I was a little nervous when my friend told me about this video, but I am glad to see you handle it with such respect. Danny was a good friend of mine and somewhat of a mentor to me in climbing. I worked with him for 2 years and he taught me a ton of things about climbing. When we were told of the accident, many of us were shocked and baffled. Danny was meticulous and overly cautious when it came to climbing. Him getting in to an accident of all people was so confusing, he was so thorough and so knowledgeable. I appreciate you breaking this down and tackling it with precision and gentile. Danny was always trying to learn more and grow in his climbing and I am honored to have been along for the ride. Thank you. Im glad his legacy and memory can be carried on, not just by those who knew him, but by other lovers of climbing as well.
@@BlindGuardian050if your family member dies, are you gonna act like you hardly know them? All he said about "himself" was that Danny was a friend of his and taught him some things.
@@BlindGuardian050 way to be a terrible human. They did not make anything about "them." They shared their appreciation that the topic was covered is a thoughtful manner.
I really appreciate you taking the time to fully humanize this as more than just a “what happened/could’ve happened” discussion and pay full attention to the life that was lost ❤
One person in the mountain project thread made a really good point that in a normal slab fall, the climber's body on the rock prevents the rope from completely pinching down on the carabiner, whereas in a situation where there is a slab above an overhang, the falling climber can actually fall below the angle of the slab, resulting in a true pinch of the rope at the carabiner. It would be interesting to see if you could replicate those two situations in a more controlled setting. The fact that the belayer felt no tension does seem to indicate that the carabiner compressed the rope. Deep condolences to everyone involved.
Under this scenario, I wonder if leaving ANOTHER carabiner attached to the carabiner attached to the rope would reduce the chances of pinching (at the expense of making rattling noises while climbing). or add a thick rubber ring to the rope.
Thank you for making this video and giving an understanding for those of us that are still looking for answers into why Danny's rope snapped. I was a close friend of Danny's for a number of years and the news about his accident was unbelievable when it reached me. Danny and I started climbing together years ago and eventually found ourselves working together at a local climbing gym. He was the biggest nerd when it came to knots, gear, and how to use it properly and we always relied on him when it came to checking our gear and whatnot before a climb. I've seen all the talk about his accident on MP with many people speculating about him making a mistake and it's upsetting to think that this could have been a result of him making a mistake. You describing this as being a factor of many small things culminating to a freak accident is very reassuring to me so I appreciate you taking the time to address this. Danny loved the climbing community dearly and was loved by many in our local community for helping foster a love for climbing in central Pennsylvania
I was there and was very involved in the post accident events which left me very shaken up. It’s surreal to me to now see this accident being covered by a channel as big and influential as How Not 2.
I'm sorry that you were involved in the accident. As someone who's lost friends who were climbing, I hope you're able to parse through things. Therapy definitely helps :)
It's absolutely awful to be witness to something like that, I'm sorry you had to go through that. Do everything you can to heal and help those around you heal as well, you're all going to need it. Be there for each other. If possible, it would be a huge contribution to the climbing community to send in the used gear for testing, and it might help bring you some peace as well.
Graceful handle of a tricky ask. Thanks for taking the time. I lost a rope to this exact scenario and I was fortunate to have that be the only cost of such an important lesson. I had loaned my rope to a couple buddies and one of them fell of a quickdraw that was situated such that the bottom carabiner rested on a rock edge. The climber took a fall and it wasn't even that big. He maybe fell five feet, if that, and he was only like fifteen feet off the ground and the rope was immediately core shot. The belayer was able to lower him quickly and nobody was hurt, but we were all amazed at how small the fall was, and how big the consequence, simply due to the carabiner laying on the rock and pinching the rope between itself and the rock during the fall. My heart goes out to everyone feeling the sting of this loss and I am eternally grateful that I got to see, firsthand, the importance of extending draws over rock lips without paying more than a rope for the lesson. Thanks again for the video
If you could recreate the basic situation, where the belay strand passing through a carabiner gets pinched against the rock by the leader strand, it would be interesting to see what the forces look like and if the rope breaks significantly lower in that situation. You could make a rig where you're able to place anchor a paver at different angles and then have a fall occur over the edge, and I could see trying it with smooth pavers versus a rough edge (maybe pour your own concrete paver for this to get the texture as you want it) to see how the roughness of the rock might affect things.
I see two different tests. The likelihood or force of the pinch on a sloped surface is one. Then the risk of a burr tearing the rope as another. Yes both of these events may have happened together but trying to combine it all is going to be harder and it won't say what the more dangerous situation is. Obviously people should avoid both but shit happens and you have to make due sometimes, so knowledge is important.
I would really love to see this test @HowNOT2 . If the danger factor is that high for a rope to be pinched and create a fall factor >1 at pitch >1 I think it would be a fundamentally important lesson for any climber doing more than leading/toproping a single pitch.
Yeah I'd be curious to see this too. It's not something I've really thought about before - especially somehow pinching the rope on a slabby section and falling over a lip where you have that very specific circumstance creating a lot of force all at once.
Thank you for taking the time to treat this accident with such respect. Reading some of the theories and speculation on that thread, it felt like it got to a point where the argument mattered more than the loss. It got hard to read. In the end, like you said, freak accident and there is no way to ever know every detail. Danny was one of my son's first climbing coaches and the first person he trusted to bring him down from the top of the wall. My husband worked with him at the gym and we all were so fond of him. This was such a hard loss for so many people. His smile was contagious and I still see it everytime I walk in the gym.
Ryan, I lost a friend to climbing and got to see an asshole on Mountain Project shit talk them in their "accident analysis". I want to thank you for being kind in how you approached this. It shows.
First, very thoughtfully done, kudos. Second, I go for the pinching theory with an effective very high fall factor. I do lots of silly abrasion tests, where I pull kernmantle rope back and forth over a very coarse, nasty wood file. My experience is that the sheath is very quickly breached, and then the core strands keep sliding back and forth with little erosion, even for ten times as many pulls. Essentially the sheath is woven so that the sharp points on the file stick in between strands at 45 degrees and pop them, whereas the almost parallel core strands quickly find places between the sharp points. So the rope still has at least 65% of its strength, even though it looks horrible, with frayed sheath everywhere. Drop test sounds cool, but you can probably get a feeling from a slow pull test; namely find the conditions where the rope will pinch through a biner. Put a steel plate at an angle on one end of you pull setup, attach the biner to a "bolt" on the inclined plate, yada yada, find the conditions where it pinches. Attaching the plate to the bench will be interesting, but really you need just 2 attachment points at one pull end of a metal triangular prism. Did he have a unicore rope? Edit: seems like there is a new analysis at MP? May come diwn to calculating the force of an F2 fall with a dynamic rope
Sounds like a bunch of things came together into one single tragic result. As a kid we used to free climb with nothing but nylon ski rope as a backup on sand stone faced mountain. We were lucky. I learned a lot later just how dangerous we were. Now days I always consider SGPR (Situation Gear Placement Ramifications). Be it a climb, fall protection, a lift, or even securing loads, there is always enough time. Proper gear is cheap, severe injury or death, not so much! Ryan and crews videos have taught me so much about rigging and safety and made me both safer and more analytical about what I do and how I do it. Gear I once deemed more than sufficient is now bare minimum is now relegated to tent tie downs or securing a tarp or pipes to a rack. This tragedy is yet another example of a smart person missing just one small detail, or perhaps many small details, in haste and paying the ultimate price for the oversight. So sad for the guys family. Dissemination of these things makes everyone safer but, fuck, there are better ways for us all to learn! Be safe and ever vilegent people.
How about dropping on a garda hitch to better test the burr/pinching theory? If the belayer never felt the load, the force must have stopped at the top carabiner, since there was no mention of a stuck rope.
