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SICG St Peters - Ground fall 23-Apr-2012 At 5:16:10 PM rockranga

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Good to hear they're back and not injured. Are we able to find out what went wrong? Are there verified details floating around? I know it appears to be belay error but was it due to:
- not paying attention
- using a belay device they were not familiar with
- too much slack in the system
- etc..etc..
'
I think any ground fall (and thankfully in this case a non-fatal one) should be used to learn what went wrong and what could have been done differently. While i'm sure the mistake is nothing ground breaking it's always good to have this sort of stuff in peoples minds so they/we know the consequences of doing things the wrong way. I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of us have bad habbits which we would quickly correct if we truely understood the impact of a worst case scenario (ie... as an example i'm trying to get our of the habit of putting my non-brake hand too close to the belay device when someone is leading, while my hand has never been dragged into a device it's come close when someone fell and would have been a lot worse had i been in a slightly different position at the time - result, change habits).

In this case the belayer may or may not have known they were doing something wrong, and i'm sure they had no intention of letting their leader deck, but intentions are worth zip when your equipment gets the better of you because you were using poor technique.

It would be nice to learn what happened here, even if it only saves one person from a ground fall it would be worth it (especially if that ground fall were to happen outdoors onto rock).

Cheers