doesn't apply to you. So what? There's plenty of climbers stuffed at belaying and plenty of climbers climbing with them. Why get shirty because a thread is irrelevant to you? Not everyone on this forum has your decades of experience. Most people who do probably don't bother with this forum at all.

dalai

24-Aug-2014
7:36:08 PM

Ignore gnaguts like the rest of us do Pedro.c - they are just a troll.


JMK

24-Aug-2014
11:43:39 PM

I would guess that 100% of belayers who are useless accidents waiting to happen actually believe they are belaying correctly as nothing has gone wrong so far so it must be good. This would be true if you have been climbing for 1 year or 20 years. Just because someone has been climbing for a long time does not mean they know what they are doing - could be just luck. However in saying that 20 years is a long time to be lucky so they probably ( not assuredly) know what they are doing. Just remember you are placing limb and life on an assumption.

martym

25-Aug-2014
8:16:16 AM

That rule applies I most things... My mum shouldn't be allowed on the road!

One Day Hero

25-Aug-2014
1:55:32 PM

On 24/08/2014 JMK wrote:
>However in saying that 20 years is a long time to be lucky so they probably
>( not assuredly) know what they are doing. Just remember you are placing
>limb and life on an assumption.

Climbing experience is measured in meters, not years. I guess belaying experience is mostly measured in falls caught, it's not like just standing there and holding a rope teaches you anything. This is majorly misunderstood, especially by old farts who've "been climbing for 30 years" but never really done anything of note. I always used to wonder how someone could be so experienced yet so shit at climbing.........took a while to work out that a lot of people never progress beyond being bumblies, and just shuffle along in their insulated bubble of incompetence for decades.

jprockbelly

25-Aug-2014
3:57:43 PM

On 25/08/2014 One Day Hero wrote:
>I guess belaying
>experience is mostly measured in falls caught, it's not like just standing
>there and holding a rope teaches you anything.

My 300 uneventful ascents of Piccolo have taught me all I need to know about climbing :)


IdratherbeclimbingM9

25-Aug-2014
9:07:03 PM

On 25/08/2014 One Day Hero wrote:
>On 24/08/2014 JMK wrote:
>>However in saying that 20 years is a long time to be lucky so they probably
>>( not assuredly) know what they are doing. Just remember you are placing
>>limb and life on an assumption.
>
>Climbing experience is measured in meters, not years. I guess belaying
>experience is mostly measured in falls caught, it's not like just standing
>there and holding a rope teaches you anything. This is majorly misunderstood,
>especially by old farts who've "been climbing for 30 years" but never really
>done anything of note. I always used to wonder how someone could be so
>experienced yet so shit at climbing.........took a while to work out that
>a lot of people never progress beyond being bumblies, and just shuffle
>along in their insulated bubble of incompetence for decades.

*Pedant alert*; it's metres (ODH)

Ok, I will bite on the burly you keep casting out, if only to save the arthritic fingers of more elderly folk replying.
Hmm, old farts with repetitive experience vs 'real' experience...

There aren't many today who have caught a fall on a waist belay.
There aren't many today who consider 5 metre spacing between adequate protection as being 'reasonable'.
... Try combining the two, for not teaching you anything!

Oh, and bumblies fall off climbs too.
~> The grade doesn't matter too much to the belayer having to catch the fall.
;-)

Insulated bubble?
~> Even aid-climbing has progressed from nailed to clean...
Heh, heh, heh.

26-Aug-2014
6:31:20 PM

On 25/08/2014 One Day Hero wrote:

>Climbing experience is measured in meters,

Here we go again - some one who cannot tell the difference between a measuring device (a meter) and a unit of measurement (a metre). If he can't tell the difference between those two why should I believe any statement he makes?

>I guess belaying experience is mostly measured in falls caught, it's not like just >standing there and holding a rope teaches you anything. This is majorly misunderstood,
>especially by old farts who've "been climbing for 30 years" but never really
>done anything of note.

When I was asked to do an interview for Chockstone (many years ago) that is the argument I used i.e. I've never done anything of note. I've climbed in, NSW, SA, Tassie, NZ, England, Wales, Scotland, France and Italy and had a bloody good time with a lot of bloody good people, but that obviously counts for nothing. Give it another 4 years and it will be a half century that when I first started climbing, none of this thirty years nonsense. The biggest falls I ever held and were held on were "waist belays" (see M9's post above), as the technology improved the falls became smaller (the gear was closer together). To get into the MUMC "Fallen Angels" club back then, a fall had to be over 10' (that's feet for you youngsters out there, or 3m) to be even considered as a fall (and I was an aRMpIT, not an OXO).