RIP Danny. We have a memorial for Danny at Seneca, he has a place in so many of our hearts for the rest of our lives. Please feel free to reach out to visit if you wish to reflect on Danny and his life ❤
Man, that’s sobering. I was on a dead stem of a walnut tree that same day, and had nowhere to tie in at the top. I only had a few cuts to make, and I was tied in twice, but both ropes were tied way below my waist, almost down by my feet. On static ropes, I know that a fall, even just the 5-6’ I could’ve fallen there would fuck me up pretty badly. I think about it a lot when I find a flat open topped tree. Hard not to let things like this shake you too hard.
I can definitely see the pain and the sadness in you over this event. A very sad story. As you said the sad thing is everything could have been perfect, perfect conditions, perfect set up, perfect gear, perfect technique but as with anything in life sometimes that 1 in a million failure happens and it can cost someone’s life. Very unfortunate and condolences to everyone involved and the climbers friends and family.
Seneca is Tuscarora Sandstone, sand cemented into quartzite. It does chew up ropes. The exposed sections can get jagged, and you have to watch the flakes. Something to consider, it's not unusual (at least when I was climbing there) to bring a piece of carpet or a part of a welcome mat to put down on the rock when you rapelled. Might be something to consider to mitigate that in the future, especially if you take one anyway. Clip it into the biner, may not work if the rope angles from it. RIP Danny. I hate to hear Seneca Rocks take lives.
@@lydiagattens7426there’s a Seneca rocks in WV, but I’m not sure if that’s the place they’re talking about. I see people mentioning PA, but he’s also from there
Sorry to Danny's family for their loss. Our sport is not without it's risk and while I can't speak for Danny, for myself, I go out knowing those risks because climbing brings me enough joy to make my life worth living. I hope Danny got to experience that. The description of the "gunshot" sound makes me think of a similar incident which happened to a friend of mine where the rope was damaged by battery acid. I wonder if there has been any look at the rope ends? I imagine with the emergency response that wasn't a priority. Maybe I'm just unaware of it, but I don't think there has been a HowNot2 test of how battery acid (or other chemicals) affect rope?
My personal view is that You should refrain from make a "testing video" about this until there are enough "firm facts" that You can make a video without having to speculate. And imho that is presently not the case. Best regards.
At least one of the actual incident witnesses is reaching out to him. Besides, even if all he does is disprove several supposed answers he'll still have contributed something of incredible value.
Experimental physicist here. The crux to this experiment is to recreate the rope overlap that caused the pinching during a whip. As you said, things move around. A little bit of double-sided scotch tape to keep things in place during a drop test. The extra adhesion is negligible compared to the fall forces in the drop test. So here's how I'd set up a drop test experiment: Drop test a mass M (climber) a distance L (total rope length during the accident) above a fixed point (belay) with a point of protection between the climber and belay. M, L, and the location of the protection should be selected to best match the accident report. Attach two dynamometers: one at the belay and one at the protection point. The protection point should be a carabiner taped to a slab-like rock, positioned in a way that ensures the fall line of the mass M results in the rope overlapping during the whip, recreating this necessary pinching effect. This is not an easy task as the fall line has variance. Wind shields help if this is outside. Also magnetic release systems promote consistent dropping. Here's the key to a successful experiment: the dyna on the belayer should read ~ 0 kN if you successfully recreated the pinching effect, as noted in the accident report. If this doesn't break the rope, add some burrs or sharpness to the carabiner (although, not sure if that actually played a role here).
@@derekcraig3617 Harder to control variables at the accident site compared to in a lab. It could be very nuanced the details you need to get right to recreate the failure mode. Plus, a lab setting allows you to more easily vary things like slab angle at the point of protection.
I have had ropes twist creating a loop. When the loop hit a carabiner it was the same as tying a stop knot. Usually happens if you use a rope for short projects then jump on a long multi pitch tying into both ends of the rope at the ground traps the twist. I messed up uncoiling a new rope once and that rope would twist up on everything for about a month.
A pretty simply way to simulate a fall factor > 2 , is connect a weight to a chain/cable, then connect the chain/cable to a length of rope which is attached to an anchor. 3/8" grade 80 chain should be strong enough
Yep, if you attach 5ft of chain to your weight on one end and to 5ft of rope on the other, then drop it from 5ft above the anchor you would get a fall factor of 3 since the weight can fall 15ft with only 5ft of dynamic rope in the system. Using chain will also let you dial in the exact FF you want by attaching the weight to a different link closer or farther from where the rope is connected to the chain.
A similar way that doesn't involve joining a chain/cable with a rope and should be doable with material you probably have: Attach the rope to a ring/biner but instead of attaching the ring/biner to a bolt let it slide down a length of metal rod that is attached to a strong point at the bottom. If your rope length is X feet and the length of your metal rode is Y feet your weight drops 2X + Y feet before the rope catches and you get a factor 2 + Y / X fall.
Cable is the worst. At least when chain breaks you only have to look out for a single link worth of shrapnel. Line dampers are cheap insurance for cable though.@@ryanp0342
Yeah sometimes I am overly scared when climbing since I know about so much that can go wrong. Or just having seen so many ropes break here. But while it is definitly nice to know a lot about limits of gear now I for myself should just acknowledge how much it takes for new rated stuff to fail when used correctly and have fun with it.
Thanks for making this video, very well done and with compassion. I worked for many years as an accident reconstruction expert and it needs to be reinforced that weird stuff happens and very often we will never know for certain what happened. I have worked on legal cases where all the experts had figured out what most likely happened only to be demonstrated to be wrong when a video or other evidence turned up. Dan Merrick (DAMMERR)
I don't know this guy, but he grew up near where I lived. He probably climbed at Reading Rocks, the first place I ever climbed back in 2001. Condolences to his friends and family.
Condolences to Dany's family and friends and to the belayer..... man such a horrible thing to happen to someone who maybe is your best friend just... hope everyone finds a way to deal with this tragic loss and lots of strength. Thank you for going into this it's very interesting how to avoid these situations. For the test: Do a pull test where you bolt it into your in-office pull table. Hard to explain but I will try Build a steel H frame with a steel plate and a loop on the other side of the pulling force On top of the steel plate, you bolt a round piece of rock(sloper) If it does not make sense send me a message or answer here and I can draw something up in autocad
Good respectful and thoughtful discussion. I feel two ways about this, on the one hand there are a zillion freak combinations that can happen that cause gear to fail. Enough people climb enough and you are going to have black swan events. You can't possibly test everything. On the other hand, I think climbing's empirical and anti-fragile approach is really important, and we owe it to Danny to find out what happened. In order to properly investigate, it may be necessary to get a look at the actual gear and the exact location, which may not be possible. But I think it is worth trying to find out if this was likely a gear issue like a carabiner with a burr, or if there is some potential issue like the pinching you talked about which on its own can present a major risk that people maybe aren't fully considering.
Such a terrible loss, same age, definitely a splash of cold humble water to the face with this one. Stay safe people, rest in peace to a brother, a son, a friend, a fellow human being
First. Thanks for treating this matter with respect. Second. It's important for climbing community to learn from this accident - because there are no freak accidents. Importantly, from the available information, this was an accident scenario that was pretty ordinary - an experienced climber and belayer working on a known route using reasonable safety precautions - not elites simuling and placing little protection for the objective of a speed record, not uniformed beginners that tied with single overhand knot and belayed without the use of a device or hip belay (both of these scenarios are from actual accidents). Point is - any of us could encounter this failure so it's worth examining for everyone's benefit, and I think that does the Danny and his loved ones a service. Said that, I've modeled how I believe this accident occurred (based on the currently available info) and I think there are four variables to examine: (1) the position of the roof and the slab relative to the extension of the carabiner and its ability to pinch the rope as the extended protection moves against the rock as the climber moves; (2) the effect of a burr or other wear point on the specific model of carabiner used - alpine carabiners tend to have a design that hollows out the structure of the biner to save weight, creating ridges in the biner by design (3) the effect of the rocks texture on the rope in a pinch scenario and (4) the effect of fall factor. My hunch is that several of these variables aligned to create this tragic ciircmstance. But I also suspect one or more of these variables played a disproportionate role in the accident. Lastly, I think it would be useful to test whether or not this accident could have been prevented with the use of twin ropes (or double ropes if the route allowed it) vs a single rope. It's worth studying not so much because this was a freak accident, but because it sure looks like this was how most of climb every day, a seemingly innocuous but dangerous flaw in the system can be identified that can save lives in the future. Thanks for all the rigor and care.
