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Chockstone Forum - Accidents & Injuries

Report Accidents and Injuries

 Page 4 of 4. Messages 1 to 20 | 21 to 40 | 41 to 60 | 61 to 71
Author
Grounder at SICG

anthonyk
26-Oct-2009
12:27:16 PM
On 26/10/2009 garbie wrote:
>All we can do is warn people of the dangers, give them
>safety instruction, and then its their responsibility for their own safety.
>Its just like driving a car - no one is sitting next to you stopping you running off
>the road. It sounds harsh but climbing centres or any such facilities would
>not exist if they were responsible for everyone's total safety as soon as they
>entered the door.

Do you tell beginners to watch if a lead route is going to intersect with a climb they're
starting? I doubt its part of the standard check list. Its hard for the leader to do
anything, the belayer may be out of reach especially if its a noisy gym, so its something
the beginner needs to be responsible for. Might be worth considering. Or a little note
on the more "at risk" climbs. I mention it because this was a situation where no one was
really doing anything obviously wrong and it could easily have turned into a serious injury.
mikl law
26-Oct-2009
12:35:19 PM
One good feature at SICG is that the areas where there is a lot of leading are too steep to toprope, thus there isn't much potential overlap between leaders and topropers.

One rule that could be posted in areas where they do overlap would be "Lead climbing has right of way" i.e don't toprope up into the crutch of some shaky leader

hangdog
26-Oct-2009
12:43:56 PM
>. Unlike some gyms in Vic, the staff at
>SICG actually seem to be
>'climbers' as opposed to random uni students needing a weekend job with
>no understanding of rock
>climbing.
Its interesting to note that certain gyms in Vic. apparently have staff that are not
climbers. I would expect that at the very least they would have had experience as a
climber whether it be indoor or outdoor. Other posters have talked about "Duty of Care"
in relation to the responsibility a centre to its customers.That centre also has the same
Duty of Care to its employees and i believe that taking inexperienced non climbers and
putting them in a situation where they are required to supervise others could well be
neglect of this Duty of Care.
I have on several occasions in the past few years been asked to give my opinion after
an accident and whether a company or individual instructor was negligent.(all outdoors)
One of the first areas looked at is the relevant qualifications and experience of the
individual and whether they and or the organisation followed accepted best practice. It
would be generally accepted that at the very least the person put in a position to
supervise would have had experience as a climber. This would be the minimum. How
could a person who has never climbed at any level be able to supervise a room full of
people climbing and belaying. It would also be very easy to show that a person put into
this position by an employer would also be in neglect of the Duty of Care owed to that
employee. I very recently had to fight a decision made by managers at the organisation
that i work for when they wanted to put a person in the climbing centre to assist with
supervision who had never seen a climbing centre until he walked in the door. I had to
argue very strongly with them and provide documentation from various sources
to show that if an accident occurred with this person supervising then the organisation
would be liable to a higher degree.

garbie
26-Oct-2009
12:47:29 PM
On 26/10/2009 mikl law wrote:
>One good feature at SICG is that the areas where there is a lot of leading
>are too steep to toprope, thus there isn't much potential overlap between
>leaders and topropers.
>
>One rule that could be posted in areas where they do overlap would be
>"Lead climbing has right of way" i.e don't toprope up into the crutch of
>some shaky leader

Yep fair call, lead climbers are asked to watch out for potential dangers like this, but to
make it clear we'll put some signs up. Ideally we would have the leading and top-roping
areas separate, but it would mean leaders would have no easy terrain to climb, or top-
ropers wouldn't get anything steep. Better I think to have them overlap but not have
leaders & topropers in the same spot at the same time.
matthewp
26-Oct-2009
2:26:15 PM
On 26/10/2009 garbie wrote:

>We monitor as best we can, given the large size of the gym, but accidents
>can't really
>be avoided by monitoring - you would need to catch someone doing the wrong
>thing as
>soon as they do it.

I disagree with this. Some of the lead belaying at SP is really pretty dangers. If most
lead climbers actually took lead fall instead of yelling "take" as soon as they got
pumped I think you would see a lot more people decking. Monitoring peoples lead belaying and calling them up when they are doing it dangerous would greatly reduce the
risk of an accident happening in the future.

The other day I saw a climbing pass the lead climbing test, and I know for a fact they
had having never done any leading in their life, afterwards I saw him repeatedly talking
his break hand of the rope to feed out slack. This is a big accident waiting to happen
which more monitoring would help stop.

just my 2 cents worth.

cruze
26-Oct-2009
4:15:05 PM
And you, of course, told him he was not belaying correctly?
matthewp
26-Oct-2009
4:30:34 PM
yes of course,
rockranga
27-Oct-2009
9:27:02 AM
On 26/10/2009 garbie wrote:
>On 26/10/2009 mikl law wrote:
>>One good feature at SICG is that the areas where there is a lot of leading
>>are too steep to toprope, thus there isn't much potential overlap between
>>leaders and topropers.
>>
>>One rule that could be posted in areas where they do overlap would be
>>"Lead climbing has right of way" i.e don't toprope up into the crutch
>of
>>some shaky leader
>
>Yep fair call, lead climbers are asked to watch out for potential dangers
>like this, but to
>make it clear we'll put some signs up. Ideally we would have the leading
>and top-roping
>areas separate, but it would mean leaders would have no easy terrain to
>climb, or top-
>ropers wouldn't get anything steep. Better I think to have them overlap
>but not have
>leaders & topropers in the same spot at the same time.

One of the things I do when leading is to tie the top rope off (ie.. climber end to belay device), most new people will not undo a knot in order to climb, it's either too confusing for them or they just assume it's tied up for a reason and off limits. A similar process could be implemented, you could advise leaders to tie off the top rope when they begin the route and untie when they finish, the really inexperienced climbers will move on without thinking and the more experienced climbers will realise what's going on and avoid the climb until it's free..

ajfclark
10-Dec-2009
8:09:28 AM
Looks like MSA is getting out of the autobelay market altogether: http://climbingnarc.com/2009/12/msa-redpoint-descender-auto-belay-discontinued-indefinitely
darryn
10-Dec-2009
8:44:23 AM
>One of the things I do when leading is to tie the top rope off (ie.. climber
>end to belay device), most new people will not undo a knot in order to
>climb, it's either too confusing for them or they just assume it's tied
>up for a reason and off limits.

That's a good idea rockranga. Especially in the back corner at St Peters where some of the steep routes
work their way round to meet the vertical face where the top ropes are and it's not obvious to a beginner
that the routes overlap. I'll be doing that next time I'm at the gym.
patto
11-Dec-2009
12:03:49 AM
It doesn't surprise me. When I first had a look at the design and found that it was designed around a small one way bearing I was shocked. Making a safety device that will fail catastrophically if a one way bearing fails seems absurd.

I suspect what has happened with this recall is that they tried to source a mission critical one way bearing. But they now have discovered that nobody could actually supply such a critical component.

 Page 4 of 4. Messages 1 to 20 | 21 to 40 | 41 to 60 | 61 to 71
There are 71 messages in this topic.

 

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