Jan. 2025
A recent deadly rappelling accident (on Boxing Day) lengthens the long list of readily preventable disasters that nevertheless intensify the public impression of ‘extreme’ climbing as being very dangerous, and the climbers who do it as being crazy.
In this case, after a 3-pitch climb on a vertical cliff, two ice climbers were descending late in the afternoon by rappelling; whether on the ice or on the rock isn’t known but would be irrelevant.
After completing the first/top rappel, they set up an anchor for the second/middle rappel, and climber A descended the (two) ropes to an anchor at the top of the final/bottom pitch, where he clipped in to wait for climber B to come down and join him. Whether A watched him start down above isn’t known, but he reported that B descended about 10 metres (of the typical 50-60m rappel) before losing control and hurtling some 100m past climber A, to his death at the bottom of the climb. The ropes were attached to the victim, and fell to the bottom with him, so leaving A stranded in the dark some 50m up the cliff, unable to descend.
Luckily climber A had some radio communication device, and contacted Parks Canada Rescue at about 7 pm. A night rescue attempt was practically out of consideration, but A said he was able to survive overnight where he was, and Rescue got ropes to him by helicopter in the morning, allowing him to complete his descent.
Analysis of the ropes and equipment with the victim, B, revealed that he had clipped only one of the two ropes in to his rappel brake; of course both ropes must run through the brake and be controlled during the descent. As it was, his weight pulled down the rope in the brake, while the other escaped upward and pulled through the anchor.
Several common or even standard backup procedures for safety were either sidestepped or not known by these climbers. In order:
- B should have added a backup device or a locking knot — a prussik — on both ropes, as well as his rappel device. This is standard practice in rappelling.
- Another standard procedure for rappelling in the middle of a cliff is to tie a knot in the bottom end of both ropes, so the rappel brake can’t slide off the ends. In this case, although B may have had a nearly-uncontrolled fall to the bottom of the resulting loop and maybe gotten quite banged up, he wouldn’t have hit bottom and may very well have survived, even with minor injury. And the ropes would have stayed available for both climbers to finish their descent.
- It’s a common practice for the first climber down to hold on to the bottom ends of the ropes while his partner rappels, to provide a ‘fireman’s belay’ in case the rappeller loses his own control, by pulling on them — this especially in the case of an inexperienced rappeller, poor light or visibility, or icey, wet, or muddy ropes. A could have done this, even with an end knot in the ropes, though in this case instead of a fireman’s belay it would have become a direct control of the rope being pulled upward through his hands, but he may have been quite able to save his partner from the fall, especially when the end knot (if tied) reached his hands as a solid stop.
- Less common but a very powerful technique for rappel safety is to tie the bottom ends of the rappel ropes directly to the bottom anchor (see photo for one example of a quick clip-in).
In this case it would have acted as a top-rope belay and allowed B to complete his rappel on the single strand of rope, giving him another chance at life to review his methods.
It’s not known whether B had the use of a lamp, but that is also standard equipment for multi-pitch climbing in the short daylight of mid-winter, so he likely did, but otherwise, poor light may have contributed to his missing the second rope when he clipped in. But experienced climbers can and occasionally DO verify setups in the dark by hand, and they can also tie knots like the safety prussik in darkness.
As it is, most climbers will recognize the serious absence of safety precautions applied by this team beyond the anchor, and take heart in that they themselves often or always use at least one of the 4 techniques I mention.
The ‘obvious’ danger of climbing is greatly lessened by routinely applying simple precautions. In fact, climbing can be much safer than this tragedy suggests.
Orvel Miskiw
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