The point several of us have been making is that the kind of scenario Dawn, and, earlier D75, describe can happen without the belayer doing anything "wrong." Dawn's inclination was to detect belayer inattention; our point was that, although inattention is of course a possibility, the observed fall could also have occurred because of appropriate and/or unavoidable amounts of slack in the rope and rope stretch.

Short falls on relatively hard climbs taken under sport-climbing conditions (whether or not the gear is trad or bolts) can give a misleading impression of what to expect in other circumstances. Traverses are especially hard to handle because slack can accumulate and hang between each piece; it doesn't automatically slide back to the belayer. The only way to correct this is for the belayer to periodically tighten the rope, but this will tug on the leader and may very well be more dangerous than leaving much of the slack in.

When the fall seems longer than expected, blaming the belayer is natural but quite possibly unjustified. For example, there is nothing in Dawn's description that suggests she did anything improper, and there is no reason to dispense the "grief" she courageously invites by describing this incident.

My old fart's perspective is that we've reached a point in climbing in which safety has been overhyped. There is an enormous amount of safety information and technique, and with this comes a growing illusion that climbing "done right," is a very safe activity. I think that both the systems and the techniques for using them are perceived to be more effective than they really are. The result is that when something goes "wrong," we are encouraged look for human error, and more than that, for character flaws in the participants.

(Another more recent trend is to devise ever more complicated and unrealistic procedures in a doomed attempt to eliminate all risks of human imperfection. The preposterous belay methods currently on display in the current issue of Rock and Ice are an example of this development.)

Yes, we've all seen incompetent practices carried out by people whose stupidity never ceases to astonish. On the other hand, climbing is a human activity and imperfection is part of the human condition. The risks we accept when we tie in are not only the ones that may be a consequence of the objective hazards and our personal failings, both physical and mental, but also those of our belayers, who are, after all, only human.

I'll go out on a limb here and say that if you have a lot of rope out and are out of contact with your belayer, then you cannot expect a short fall to be short. This is a reality the leader has to factor into his or her climbing decisions, not an occasion to blame a belayer after you have dropped much further than you expected.

Getting back to the Arrow, a leader who thinks they may be challenged by the top pitch should bring his or her belayer up to the stance at the start the white slab, rather than leaving them way below and out of sight on the GT ledge.

I'm really suprised that this thread went on for so long.
Its interesting that the length of the fall from the crux of Arrow has become the main topic of discussion. I didn't have any problem pulling the move, if I fell there, I wouldn't mind falling an extra couple of feet, it might get a little dicey because of the angle, but thats okay. The problem that I had was the junk spinner rusty bolt that was at the crux. When I read "bolt" in the guidebook, I had an expectation, that expectation wasn't met, and now that I see that is what the situation is, thats fine, its all part of the game
thanks for all the info
dev

I'll go out on a limb here and say that if you have a lot of rope out and are out of contact with your belayer, then you cannot expect a short fall to be short. This is a reality the leader has to factor into his or her climbing decisions, not an occasion to blame a belayer after you have dropped much further than you expected.

Indeed. When I was belaying a friend on Arrow and he was determined to skip the bolts (the route was retrobolted, after all, but let's leave that aside for now), we did a short middle pitch to get over the roof above the GT ledge, so that I could see him and we had no rope drag.