Accidents like this are freaky, but it is still respectful to try to figure them out and think about preventing them in the future. I have a theory you might find useful for an experiment: during the fall, the rope falls too. If it falls into a feature that pinches it close to the climber (not on the carabiner or before like you seemed to hint at), all bets are off… you can easily go over 2x. I accidentally managed this at a fortunately very low speed once. It was memorable. Doing that at more than 10m/s would be… not something I'd try.
It’s too hard to know exactly what happened, but I am interested in the gunshot bang. It would be interesting to load some ropes and then cut them in varying ways to see if you can re-create the sound. it just seems to me that cutting from one side to the other would take too many milliseconds to make a sharp noise.
So sorry to all concerned, tragic; Ryan is best placed to answer , as your comment “the sharp bang” is likely the key, Ryan’s testing has gear flying everywhere making a noise, so difficult to isolate how much of a bang a rope snapping makes, huge release of energy for the belayer to hear a sharp bang . grim all round.
If you wanted to test pinching ropes maybe a scaffolding Jordan Safety Clamp (temporary anchor point for scaffolders) would let you apply such forces. They are designed to arrest falls (up to 22kN depending on application) and already have a large eye you could use. The idea is the clamp is suspended by the eye and in the jaws instead of the normal scaffold tube is a smaller diameter length of solid round stock, the rope, then carabiner. Could use a low range torque wrench when tightening the nut to measure how tight the rope is being clamped / pinched. Possibly clamp a small rock in there to simulate gear not being extended. As always, thanks for raising awareness of these issues and explaining it so it's understandable.
It will be important to find out charactheristics of the rope. What was it's diameter? How long was it in use? How many leader falls had he taken on it previously? When I started climbing 51 years ago, ropes were 11 mm in diameter. Then it became the thing to climb with smaller diameter ropes. People are climbing with 9 mm ropes now. It's a certainty that a smaller diameter rope is more prone to break over edges than a thicker diameter rope. Then why are climbers on a march to climb with thinner ropes? Is it because a 9 mm rope weighs less on the approach? Is it because a rope manufacturer has done lab tests that show that thin ropes are fine in perfect condition and that they know that they can charge every increasing prices for less volume of material. Certainly, the cost of manufacturing a rope goes up with the diameter. Have rope companies seduced us with a lighter pack while they can charge more money for a less safe product? With the loss of a good climber and person, we are asking ourselves how did this happen? Why is it nearly impossible to find 11 mm ropes to climb with now? It's even difficult to find a 10.5 mm rope. I hope that the experimental design will include using the diamater of rope that Danny had and also recreating it with 11 mm rope to compare. It would seem that putting a climber's weight tied in as Danny did, then having the rope pass through a carabiner that is isolated by putting it on a bolt hanger on a bolt on a ramped location would be the start. The rope could be anchored just a few inches below the carabiner to a second bolt. It seems that regardless of how the rope wasn't able to elongate though the climb, that was what happened. Did it get caught in a grove as some suggested? Did it get pinched? Either way, the lower anchor below the carabiner would simulate this. I've climbed at Seneca Rocks many times. The rock, the Tuscarora Sandstone is vertically bedded and while it's called a sandstone, it's been metamorphosed in a number of mountain buildling episodes in the Appalachains. This results in many sharp edges and quartz blobs that protrude. Likely, the situation is not similar to California granite that has rounded edges. It would be important to this investigation to photograph the location of the accident and have a better understanding of the sharpness of the face where the rock came into contact with the rope. To me, it seems more likely that a sharp quartz crystal could have cut the sheath than a burr in a carabiner. One other thought. In the past, the axiom was the leader never falls. Today, people are encouraged to fall when they take their lead test at the rock gym. Climbers today are educated that taking leader falls is no problem. How would the situation have changed had the victim decided not to intentionally fall and tried to downclimb instead? This accident points out that it is very difficult to consider all the variables that can happen in a fall. It's better not to fall. At such times, we have to honor the victim and console those who were a part of this tragedy. However, we must investigate the accident and try to recreate what happened so that the rest of us can learn better how to climb safely and possibly make changes to our gear. As such, we gather here to honor Danny and his love for climbing. We know that Danny would want the answers to what happened so that this doesn't happen to other climbers.
Hi Ryan, You can simulate a factor two fall with a CAMP Goblin. Rope can pulled back very quickly through it. This can be accomplished with bugie rope parallel below the Goblin. Condolence to all the families.
For the test - how about beginning by isolating the pinch factor? Ex. Bolt a biner to a peice of metal to pinch the rope and do a few body drops at varying lengths on that. If that doesnt break the rope, start adding in some contibuting factors until you find minimum number that would recreate a failure. For example, if the pinch alone isnt enough, then add in factors like substituting the metal for rock, adding small vertical cuts, recreating the angle, adding a bur , etc.
if i had infinite resources to work on this to find the root cause, i would either close the climbing area and do testing directly on the anchor (with a scaffolding installed to work from) or i would make a casting of the area around where the anchor was. you should be able to case the rock using paint on silicone and a lot of patience. my third option would be a laser 3D scan of the area around the anchor then 3D printing the area then using that to make a mold. lastly i would go to computer modeling (but only as a last resort). i hope the engineers that work for the companies that made the climber's gear all put in some work to figure this one out. we take on an ethical and moral responsibility when we make products that impact safety
Well done. Good treatment of the situation. I agree that securing a piece of concrete to the drop tower as a replicate edge might be effective for recreating this scenario. I would start with a pier block as they are substantial and come with a pre-drilled hole for anchors if to the tower with a big bolt. Or maybe just clamp a paver to the top side of an I beam with a few squeeze clamps.
Quick comment: For some ropes, the rope fall ratting number is only on fall factor 1s and not fall factor 2. Those ropes should be retired after one fall with 1.6 factor or higher. Always check the UIAA fall ratting for the rope you use and how it was tested (fall factor 1, 1.5, 1.7 or …)
I’m not a climber but I have 35 years in industrial rope access. Our knot locations are always changing on the rope based on height of work, rarely do you put stress on the same places on the rope. Climbers always use the end so all the stress is almost always in the same areas over and over based on how many climbs and how many whippers(falls). So either end of the rope could be full of unseen internal stresses caused by many uses. In short the pinch areas might have occurred many times in relatively same area. One to many, could cause a snap where the inner cords have been damaged and didn’t hold after the cover was pinched then failed. Just trying to wrap my head how it could have possibly happened. But not real sure. Sadly there are risks and knowing the conditions of rope are paramount.
RIP Danny. This one hits home because I also lost a brother named Danny years ago. Ryan, what if you were to recreate a pinching scenario like you described in the video by clamping rocks/crab/rope together in the right position? Maybe a quickgrip clamp would do the trick?
Hey Ryan I noticed a lot of your recent videos are low view count compared to your subscriber number. For example some videos only have 25k or 50k views but you have almost 200k subscribers. I think the vague titles with the "they" and "this" aren't really helping you. Climbing is serious and shouldn't try to clickbait people into watching. IMO you are targeting the wrong audience. I'm a fan of your channel but the vague titles aren't helping. Also the red arrows and circles in the thumbnails don't really help. I think your videos can stand on their own without the vague titles and unnecessary click bait. The information you give is valuable but I think sometimes the way it's presented turns people away.
UIAA specs (such as 7-8 falls) are useful in comparing one rope to another. They have virtually no value in real world climbing. Even if the leader's mass were equal to the UIAA test weight, the spindle diameter in the test is much greater than a carabiner plus other differences conducted identically each time in a laboratory. It's very dangerous to think that a 7-8 fall rope will take 7-8 falls in the real world. It may take 30 falls, it may be unsafe after 1 fall. Thank you for posting the video. It's important to analyze and discuss all accidents. Especially when life is lost.