>I always used to wonder how someone could be so
>experienced yet so shit at climbing.........took a while to work out that
>a lot of people never progress beyond being bumblies, and just shuffle
>along in their insulated bubble of incompetence for decades.

When it comes to defining "bumblies", what is the definition? When I started climbing in Victoria the hardest grade was HVS, and no, I'm not going to say what that translates into modern grading because the poster (ODH) has already implied his knowledge of climbing (from 30 years ago) is greater than mine. Just because I'm talking about 15 years earlier does not let him off the hook. He has set himself up as the fount of all knowledge. I have led that grade and been on stuff that was grades harder, where I learned new skills like how to pinch grip bolt heads, dyno for slings that Kieran left behind after he had dynoed for the hold (and snared it) and I started working on a design for two handed krabs.

I am a bumbly, and I'm out and proud. When I started climbing we found it interesting that Chris Dewhurst and Bruno Zielke trained, and I mean they did things like bench presses and the like, nothing specifically for climbing (but they were competitive).

Climbing with Kieran has probably saved me from potentially fatal embarrassment and my name being left off some important FFAs (due to the above mentioned new "skills") He climbed harder that my normal climbing partners and thus honed my belaying skills, especially with two ropes.

But I will be happy if I ever get back into the "insulated bubble" that ODH mentions above. Climbing without those mates from the '60s, '70s, '80s, '90s and into the naughties, means for me, that I doubt that I will ever take to climbing seriously again. My climbing years are probably over. My climbing was about who I was climbing with and not about the grades. Doing a 60m pitch on Ben Nevis (Scotland) with a 50m rope? Done it. Doing an FA on a waterfall during a drought? Done it. Repeating a route on Rosea where the second used the stars to work out what direction to head in? Done it. Nothing of note there. Now move along, nothing to see here.

So, ODH, I humbly suggest that you pull your head in and increase the circle of climbing acquaintances that you have, the best ones are the ones that enjoy climbing, not the ones whose success is measured by their belaying ability. After all, they're success is measured by your failure. Inside my bubble I never dropped anybody and nobody ever dropped me. I am sure there are other people living inside their bubbles who have the correct belaying skills and have never done anything of note, except, perhaps, for themselves and their climbing partner.

(And yes I'm feeling a bit angry at the moment, a non-climbing friend has been recently diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer's disease and the above comments seem so, so trivial and irrelevant and demeaning that I'm surprised that I haven't resorted to being more overtly abusive.)

Over to you ODH.

Reluctant

26-Aug-2014
7:20:22 PM

No need for the judges scorecards. Old man attitude and rant beats a big mouth and small mind hands down.


Sabu

26-Aug-2014
7:28:06 PM


IdratherbeclimbingM9

26-Aug-2014
7:58:16 PM

Glad to see your typing-hands are not arthritic BA.
;-)


rodw

26-Aug-2014
8:45:53 PM

Good rant BA..well said.

mikllaw

27-Aug-2014
6:56:36 AM

Unfortunately I agree with everyone here. You generally get better with experience (smaller risk per climb), but the odds of a mistake slowly increase (risk x frequency).
Yes I know that if you climb sport and catch 100 falls a day that you'll be more experienced than the average trad belayer. But then again, you probably would mess up a trad catch.
Belaying is hard and there is no certainty.

martym

27-Aug-2014
8:30:15 PM

I don't think it's unfortunate at all Mikl - if anyone should know about it, it's the guy doing demonstrations every other week of how (and how not to) belay/clip/prusik and every other thing you include!
There's no such thing as a typical climber, nor belayer, nor climb - so lots of different experiences and ideas need to be considered and discussed.
In a courteous way would be nice for once too hey?


Doug

28-Aug-2014
1:39:35 AM

On 27/08/2014 mikllaw wrote:
>Unfortunately I agree with everyone here. You generally get better with
>experience (smaller risk per climb), but the odds of a mistake slowly increase
>(risk x frequency).
>Yes I know that if you climb sport and catch 100 falls a day that you'll
>be more experienced than the average trad belayer. But then again, you
>probably would mess up a trad catch.
>Belaying is hard and there is no certainty.

+1 on that. There's a bit of a curve there I think. In the middle years the risk of such an accident are minimised; as you push on in years they probably start to gradually go up again for various reasons ... ;-)

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