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Leading rappeller falls unconscious. What to do? 16-Aug-2014 At 8:48:15 AM Wendy

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How is the popcorn supply?

On 15/08/2014 JimmyJimJam wrote:
>I might be largely out of place here, being new to the forum, but honestly
>Wendy, someone could quite easily be rendered unconscious by rockfall,
>a wayward swing off an overhang, or any number of unlikely but possible
>scenarios, even having taken the precautions of putting on their helmet
>and tying their auto block. And, when a loose rock comes hurtling at your
>head it makes no difference whether your on a big wall or a measly two
>pitch route.

Try as I might, I can't think of any way an autoblock is going to save being knocked unconscious ... What I was suggesting was that someone who has chosen not to take the precaution of wearing a helmet is likely also to have chosen not to take the precaution of using an autoblock, (which I freely admit to doing rather a lot) and so in the event of being knocked out is going to slide on down the rope the whole way. And if the force of rockfall or hitting the rock is enough to knock someone out through a helmet, I think we might have a few more serious injuries to deal with. Like broken necks and skulls. I would have thought if someone could easily be knocked out rapping in these circumstances with a helmet on, I might possibly have come across it in 25 years.

Andrew offered you the text book answer to your question in about post 3. The following posts suggested that if your scenario ever happened, it was almost guaranteed to have poor outcomes because of the circumstances, time limitations and concurrent medical emergencies. I suspect your ASM course didn't cover it because it just isn't a useful scenario to practice.

I know I amped up the stakes in the beginning but if you have
>no useful advice other than "avoidable or self rescuable" I'll invite you
>to butt out.

Pfft, avoidance and self rescue are crucial survival skills! Especially in the case of this scenario, where the person is going to die. But as you may notice reading my post, I was not actually referring to this scenario at this point, I was offering scenarios that are far more likely to arise and therefore useful to be aware of, avoid and be able to get out of.

Following my avoidance strategy, my suggestion for this scenario is to piss off the autoblock and top belay the abseiler down. Then when a goblin jumps out of the rock, whips their helmet off and clonks them on the head with their hammer, you can just lower them down the rest of the route. Of course, this has problems on a multipitch steep route, but then if you prusik down to this person, you are still hanging in space and unable to swing either of you back into the cliff. Or if you are going to a hanging belay, but then have you thought what are you going to do to get this unconscious person out of a dead hang in a hanging belay?

I honestly think this is not a particularly realistic scenario and you would be better spending your time on the basic rescue skills, principles and strategies, how to apply them in the most common situations, practice them in more awkward situations as you gain confidence and using problem solving skills to work out how to best apply them in the given circumstance. Which is how we really learn everything in climbing. We get taught how to place gear or set up belays in relatively ideal situations and gradually progress to placing harder to find gear and difficult to rig belays. We start of on climbs with easy moves and obvious holds and progress adapting these skills onto harder climbs. We don't pick some obscure hard climb that almost never gets an ascent and ask what's the best way to do the crux so I can practice it!