After watching your video and reading the forum thread I came up with a theory that the failure was a combination of pinched rope and abrasion and just posted that theory in the thread (Tyler Murray's post). As mentioned in that post it would be interesting to see test effects of pinching a rope (both pull test and drop test) and abrasion drop tests (drop over smooth curved surface, rough curved surfaces with either increasing roughness or reduced radius, blunt/sharp edges etc). The first test (pinched rope) would just be interesting to see if/how much it affects rope strength. The second one would show the importance of gear placement to avoid falls on edges. I believe you have already done some fall factor videos but a drop test video on that and trying to recreate effects of belayer pulling in line while a climber falls would be interesting. This could be done easier than you theorized because you don't have to test to failure so can use lighter weights and some type of capture device (even toothed) while trying to pull in (some way to know how much rope was pulled in will be the hard part, maybe colour coded rope or something and high speed video). All you need to do is measure the forces and see if you can recreate a greater than factor 2 fall. The high speed camera idea also gave me idea that it would be neat to see high speed video of a rope failure, not sure if that has been done.
First and foremost, RIP Danny... =( I had an idea about how to target a certain part of rope. Instead of using tape or something like that, which can be moved from pressure via a carabiner, etc, but instead use spray paint. Like, use two pieces of cardboard to help narrow down where the paint lands on the rope for a finer line to help target spots. Could be useful in examining different tests when looking at a specific spot on a rope.
Seneca Rocks is a formation in the Tuscarora Sandstone. This stuff is quartzite and forms extremely sharp edges that will cam your rope on these sharp crystals. It's like catching a factor-2 fall on pro traxion. A virtually identical accident happened in the same location in 2010. You've gotta touch this stuff to understand how sharp these crystals are. It's almost like a rock made from broken car windows.
Thank you for humanizing this accident. I think regarding gear fear, everyone needs to remember that almost all climbing risk is mitigable. This is the rare case where it seems most everything was done right. The vast majority of deaths are from rappel accidents that could be fixed by weight testing, using a prussik/assisted brake device and tying stoppers. If you are really concerned about something like this, it sounds like climbing on twin ropes could prevent rare rope snap accidents like this. Like you said, freak accident. I view something like this like getting struck by lightning or having a heart attack. Driving to the crag is significantly more dangerous.
middle marks on ropes from the factory should be mandatory. No exceptions. I recently had a brush with death a middle mark would have prevented. was using a Beal rope that didnt have one from the factory. wasnt supposed to be our multi pitch rope so I had yet to put one on this very dark colored rope but we had it so we used it. I wont go in to the details of how this close call happened, yes mistakes were made, but a middle mark would have prevented the close call. Condolances to friends and family.
Idea for design :on your droptower Or on your testbench, have a large diameter tube ( metal or something) have like griptape on there to simulate the rock, a carabiner on that surface which you can adjust up and down to recreate the angle of the "rock" , so you can recreate the pinching effect. What you also can do maybe instead of griptape (which might damage/ slide during testing) , use industrial paint with course sand dusted over it .
This whole deal makes me think we should talk more about drag, corners and other stuff that would essentially "increase" the FF. The pinching thing didnt have to be "absolute" for this fall become really harsh, if the rope is no longer new (i.e. fuzzy-ish and not slippery) and is touching some rough edges near that too pro, that alone would increase the FF significantly, right? Many many multi pitch routes have zigszags and rock features thay "remove" significant rope lenght from the system when a leader falls. How many times have you asked for slack but the belayer acually had you loose? Theoretical FF may be a bad idea.
Thanks for doing this video! I was there and it was very scary! Also I hope his family is doing as good as they possibly can after this. Also I have pictures of the cut rope if it means anything, but would rather not post them publicly
Seatbelts will absolutely help even in a head on collision, as long as the crash structure works. You may get fractures but that's generally preferable to dying.
My sincere condolences to the family and friends of the young man. I have five sons and can't even think of what it would be like... My thoughts and prayers go out to them. But I believe your analyzing and trying to explain what could happen is extremely important and necessary.
Sympathies and best wishes to family, friends, and rescuers! We all know ropes tend to break in knots. Why...bends and compression in the knot. Test the strength reduction do to compression of the rope. If the biner pinched the rope against the rock resulting in an increased FF, the biner/rock pinch point functioned similar to a knot compressing the rope. Testing the effect of compression of the rope on strength might be telling. First pass test - put a cable clamp on rope and pull test. Thanks for your thoughts on this tragedy.
Unless there are pictures of the rope and the hardware on the rock I don't think you can even begin to properly explore what happened with testing. The only thing that blind recreating the accident could lead to is some repeatable freak loading that always results in a failure.
To test a fallfactor above 2 you could create a movable anchor point. The rope would be fixed to guide rod and is stopped at the end. Kind of like on a via ferrata which can reach a fall factor as high as 5! Maybe using a spanset for half the rope length would be close enough to static.
Can a rope actually get pinched between carabiner and rock to the point where the belayer feels no force? You’d have to somehow create a situation where it behaves like an ATC-style device in guide mode.
Be interesting to know if rope against rope burns was partly or the whole reason? As the rope becomes pinched then falls over the rope below the carabiner.
Thank you for a very humane discussion of the relevant technical details. My first thought is that with the information available, there isn't a way to reproduce the accident. I could see playing with a "rope grinder" of a carabiner pinching the rope onto a piece of rock in the slow-pull machine to see what happens, but I hare a hard time seeing drop tests working with such a thing. I think the other issue that should be considered is the possibility that the rope had been exposed to a strong acid. There was an accident some years ago where a climbing rope broke in a gymn and forensic analysis found it had been exposed to battery acid.
I think you speculated about what might have happened in the best possible way. Nevertheless, I want to ask you to consider doing something else when there is the next tragic climbing accident: ask everybody to refrain from speculations until there is more information. The tragic accident of Danny just happened and many people want to know NOW what was the cause - this is our natural human urge. But most people will see your speculation in this video (because it receives a lot of clicks due to our human nature) and very little people will ever learn about the follow up of the case after the evidence will be evaluated and after your speculation might be as well invalidated. What will remain in public domain and in intuition of many climbers is, however, your speculation rather than a more solid evidence-based hypothesis. I like and respect and learn from your videos but I'd prefer if you were the authority to slow down the crazy train of speculations in cases such as Danny's accident and suggest everybody to be patient and wait for some evidence provided by the official inspection of the rope before making a conclusion - even a speculative one. This accident is unlikely a result of design or manufacturing error of a piece of climbing equipment so there is also no urge for immediate publishing and issuing a warning to the potential equipment users. (NOTE: I assume there will be an official investigation which will at minimum inspect the rope and thus will be able to answer many questions. If due to any reason this is not expected to happen, my comment is mostly irrelevant - but more importantly, it would be extremely unusual - at least here in Europe - not to have such an investigation)
A possible option for a drop test where you can pull slack during the fall and get the rope pinched at the carabiner would be to use an alpine clutch/garda hitch? Just a suggestion, this definitely is not an easy test to do!
fall factor > 2: two person tied with a rope, walk at the same time on ice (up, few point between). second one fall, pull the rope => first one fall and length of the rope becomes less than length of fall test idea: main dumbbell on the top of the tower (stable but on the edge). + rope + Garda hitch + small dumbbell somewhere near the ground(limit how much you can reduce the rope)
I think this is a really important thing to look into. How does popes getting pinched, or a large amount of rope drag in the system affect the forces? and how would crystals or a bur on the carabiner affect the rope? I wonder how often things similar to this happen, but the outcome is less tragic. I.E: This summer I had a 10m whipper on a slab. It was a low-angle slab, but I luckily fell off the edge of the slab into a gully so it was a fall in empty air. Anyway, my belayer said he could not feel me falling (and I was out of view). He did not realize I fell until I stood up. There was quite a lot of rope in the system 40 or 45 meters. I assumed rope-drag and rope-on-stone friction was the reason he did not feel the fall, but now I am wondering if the rope got pinched. Edit: There was no visual damage to the rope. We were using two ropes.
