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Mt York Accident 21-Jun-2010 At 12:50:12 PM alg

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On 21/06/2010 tnd wrote:
>On 20/06/2010 alg wrote:
>>...There's no way
>>to eliminate the risk of a ground fall on that clip...
>
>I disagree. I rebolted that route ...

I'm in no way trying to blame anyone, most accidents happen due to a combination of factors. In this instance the climber obvously should have been aware of the risk when they went for the clip and accepted that risk. *edit... accepted/avoided...*

I didn't see the actual fall so can't comment on the amount of slack that was out, though i know the belayer well and they're usually very conservative (if anything, too conservative) with the amount of slack they keep in the rope. There was obviously a lot of discussion and inspection of the route/bolting in the 4ish hours it took for the rescue crews to get him out, and with the slack from the 2nd bolt to the 3rd, then back to the waist of the climber in the most obvious clipping stance is about equal the length from the 2nd bolt to the ground (though obviously we didn't have a tape measure). As nmonteith points out, this could possibly be reduced by stepping up so the bolt is at waist height before clipping, from memory this could lead to the rope catching and the climber decking out due to stretch, it's hard to say. This would mean the climber no longer had the ledge to stand on while clipping though.