It is difficult to rip a piece of webbing on body weight, unless it is being worked over a sharp edge or another rope. It is extremely difficult to break a climbing rope on body weight. It can be done while climbing, it has happened, but you have to allow new and special circumstances.

On most harnesses, even if the strap comes undone, you are still in the leg loops or as it begins to loosen you can notice it. And it does not always happen all at once.

Sometimes "redundancy" only makes for confusion and danger. In other words, sometimes redundancy can mask the fact that nothing is good. Or sometimes redundancy in a knot or the way a long piece of webbing is used masks the truth that nothing is as it should be. Sometimes redundancy can cause a sling to be cut by another sling. In this regard one anchor, one new non-locking biner, one loop of webbing is better than two or three locking biners and can be perfectly fine. "Redundancy" is not the primary directive when you want a secure anchor. Foremost, each piece needs to be suitable to stand alone with no redundancy necessary.

Knots in webbing require maintenance. As any knotted piece of webbing is used the knots begin to work themselves apart. This is more so the case with solid thick pieces on nylon that are not, for lack of a better word, "braided". Some tape over the ends can be used to measure where the ends should be, and as they start to work into the knot you can measure how far they have moved and retie them.

Allow time to look over your equipment and call to mind everything that happens and what could happen and test it out completely, either mentally or physically before actually using it.

This is a very sad story. I am sorry to hear about it.

incredibly sad, hits home climbing nearby for my 24th birthday just the day before. do we know if this was a "fixed" anchor or was this something those climbing had put together?

Tragic. Condolences to her friends and family.

This is an awful accident, everything about it.

Really sorry to hear this, my deepest condolences to her friends and family - especially those who were there that day.

Comments from Stephanie's mother:

http://www.northjersey.com/news/Haworth_woman_killed_in_upstate_NY_rock_climbing_fall.html

Thanks, RG. Her first time out close to graduation, incredibly sad.

Note that the news account claims that her equipment failed.

A reporter who knows nothing about climbing would lump together everything she was using as "her equipment", including rope, anchor, etc. It's usually pointless to parse news reports on climbing accidents to that fine a degree to get insight about the cause.

I believe the only way to know exactly what happened is to hear directly from those who were in the group, who set up the top rope anchor and how they did it, her harness set-up, etc., and how they managed the entire system.

As a caveat and respectfully, I certainly don't expect to hear from them anytime in the near future as it is just an observation.

My sincere prayers to the family...

This breaks my heart. First time climbing, too. My thoughts and prayers to her parents and family. I simply cannot imagine.