I outweigh my belayer by 60 lbs and we noticed that It doesn't take more than a few sharp bends in the rope before there's so much drag that lead falls start feeling like top rope falls to the belayer
The MtnProject drawing and analysis seems fairly clear; testing over a broadly curved rock section, with coarse texture, could replicate the binding of the strand from below, as the section from the biner to leader is trapped by the force of the fall - the abrasion under the biner could initiate the tearing of the fibers, while the binding effectively creates a factor two fall - maybe more, if several feet of slack slide down initially. Not really that hard to imagine, and surprising only perhaps as on that terrain climbers rarely slip, and never just jump off.
It might not recreate the scenario exactly in regards to the pinched on a rock, but perhaps for the nicked carabiner and the pinch working in tandem to create this failure, you could use a Garda hitch (alpine clutch) with the top binder having the notch in it. Thanks as always for the insight and open dialogue.
I think the pinch theory would be nice to test, because it might happen again... even proving a factor 2 when it is supposed to be 1.5 would be enough to prove it can happen..
What if, you setup rope and carabiner on a ledge, have the belay side towards the wall and climber side away from the wall, mount two L brackets with a gap of a rope width. Have the ropes stacked in the gap created with the L brackets. Climber side of the rope stacked on top of the belayer side. Drop test it. The goal is to simulate a scenario where the climber strand pinches on the belayer strand when falling. The L bracket ensures the worst case with perfect stacking.
Would be really good to try and recreate this scenario as this does seem to be a scenario which many climbers could experience.. in fact i think i was belaying my dad on a top rope with this sort of pinching occuring just a couple of weeks ago. Clearly not as risky with it being a top rope but the principle is the same.. extend those runners folks!
As interesting as this channel is from a materials and physics perspective I always try to remember that every point of data is potentially a life. Events like these really drive that home.
Take/get several pictures of the rock where the carabiner was and have a stone mason make a copy out of the same type of rock. Anchor the rock rigidly and attach a carabiner in the same spot on your copy.
You mentioned factor 10 fall on a rope pinched. Seems like it wouldve that in combination of being bein pinched as in an atc in guide mode, and over an edge im a horizontal placement. See what it doo
if you are 10 feet above the carabiner, fall, the rope feeds back through the draw, then when you are level with it, the rope pinches with 1 foot from harness to draw, that would be a factor 11 fall (10 feet to draw, 1 foot past, on one foot of rope). that would be the test to do.
would the gunshot noise imply that the rope wasn't cut from a burr? It makes more sense to me that the sheath might have been friction cut/melted by the rope on the rock then when the compromised rope was loaded it failed?
An eyewitness to the fall recently added to the mp discussion, "The rope was definitely taught against a sharp edge and the tension created by the fall was enough to go through the rope."
Well, assuming that is true, then that seems to be the answer. Occams razor - The simplest explanation is usually the most likely. Rope got loaded over a sharp edge, rope was cut. That’s an important difference from the rope breaking. My sincere condolences to the friends and family of this phone man.
From the explanation I’m assuming due to the slack to the belayer never getting tight, and the snap sound. It sounds like it was in deed pinched higher “probably where the belay” was and like you said snapped due to less rope available above the anchor. The slack was taken up down the line somewhere, that’s where the failure was most likely located. What caused it exactly isn’t present unless you can get ahold of all his gear
Isn't that kinda the point though? For me anyway my fear motivates me to do everything right, learn, and double check. When I'm putting the rope back in the bag at the end of the day it's a different feeling of accomplishment than hiking Mt. Washington. They might take the same overall effort, but the possibility that things could go badly wrong really fast makes it distinct. The risk is what helps us focus; and as with any risk it will statistically catch up to someone eventually. Not trying to be cold, and what happened to Danny was outta the blue sky as far as I know, just saying that the risk IS the reward kinda. Not really sure how to put it better, but I hope you know what I mean.
I was a little nervous when my friend told me about this video, but I am glad to see you handle it with such respect. Danny was a good friend of mine and somewhat of a mentor to me in climbing. I worked with him for 2 years and he taught me a ton of things about climbing. When we were told of the accident, many of us were shocked and baffled. Danny was meticulous and overly cautious when it came to climbing. Him getting in to an accident of all people was so confusing, he was so thorough and so knowledgeable. I appreciate you breaking this down and tackling it with precision and gentile. Danny was always trying to learn more and grow in his climbing and I am honored to have been along for the ride. Thank you. Im glad his legacy and memory can be carried on, not just by those who knew him, but by other lovers of climbing as well.
Sorry for your loss
@@BlindGuardian050 Not sure how you would say that…But, there always that guy and you were him today! Peace bro!
@@BlindGuardian050if your family member dies, are you gonna act like you hardly know them? All he said about "himself" was that Danny was a friend of his and taught him some things.
@@BlindGuardian050 way to be a terrible human. They did not make anything about "them." They shared their appreciation that the topic was covered is a thoughtful manner.
Danny was a great guy and great climber, thank you for treating this video with respect.
😞
I really appreciate you taking the time to fully humanize this as more than just a “what happened/could’ve happened” discussion and pay full attention to the life that was lost ❤
One person in the mountain project thread made a really good point that in a normal slab fall, the climber's body on the rock prevents the rope from completely pinching down on the carabiner, whereas in a situation where there is a slab above an overhang, the falling climber can actually fall below the angle of the slab, resulting in a true pinch of the rope at the carabiner. It would be interesting to see if you could replicate those two situations in a more controlled setting. The fact that the belayer felt no tension does seem to indicate that the carabiner compressed the rope. Deep condolences to everyone involved.
Under this scenario, I wonder if leaving ANOTHER carabiner attached to the carabiner attached to the rope would reduce the chances of pinching (at the expense of making rattling noises while climbing). or add a thick rubber ring to the rope.
This is tragic RIP Danny. I think this was a freak accident and I hope the belayer is able to handle the mental anguish this is causing.
Thank you for making this video and giving an understanding for those of us that are still looking for answers into why Danny's rope snapped. I was a close friend of Danny's for a number of years and the news about his accident was unbelievable when it reached me. Danny and I started climbing together years ago and eventually found ourselves working together at a local climbing gym. He was the biggest nerd when it came to knots, gear, and how to use it properly and we always relied on him when it came to checking our gear and whatnot before a climb. I've seen all the talk about his accident on MP with many people speculating about him making a mistake and it's upsetting to think that this could have been a result of him making a mistake. You describing this as being a factor of many small things culminating to a freak accident is very reassuring to me so I appreciate you taking the time to address this. Danny loved the climbing community dearly and was loved by many in our local community for helping foster a love for climbing in central Pennsylvania
I was there and was very involved in the post accident events which left me very shaken up. It’s surreal to me to now see this accident being covered by a channel as big and influential as How Not 2.
I'm sorry that you were involved in the accident. As someone who's lost friends who were climbing, I hope you're able to parse through things. Therapy definitely helps :)
Can you get him the rope and gear?
how are you holding up after the accident?
Please consider some counseling or talking to loved ones, you can have long lasting PTSD from being around events like this.
It's absolutely awful to be witness to something like that, I'm sorry you had to go through that. Do everything you can to heal and help those around you heal as well, you're all going to need it. Be there for each other. If possible, it would be a huge contribution to the climbing community to send in the used gear for testing, and it might help bring you some peace as well.
Graceful handle of a tricky ask. Thanks for taking the time. I lost a rope to this exact scenario and I was fortunate to have that be the only cost of such an important lesson. I had loaned my rope to a couple buddies and one of them fell of a quickdraw that was situated such that the bottom carabiner rested on a rock edge. The climber took a fall and it wasn't even that big. He maybe fell five feet, if that, and he was only like fifteen feet off the ground and the rope was immediately core shot. The belayer was able to lower him quickly and nobody was hurt, but we were all amazed at how small the fall was, and how big the consequence, simply due to the carabiner laying on the rock and pinching the rope between itself and the rock during the fall. My heart goes out to everyone feeling the sting of this loss and I am eternally grateful that I got to see, firsthand, the importance of extending draws over rock lips without paying more than a rope for the lesson. Thanks again for the video
If you could recreate the basic situation, where the belay strand passing through a carabiner gets pinched against the rock by the leader strand, it would be interesting to see what the forces look like and if the rope breaks significantly lower in that situation.
