So one of the climbers in my Gym sent me some photos from his weekend in Rumney....

I have cropped this photo to protect the ignorant, but is this the type of climbing anchors new climbers are being taught??!?!!?

Why would anyone bother teaching anchor building at Rumney?

I'm surprised they even have locking biners.

That certainly is not the kind of anchor you want to see when you hook your nose up over a ledge to keep from a big pendulum into yon huge corner while your leader yawns. I always thought that the Rumney crowd was pretty savy but there seem to be exceptions.

There are many good climbers there, but there are quite a few who would be a danger to themselves in a gym let alone being responsible for themselves outside. I was there a few weeks ago. Three guys were climbing next to use who met up in the parking lot. The guy who was going to lead ask one of the others to belay and he said that he had not lead belayed before. The third guy said that he knew what to do and belayed the leader up, it looked pretty sketchy. When the leader reached the top he clipped in some draws and told the belayer to lower him down. Apparently this meant take your hand off of the rope and let er rip. If it were not for alot of friction between the rope and the coarse slabby rock, the leader would have sustained much more than a sprained ankle when he crashed to the ground with a resounding thud. I remeber a leader there a few years back who fell after clipping the third bolt on a climb, flipped becasue a foot was behind the rope and came to a rest inches from the ground. This person was shaken, but not hurt. He then remarked how lucky he was to have such a good belay, yikes! Scenes like this are not uncommon at Rumney. Ten years ago this was not the case, but more recently, just like at the Gunks, dangerous people seem to be lurking around just about every corner.

Dangerouse people are everywhere no area is safe from people that don't know what they do not know if you see something like this be as polite as possible and offer some advice or let them know they aren't being as safe as possible. I've corrected some belay techniques at the cliff just to clear my mind

some have resulted in a OH thanks and some got me weird looks

10 years ago there may have not been the same numbers of no knowledge people but they were still out here in good amounts

I was out last week with my partner doing dat mantel and had the scariest crew next to me I have ever witnessed. There was one individual "teaching" two others how to climb and one more how to lead. They were toproping two climbs to the left of the dismantle block at once and there were about four ropes going somehow. Here are few of the quotes that left us looking at each other in disbelief:
1. Well, which rope is through the anchor?... I think this one... whatever I'll just climb up using this one then.
2. Don't worry about keeping your hand locked down on the atc, the friction will do the work.
3. (My personal favorite after the "leader" made it up to the first belay) Hey, did i leave my atc down there? Yep. Well i will just belay you all up with a munter hitch.
4. Finally. Upon leading the second pitch with all three of his cohorts on a small ledge the leader yells down "Watch me here, I don't really feel comfortable leading at this level."

This doesn't take into consideration how many rocks they knocked down over the hour we were there.

except for the fact that they probably didnt know how to use a munter hitch, whats wrong with using a munter hitch?

Nothing wrong with the munter hitch. but like you said they probably had no idea how to use it.

I've found that at Rumney, the percentage of unsafe and scary climbers drops to a fairly reasonable level as soon as you get away from the Parking Lot crag.

Three weeks ago at Parking Lot I saw the worst example of gri-gri training ever. It's a bummer, no doubt about it.

GO

I feel sorry for the novice gentleman climber yesterday who having decided to teach his girlfriend to climb, had figured that the best way to fix a toprope would be to clip the (single piece of) manky fixed tat hanging below the first roof on Laughing Man, by traversing in from Welcome to The Gunks.

Needless to say the top-roping foray ended early, with a thump, at the base of WTTG.

If you're reading this feller, hope your ankle is ok and your knees are recovering. Next time, have a gander at the guide book before you set off, and make sure the anchors you are hoping to use are not going to rip on first test and leave you or your partner with a worse injury than yesterdays lucky escape.

Just curious, but how did he get up Welcome to the Gunks? We he TR'ing on someone elses setup?

Well, the answer would be that he didn't actually get up Welcome to the Gunks, or rather didn't get up that much of it. Not for lack of trying though.

This is pure conjecture of course, since I only heard the

THUD

accompanied by an

 Quote:

OOOF!

and hurried over to see said individual sitting on the floor rubbing his ankle while looking mournfully at his bloodied knees.

But given that he was sitting on a pile of rope, one end of which he was tied to, and he had pointed out his intended route to me, I think it's a fair interpretation of actual events.

I believe he had peeled off, somewhere just above the first ledge having discovered a startling and probably highly disconcerting absence of holds.

So how did he get up to the anchor to work is gearing magic?

Saw the whole thing. This is how it went down.
We were at the base of credibility gap. My friend Jay was on the phone while Peter (yes the Irish dude) and I were critiquing my friend Mike's anchors. Then this dude next to us on Laughing Man falls on the opening moves and craters.
He was rolling around going ugh ugh and insisting he was fine while his woman laughed.
We asked again if he was ok then left while she was helping him remove his shoe. We got the hell out of there before he killed himself. Fucked everyone up for the rest of the day.

Well that makes alot more sense, at least in terms of what happened.

OK, looks to me like the anchor in question is an american triangle. So... That's bad. You shouldn't do that. But do we really need to get this upset? The webbing is through a couple of glue-ins! Assuming an 800 pound climber doesn't take a 200 foot factor 2 fall onto them, I think everyone is going to be OK.

So did you get on credibility gap? how is it?

My enduring memory of C. Gap is that you'll want 2 ropes to rap down (over Welcome...) If you have one, you'll need to top out and find another way down, and the last "pitch" is horribly brushy.

The climbing wasn't too bad as I recall. If you are trying to do all the 6's on the Trapps, then you have to do this one. (duh!) But it's no classic by any means.

I started climbing in the Gunks in 1972 and moved to Utah in Dec of 2000. I've never done or was ever motivated to do C. Gap. For that matter, only did Asphodel once. After doing the upper pitches to the top, vowed to never return to either.

The move out the prow is probably exciting for a new 5.6 leader. Interesting variety of moves, but I don't think it merits two stars. I don't know about the 2nd pitch.

From the top of WttG belay, you can rap down to the LM anchor with a single.

The american triangle isn't ideal, but as you say not a big deal. But they've got a single gold colored locker on the end of the sling, and attached to that a silver locker on the blue runner and what looks like a non-locking biner on the orange runner, possibly cross-loading it. Angle looks small enough so it probably won't be a problem.

Additionally, the locker on the blue is face down on the rock; movement of the runner could unscrew the gate, or even break the biner.

I wouldn't go as far as calling it a death rigging, but it could easily have been made safer.

Sounds pretty much as I'd imagined. Although having stood and chatted to him while he was sitting on his pile of rope, I'd say he was somewhere in between WTTG and Laughing Man, since the "bolt" that he told me he was aiming for was a good few feet off to the right of his wreckage.

Any idea how far up he got?

umm, bolt?

He looked to be about 10-15 feet up but that is a terrible guess as we were not really looking at him.
As for C Gap. We did not get on it. We wanted to get out of there before that guy killed himself and his girl so we left without climbing it.