the CP wall is great for building strength but I hadn't noticed too many good (or not so good) gear placements, rocks, loose flakes, snakes or anything else involved in climbing. i am not sure whether this is a step forward or a confidence boost to someone who should hook up with a more experienced climber for a while to learn. i am too young to sound so old, but as this episode clearly demonstrates, there is no substitute for real experience. With the numbers of people climbing now and the legal/access climate such as it is, we dont have the leeway that the pioneers had to go out and teach themselves with a goldline and EBs

This type of thing is becoming more common with the multitudes with no instruction/experience. You can’t mandate a certain level of knowledge/experience. As you probably know, the AMC tried to do that many years ago and the Vulgarians ended that pretty quickly. I was walking off the top of the cliff at dusk and came across a group of young people from Brooklyn who had just climbed Beginner's Delight. They were a party of four with two ropes and two belay devices. They had a Blackberry and were searching Google on how to do a carabineer brake rappel. Two of them were going to rap off using the belay devices and two using a carabineer brake with their new found knowledge from the Internet. They had tried to walk off from the top of cliff but didn't trust the trail and had gotten “lost” so they returned to the top of the climb. I told them to follow me and led them down to the Uberfall. As we were walking down I asked them if they knew of the Munter hitch but they had never heard of it. Unfortunately more people and less knowledge/experience is going to equal more injuries and deaths.
Brian

If I had a nickel for the number of times I've swung between saying nothing at all, and trying to intervene ....

but we really need to police our own. We can't leave it up to the Preserve because you know where that line of reasoning goes.

I can completely understand that the party on MT never thought in a million years they'd see what they saw - but if they saw enough to tell stories about it later, then they saw enough to go chase 'em down and chew 'em out.

Still shaking my head here. Unbelievable. As is your story, Brian!

wow....

And as of yet, there's still no thread on rc.com about any of this. What's taking them so long!!!??? How could they miss such an obvious opportunity for gumbys advising gumbys???

As for the CP thing, I agree with what the person upthread said....But on the other hand, at least it is something. I used to go to 59th Street gym and they had Mike Cimono come down a couple times and teach us escaping the belay and self-rescue. His teaching was definitely applicable to outdoors reality, even though the rope was anchored onto a BF metal pipe and not a tree....

I still don't understand exactly what happened, am I stupid or is this sh*t just too crazy and freakish to comprehend?

now I'm even more glad that I was out of town.

I hate hearing people screaming. Unless it's at a Rob Zombie flick.

PS Julie If I'm right there and someone is REALLY about to die, I will and have intervened. and I'm glad I did. Saved at least one life.

Was this on Saturday? I was climbing near there and heard a commotion that sounded like the situation described (up to the girl dangling in space with no idea how to remedy it - no idea there were ropes being cut). We headed the other way to avoid any dramatic rappel...

but that (hating the screaming) is part of the problem. I hate it too. I avoid crowds of gang-ropers who have no idea the effect they're having on everyone else, like the plague. I don't want to go anywhere near know-it-all new leaders of parties of 5. I -really- don't want to get between Boyfriend and Girlfriend (Who Is About To Die).

I'd like to think I'd intervene, but between the ugly scenarios I don't want to be any part of, and the reactions I get when I *do* try to say something ... the very things that need approached, are exactly why you don't want to approach them.

That's why I need a nickel for every time I've swung from saying something, to abiding by the Ten Second Rule.

But still.

Oh crap. I'd agree with whoever suggested there was an autolocking device like an ATC Guide or a Reverso involved.

If they could pass her a knife, they could just as easily have passed up a cam to stick in one of the many horizontals, so she could anchor in directly (thus get her weight off the other party on the rope with her) until someone rapped down to rescue her.

Unreal.

GO

my Main reason for intervening in said circumstance is that at least they won't die in front of ME!
Let them die where and when they may, I just don't want to see the carcass and the blood.
if there is not great risk of imminent DEATH, I always walk away as fast as I can. very simple rules to live by. :-)
I even had to do this with my sister and brother in law once. No - neither of them died.

I guess the reality is that there are always going to be ridiculous leaders out there, as there are always going to be crazy drivers out there, and some of them are going to get hurt/die.

The problem is complacency, there are close to 60,000 deaths by car wreck per year, and no one does anything. But when someone dies climbing, every non-climber's reaction is 'Well that was stupid of them. They shouldn't have been there anyway. Let's ban climbing so it doesn;t happen again..."

Stupid world.