You could make a rig where you're able to place anchor a paver at different angles and then have a fall occur over the edge, and I could see trying it with smooth pavers versus a rough edge (maybe pour your own concrete paver for this to get the texture as you want it) to see how the roughness of the rock might affect things.
I see two different tests. The likelihood or force of the pinch on a sloped surface is one. Then the risk of a burr tearing the rope as another. Yes both of these events may have happened together but trying to combine it all is going to be harder and it won't say what the more dangerous situation is. Obviously people should avoid both but shit happens and you have to make due sometimes, so knowledge is important.
I would really love to see this test @HowNOT2 . If the danger factor is that high for a rope to be pinched and create a fall factor >1 at pitch >1 I think it would be a fundamentally important lesson for any climber doing more than leading/toproping a single pitch.
Yeah I'd be curious to see this too. It's not something I've really thought about before - especially somehow pinching the rope on a slabby section and falling over a lip where you have that very specific circumstance creating a lot of force all at once.
Thank you for taking the time to treat this accident with such respect. Reading some of the theories and speculation on that thread, it felt like it got to a point where the argument mattered more than the loss. It got hard to read. In the end, like you said, freak accident and there is no way to ever know every detail. Danny was one of my son's first climbing coaches and the first person he trusted to bring him down from the top of the wall. My husband worked with him at the gym and we all were so fond of him. This was such a hard loss for so many people. His smile was contagious and I still see it everytime I walk in the gym.
Ryan, I lost a friend to climbing and got to see an asshole on Mountain Project shit talk them in their "accident analysis".
I want to thank you for being kind in how you approached this. It shows.
First, very thoughtfully done, kudos. Second, I go for the pinching theory with an effective very high fall factor. I do lots of silly abrasion tests, where I pull kernmantle rope back and forth over a very coarse, nasty wood file. My experience is that the sheath is very quickly breached, and then the core strands keep sliding back and forth with little erosion, even for ten times as many pulls. Essentially the sheath is woven so that the sharp points on the file stick in between strands at 45 degrees and pop them, whereas the almost parallel core strands quickly find places between the sharp points. So the rope still has at least 65% of its strength, even though it looks horrible, with frayed sheath everywhere. Drop test sounds cool, but you can probably get a feeling from a slow pull test; namely find the conditions where the rope will pinch through a biner. Put a steel plate at an angle on one end of you pull setup, attach the biner to a "bolt" on the inclined plate, yada yada, find the conditions where it pinches. Attaching the plate to the bench will be interesting, but really you need just 2 attachment points at one pull end of a metal triangular prism. Did he have a unicore rope? Edit: seems like there is a new analysis at MP? May come diwn to calculating the force of an F2 fall with a dynamic rope
Sounds like a bunch of things came together into one single tragic result. As a kid we used to free climb with nothing but nylon ski rope as a backup on sand stone faced mountain. We were lucky. I learned a lot later just how dangerous we were. Now days I always consider SGPR (Situation Gear Placement Ramifications). Be it a climb, fall protection, a lift, or even securing loads, there is always enough time. Proper gear is cheap, severe injury or death, not so much! Ryan and crews videos have taught me so much about rigging and safety and made me both safer and more analytical about what I do and how I do it. Gear I once deemed more than sufficient is now bare minimum is now relegated to tent tie downs or securing a tarp or pipes to a rack. This tragedy is yet another example of a smart person missing just one small detail, or perhaps many small details, in haste and paying the ultimate price for the oversight. So sad for the guys family. Dissemination of these things makes everyone safer but, fuck, there are better ways for us all to learn! Be safe and ever vilegent people.
How about dropping on a garda hitch to better test the burr/pinching theory? If the belayer never felt the load, the force must have stopped at the top carabiner, since there was no mention of a stuck rope.
RIP Danny. We have a memorial for Danny at Seneca, he has a place in so many of our hearts for the rest of our lives. Please feel free to reach out to visit if you wish to reflect on Danny and his life ❤
Man, that’s sobering. I was on a dead stem of a walnut tree that same day, and had nowhere to tie in at the top. I only had a few cuts to make, and I was tied in twice, but both ropes were tied way below my waist, almost down by my feet. On static ropes, I know that a fall, even just the 5-6’ I could’ve fallen there would fuck me up pretty badly. I think about it a lot when I find a flat open topped tree. Hard not to let things like this shake you too hard.
You sir, need a crane.
I can definitely see the pain and the sadness in you over this event. A very sad story. As you said the sad thing is everything could have been perfect, perfect conditions, perfect set up, perfect gear, perfect technique but as with anything in life sometimes that 1 in a million failure happens and it can cost someone’s life. Very unfortunate and condolences to everyone involved and the climbers friends and family.
Seneca is Tuscarora Sandstone, sand cemented into quartzite. It does chew up ropes. The exposed sections can get jagged, and you have to watch the flakes. Something to consider, it's not unusual (at least when I was climbing there) to bring a piece of carpet or a part of a welcome mat to put down on the rock when you rapelled. Might be something to consider to mitigate that in the future, especially if you take one anyway. Clip it into the biner, may not work if the rope angles from it.
RIP Danny. I hate to hear Seneca Rocks take lives.
where is seneca rocks?
@@lydiagattens7426 West Virginia
@lydiagattens7426 it's in West Virginia
@@lydiagattens7426there’s a Seneca rocks in WV, but I’m not sure if that’s the place they’re talking about. I see people mentioning PA, but he’s also from there
Sorry to Danny's family for their loss. Our sport is not without it's risk and while I can't speak for Danny, for myself, I go out knowing those risks because climbing brings me enough joy to make my life worth living. I hope Danny got to experience that.
The description of the "gunshot" sound makes me think of a similar incident which happened to a friend of mine where the rope was damaged by battery acid. I wonder if there has been any look at the rope ends? I imagine with the emergency response that wasn't a priority.
Maybe I'm just unaware of it, but I don't think there has been a HowNot2 test of how battery acid (or other chemicals) affect rope?
Chlorine, sun exposure might affect too
My personal view is that You should refrain from make a "testing video" about this until there are enough "firm facts" that You can make a video without having to speculate.
And imho that is presently not the case.
Best regards.
At least one of the actual incident witnesses is reaching out to him.
Besides, even if all he does is disprove several supposed answers he'll still have contributed something of incredible value.
Experimental physicist here. The crux to this experiment is to recreate the rope overlap that caused the pinching during a whip. As you said, things move around. A little bit of double-sided scotch tape to keep things in place during a drop test. The extra adhesion is negligible compared to the fall forces in the drop test.
So here's how I'd set up a drop test experiment: Drop test a mass M (climber) a distance L (total rope length during the accident) above a fixed point (belay) with a point of protection between the climber and belay. M, L, and the location of the protection should be selected to best match the accident report. Attach two dynamometers: one at the belay and one at the protection point. The protection point should be a carabiner taped to a slab-like rock, positioned in a way that ensures the fall line of the mass M results in the rope overlapping during the whip, recreating this necessary pinching effect. This is not an easy task as the fall line has variance. Wind shields help if this is outside. Also magnetic release systems promote consistent dropping. Here's the key to a successful experiment: the dyna on the belayer should read ~ 0 kN if you successfully recreated the pinching effect, as noted in the accident report. If this doesn't break the rope, add some burrs or sharpness to the carabiner (although, not sure if that actually played a role here).
what about actually going to the accident site and reproducing the scenario that played out with a bag drop test?
@@derekcraig3617
Harder to control variables at the accident site compared to in a lab. It could be very nuanced the details you need to get right to recreate the failure mode. Plus, a lab setting allows you to more easily vary things like slab angle at the point of protection.
