Chockstone Forum

      Sponsored By
      ROCK
   HARDWARE

Chockstone Photography

Australian Landscape Prints

Chockstone Forum - General Discussion

General Climbing Discussion

Topic Date User

Leading rappeller falls unconscious. What to do? 13-Aug-2014 At 8:17:41 PM kieranl

Message

On 13/08/2014 JimmyJimJam wrote:
>Good ideas.
>Yates hitch? Wha?
>Let's say there's no help nearby. You're bailing off a big face. Winter
>in the mountains. You're a long way from the bottom of a big hill.
>'Prussik down, move one prussik, then the next bellow your partner. Sling
>from your harness to his/her belay device. Place your own autoblock. Remove
>your partners autoblock.'
>Can you then control descent? Or is the device way to far above you?
>If so, rappel to the ropes end. Build a new anchor. Then what?
>Continue the same way?
From the two real-life examples of this scenario among people that I've met, I am sorry to say that the answer is that most probably that you, or more correctly your partner, are rooted.
A major problem is that people in these situations don't usually just "fall unconscious". In fact they don't even have to be unconscious. They tend to occur in situations where the proverbial has hit the fan and there isn't the luxury of systematically working your way through a self-rescue scenario that you've practised on the crag.
If it's an alpine storm, you may well be able to get down to your partner but ice-caked ropes are going to severely limit what you can do. A solution which has resulted in both climbers surviving is to apply the belay-knife to the rope - but this is by no means reliable. You, as the cutter, greatly improve your chances of survival though you have lost your rope. Your erstwhile partner is unlikely to be so lucky.

post-edit : I have actually been in the situation of hanging unconscious from the end of the rope in an alpine gully. Mercifully I woke up and we barely got down before the gully was swept by a major rockfall. Had I remained unconscious for any length of time I would certainly have died. In that circumstance my partner would also have died if he'd persisted in trying to rescue me.