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Leah Breen had always been taught to embrace failure. You can’t win every mountain bike race, or make it to the top of every pitch. Learn from it, and keep going. But when she felt her partner’s climbing rope careen through her hands over a cliff, she realized in an instant that the consequences of her failure could be much larger than individual defeat. Are there some failures you can’t embrace?
Music: If Walls Could Talk by Jacob Bain & Nis Kotto • I Dare You by Little Glass Men • Anxiety by Kai Engel • Double Helix by Nisei23 • Lake Rise by John Berry • Tracks provided by Free Music Archive or with permission from the artists.
Climbing accidents are not uncommon but can easily be avoided if the proper steps are taking to ensure your safety. I’m glad to hear that Raja was ok. I don’t think this was as much a failure on your part in using the gri gri to lower as it was a failure on the part of the person who instructed you on how to use a gri gri properly. You should NEVER fully open the lever when lowering someone.You should always take the climber’s weight and then slowly engage the lever until they begin to lower. It you haven’t already done so, you should report this accident to the American Alpine Club so that they can add it to their annual book of climbing accidents. It’s a good a way for others to learn from climbing mistakes so that we can all be safer.
Thanks for listening, Brian, and for your comment! The accident happened a year ago, but I’ll definitely report it to the AAC—I agree with your point about educating others to help prevent this kind of accident from occurring again.