@@michaelwolfe9807 one thing you cannot recreate in the lab very easily at all is rock texture
I have had ropes twist creating a loop. When the loop hit a carabiner it was the same as tying a stop knot. Usually happens if you use a rope for short projects then jump on a long multi pitch tying into both ends of the rope at the ground traps the twist. I messed up uncoiling a new rope once and that rope would twist up on everything for about a month.
A pretty simply way to simulate a fall factor > 2 , is connect a weight to a chain/cable, then connect the chain/cable to a length of rope which is attached to an anchor. 3/8" grade 80 chain should be strong enough
Yep, if you attach 5ft of chain to your weight on one end and to 5ft of rope on the other, then drop it from 5ft above the anchor you would get a fall factor of 3 since the weight can fall 15ft with only 5ft of dynamic rope in the system. Using chain will also let you dial in the exact FF you want by attaching the weight to a different link closer or farther from where the rope is connected to the chain.
Just a friendly reminder to be very careful when tensioning chain and cable. It has a lot more kinetic energy than rope.
A similar way that doesn't involve joining a chain/cable with a rope and should be doable with material you probably have: Attach the rope to a ring/biner but instead of attaching the ring/biner to a bolt let it slide down a length of metal rod that is attached to a strong point at the bottom. If your rope length is X feet and the length of your metal rode is Y feet your weight drops 2X + Y feet before the rope catches and you get a factor 2 + Y / X fall.
Cable is the worst. At least when chain breaks you only have to look out for a single link worth of shrapnel. Line dampers are cheap insurance for cable though.@@ryanp0342
I feel like Twin/Double ropes is going to be the way.. Why no redundancy is such a critical piece of equipment :(
15:24 that summation is perfect 👌🏻
sad to loose someone in a freak accident like this, much love to family and friends of this poor guy
Yeah sometimes I am overly scared when climbing since I know about so much that can go wrong. Or just having seen so many ropes break here. But while it is definitly nice to know a lot about limits of gear now I for myself should just acknowledge how much it takes for new rated stuff to fail when used correctly and have fun with it.
Thanks for making this video, very well done and with compassion. I worked for many years as an accident reconstruction expert and it needs to be reinforced that weird stuff happens and very often we will never know for certain what happened. I have worked on legal cases where all the experts had figured out what most likely happened only to be demonstrated to be wrong when a video or other evidence turned up. Dan Merrick (DAMMERR)
I don't know this guy, but he grew up near where I lived.
He probably climbed at Reading Rocks, the first place I ever climbed back in 2001.
Condolences to his friends and family.
Condolences to Dany's family and friends and to the belayer..... man such a horrible thing to happen to someone who maybe is your best friend just... hope everyone finds a way to deal with this tragic loss and lots of strength. Thank you for going into this it's very interesting how to avoid these situations.
For the test:
Do a pull test where you bolt it into your in-office pull table.
Hard to explain but I will try
Build a steel H frame with a steel plate and a loop on the other side of the pulling force
On top of the steel plate, you bolt a round piece of rock(sloper)
If it does not make sense send me a message or answer here and I can draw something up in autocad
Good respectful and thoughtful discussion. I feel two ways about this, on the one hand there are a zillion freak combinations that can happen that cause gear to fail. Enough people climb enough and you are going to have black swan events. You can't possibly test everything. On the other hand, I think climbing's empirical and anti-fragile approach is really important, and we owe it to Danny to find out what happened. In order to properly investigate, it may be necessary to get a look at the actual gear and the exact location, which may not be possible. But I think it is worth trying to find out if this was likely a gear issue like a carabiner with a burr, or if there is some potential issue like the pinching you talked about which on its own can present a major risk that people maybe aren't fully considering.
Such a terrible loss, same age, definitely a splash of cold humble water to the face with this one. Stay safe people, rest in peace to a brother, a son, a friend, a fellow human being
The fact that the belayer never felt the fall seems to be the single most important detail of situation. :(
Horrible, nonetheless.
First. Thanks for treating this matter with respect. Second. It's important for climbing community to learn from this accident - because there are no freak accidents. Importantly, from the available information, this was an accident scenario that was pretty ordinary - an experienced climber and belayer working on a known route using reasonable safety precautions - not elites simuling and placing little protection for the objective of a speed record, not uniformed beginners that tied with single overhand knot and belayed without the use of a device or hip belay (both of these scenarios are from actual accidents). Point is - any of us could encounter this failure so it's worth examining for everyone's benefit, and I think that does the Danny and his loved ones a service. Said that, I've modeled how I believe this accident occurred (based on the currently available info) and I think there are four variables to examine: (1) the position of the roof and the slab relative to the extension of the carabiner and its ability to pinch the rope as the extended protection moves against the rock as the climber moves; (2) the effect of a burr or other wear point on the specific model of carabiner used - alpine carabiners tend to have a design that hollows out the structure of the biner to save weight, creating ridges in the biner by design (3) the effect of the rocks texture on the rope in a pinch scenario and (4) the effect of fall factor. My hunch is that several of these variables aligned to create this tragic ciircmstance. But I also suspect one or more of these variables played a disproportionate role in the accident. Lastly, I think it would be useful to test whether or not this accident could have been prevented with the use of twin ropes (or double ropes if the route allowed it) vs a single rope. It's worth studying not so much because this was a freak accident, but because it sure looks like this was how most of climb every day, a seemingly innocuous but dangerous flaw in the system can be identified that can save lives in the future. Thanks for all the rigor and care.
Accidents like this are freaky, but it is still respectful to try to figure them out and think about preventing them in the future. I have a theory you might find useful for an experiment: during the fall, the rope falls too. If it falls into a feature that pinches it close to the climber (not on the carabiner or before like you seemed to hint at), all bets are off… you can easily go over 2x. I accidentally managed this at a fortunately very low speed once. It was memorable. Doing that at more than 10m/s would be… not something I'd try.
It’s too hard to know exactly what happened, but I am interested in the gunshot bang. It would be interesting to load some ropes and then cut them in varying ways to see if you can re-create the sound. it just seems to me that cutting from one side to the other would take too many milliseconds to make a sharp noise.
I agree with you on the basic test, but not with cutting. You have to overstretch the rope until breaking point to get that sharp bang.
So sorry to all concerned, tragic; Ryan is best placed to answer , as your comment “the sharp bang” is likely the key, Ryan’s testing has gear flying everywhere making a noise, so difficult to isolate how much of a bang a rope snapping makes, huge release of energy for the belayer to hear a sharp bang . grim all round.
If you wanted to test pinching ropes maybe a scaffolding Jordan Safety Clamp (temporary anchor point for scaffolders) would let you apply such forces. They are designed to arrest falls (up to 22kN depending on application) and already have a large eye you could use.
The idea is the clamp is suspended by the eye and in the jaws instead of the normal scaffold tube is a smaller diameter length of solid round stock, the rope, then carabiner. Could use a low range torque wrench when tightening the nut to measure how tight the rope is being clamped / pinched. Possibly clamp a small rock in there to simulate gear not being extended.
As always, thanks for raising awareness of these issues and explaining it so it's understandable.
It will be important to find out charactheristics of the rope. What was it's diameter? How long was it in use? How many leader falls had he taken on it previously?
When I started climbing 51 years ago, ropes were 11 mm in diameter. Then it became the thing to climb with smaller diameter ropes. People are climbing with 9 mm ropes now. It's a certainty that a smaller diameter rope is more prone to break over edges than a thicker diameter rope. Then why are climbers on a march to climb with thinner ropes? Is it because a 9 mm rope weighs less on the approach? Is it because a rope manufacturer has done lab tests that show that thin ropes are fine in perfect condition and that they know that they can charge every increasing prices for less volume of material. Certainly, the cost of manufacturing a rope goes up with the diameter. Have rope companies seduced us with a lighter pack while they can charge more money for a less safe product? With the loss of a good climber and person, we are asking ourselves how did this happen?
