Today Sean almost died. He was setting up a rapell for a climb, and instead of putting his sling THROUGH the belay loop, he put it around. He had put his whole weight on the sling too. He called it the “pinch hitch”.
I just happened to notice it, and said “uh is that sling right?” We quickly realized it wasn’t, and I grabbed a sling, girth hitched it around his belay loop, and locked a carabeaner into a bolt.
Here’s where we were. He was attached like I was, with his whole weight on a sling, and no rope.
Thing of putting a rubber band around a finger, and only the friction of the rubber band on the finger keeping you alive.
Anyways he didn’t die. But that’s the closet I’ve ever been to someone dying. For some reason I wasn’t that scared, and as soon as I saw the problem I clipped him in with a sling.
I learned 3 things from this:
1) Always put your slings through both leg loops, rather than a belay loop. This makes it redundant and harder to fuck up.
2) Always anchor yourself into your anchor system with 2 loops rather than one. This may seem excessive, but it’s all about redundency. You can use a sling or PAC or rope with a clove hitch. Use any combination of the two.
3) Buddy check when possible.
Anyways, besides that incident, the day was really fun. We did some lead climbs in a cave(see the pictures), I did a rapell down a 60m cave on my own(2 pitches), and ate a bunch of food. I’ve got GoPro footage of the rapell which I’ll put up later.
We also went to the hotel bar where we were staying, and were the first customers for the new bar! The manager took a picture of us and posted it to his fb tagging us, which was kinda funny.
