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General Climbing Discussion

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Leading abseiler falls unconscious. What to do? 22-Aug-2014 At 1:57:00 PM jprockbelly

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On 13/08/2014 JimmyJimJam wrote:
>My question is;
>What would you do if you were rappelling off a route and your partner
>("ahead/bellow)" falls unconscious? Autoblock assumed.

Lots of good discussion above, but here is my 2 cents anyway:

Before you rush into building a pully system and pulling out your laces out to tie prusik knots, you should recognise that you are in a first aid situation, and hence can follow the first aid procedure DRABC, particularly the first step, which is to assess the danger that your partner has succumb to and make sure that you do no suffer the same fate.

So why is your partner unconscious? If it is snake bite, rockfall, lack of oxygen or some other cause that is due to your partners location, then perhaps it is wise to not go down the rope and have 2 unconscious climbers instead of 1. If it is exhaustion, dehydration or exposure first check that you are not also suffering from one of these. If you have determined that it is some other factor that won't happen to you (i.e. you dropped your water bottle on his head and knocked him out), then you can start thinking about how to get to him.... provided of course that you have the daylight, food, drink and clothing to get you through the duration of what is going to be a grueling few hours.

But before you do any of that it's probably a wise idea to call 000, and/or attract the attention of a near by person, and/or pop your epirb off.