Why is it nearly impossible to find 11 mm ropes to climb with now? It's even difficult to find a 10.5 mm rope.
I hope that the experimental design will include using the diamater of rope that Danny had and also recreating it with 11 mm rope to compare. It would seem that putting a climber's weight tied in as Danny did, then having the rope pass through a carabiner that is isolated by putting it on a bolt hanger on a bolt on a ramped location would be the start. The rope could be anchored just a few inches below the carabiner to a second bolt. It seems that regardless of how the rope wasn't able to elongate though the climb, that was what happened. Did it get caught in a grove as some suggested? Did it get pinched? Either way, the lower anchor below the carabiner would simulate this.
I've climbed at Seneca Rocks many times. The rock, the Tuscarora Sandstone is vertically bedded and while it's called a sandstone, it's been metamorphosed in a number of mountain buildling episodes in the Appalachains. This results in many sharp edges and quartz blobs that protrude. Likely, the situation is not similar to California granite that has rounded edges. It would be important to this investigation to photograph the location of the accident and have a better understanding of the sharpness of the face where the rock came into contact with the rope. To me, it seems more likely that a sharp quartz crystal could have cut the sheath than a burr in a carabiner.
One other thought. In the past, the axiom was the leader never falls. Today, people are encouraged to fall when they take their lead test at the rock gym. Climbers today are educated that taking leader falls is no problem. How would the situation have changed had the victim decided not to intentionally fall and tried to downclimb instead? This accident points out that it is very difficult to consider all the variables that can happen in a fall. It's better not to fall.
At such times, we have to honor the victim and console those who were a part of this tragedy. However, we must investigate the accident and try to recreate what happened so that the rest of us can learn better how to climb safely and possibly make changes to our gear. As such, we gather here to honor Danny and his love for climbing. We know that Danny would want the answers to what happened so that this doesn't happen to other climbers.
I don't think you necessarily have to recreate this accident. Rest in peace, fellow climber Danny.
Hi Ryan,
You can simulate a factor two fall with a CAMP Goblin.
Rope can pulled back very quickly through it.
This can be accomplished with bugie rope parallel below the Goblin.
Condolence to all the families.
For the test - how about beginning by isolating the pinch factor? Ex. Bolt a biner to a peice of metal to pinch the rope and do a few body drops at varying lengths on that.
If that doesnt break the rope, start adding in some contibuting factors until you find minimum number that would recreate a failure.
For example, if the pinch alone isnt enough, then add in factors like substituting the metal for rock, adding small vertical cuts, recreating the angle, adding a bur , etc.
could an ATC in guide mode/ follower belay be used to simulate a pinch? Such a sad story and praying for Danny's friends and family
Sad story, stay safe my friends. Don't stop climbing over the rocks and start living under one.
if i had infinite resources to work on this to find the root cause, i would either close the climbing area and do testing directly on the anchor (with a scaffolding installed to work from) or i would make a casting of the area around where the anchor was. you should be able to case the rock using paint on silicone and a lot of patience. my third option would be a laser 3D scan of the area around the anchor then 3D printing the area then using that to make a mold. lastly i would go to computer modeling (but only as a last resort).
i hope the engineers that work for the companies that made the climber's gear all put in some work to figure this one out. we take on an ethical and moral responsibility when we make products that impact safety
Well done. Good treatment of the situation. I agree that securing a piece of concrete to the drop tower as a replicate edge might be effective for recreating this scenario. I would start with a pier block as they are substantial and come with a pre-drilled hole for anchors if to the tower with a big bolt. Or maybe just clamp a paver to the top side of an I beam with a few squeeze clamps.
Quick comment: For some ropes, the rope fall ratting number is only on fall factor 1s and not fall factor 2. Those ropes should be retired after one fall with 1.6 factor or higher. Always check the UIAA fall ratting for the rope you use and how it was tested (fall factor 1, 1.5, 1.7 or …)
I’m not a climber but I have 35 years in industrial rope access. Our knot locations are always changing on the rope based on height of work, rarely do you put stress on the same places on the rope. Climbers always use the end so all the stress is almost always in the same areas over and over based on how many climbs and how many whippers(falls). So either end of the rope could be full of unseen internal stresses caused by many uses. In short the pinch areas might have occurred many times in relatively same area. One to many, could cause a snap where the inner cords have been damaged and didn’t hold after the cover was pinched then failed. Just trying to wrap my head how it could have possibly happened. But not real sure. Sadly there are risks and knowing the conditions of rope are paramount.
It would be good to get pictures or videos of the actually spot where the failure was and replicate the rock shape and connection.
RIP Danny. This one hits home because I also lost a brother named Danny years ago. Ryan, what if you were to recreate a pinching scenario like you described in the video by clamping rocks/crab/rope together in the right position? Maybe a quickgrip clamp would do the trick?
May prefers be with him and his family 1:26
i went climbing with my friend who was at seneca during the accident and he was really on edge
Hey Ryan I noticed a lot of your recent videos are low view count compared to your subscriber number. For example some videos only have 25k or 50k views but you have almost 200k subscribers. I think the vague titles with the "they" and "this" aren't really helping you. Climbing is serious and shouldn't try to clickbait people into watching. IMO you are targeting the wrong audience. I'm a fan of your channel but the vague titles aren't helping. Also the red arrows and circles in the thumbnails don't really help. I think your videos can stand on their own without the vague titles and unnecessary click bait. The information you give is valuable but I think sometimes the way it's presented turns people away.
UIAA specs (such as 7-8 falls) are useful in comparing one rope to another. They have virtually no value in real world climbing. Even if the leader's mass were equal to the UIAA test weight, the spindle diameter in the test is much greater than a carabiner plus other differences conducted identically each time in a laboratory. It's very dangerous to think that a 7-8 fall rope will take 7-8 falls in the real world. It may take 30 falls, it may be unsafe after 1 fall.
Thank you for posting the video. It's important to analyze and discuss all accidents. Especially when life is lost.
After watching your video and reading the forum thread I came up with a theory that the failure was a combination of pinched rope and abrasion and just posted that theory in the thread (Tyler Murray's post).
As mentioned in that post it would be interesting to see test effects of pinching a rope (both pull test and drop test) and abrasion drop tests (drop over smooth curved surface, rough curved surfaces with either increasing roughness or reduced radius, blunt/sharp edges etc).
The first test (pinched rope) would just be interesting to see if/how much it affects rope strength. The second one would show the importance of gear placement to avoid falls on edges.
I believe you have already done some fall factor videos but a drop test video on that and trying to recreate effects of belayer pulling in line while a climber falls would be interesting. This could be done easier than you theorized because you don't have to test to failure so can use lighter weights and some type of capture device (even toothed) while trying to pull in (some way to know how much rope was pulled in will be the hard part, maybe colour coded rope or something and high speed video). All you need to do is measure the forces and see if you can recreate a greater than factor 2 fall.
The high speed camera idea also gave me idea that it would be neat to see high speed video of a rope failure, not sure if that has been done.
Always a treat to see Bobby on your episodes, great info, I’m very sorry for the loss of this great human.
First and foremost, RIP Danny... =(
I had an idea about how to target a certain part of rope. Instead of using tape or something like that, which can be moved from pressure via a carabiner, etc, but instead use spray paint. Like, use two pieces of cardboard to help narrow down where the paint lands on the rope for a finer line to help target spots. Could be useful in examining different tests when looking at a specific spot on a rope.
Seneca Rocks is a formation in the Tuscarora Sandstone. This stuff is quartzite and forms extremely sharp edges that will cam your rope on these sharp crystals. It's like catching a factor-2 fall on pro traxion. A virtually identical accident happened in the same location in 2010. You've gotta touch this stuff to understand how sharp these crystals are. It's almost like a rock made from broken car windows.
Thanks for your effort to shine light on this... Maybe use a Garda brake as a pinch?
Thank you for humanizing this accident. I think regarding gear fear, everyone needs to remember that almost all climbing risk is mitigable. This is the rare case where it seems most everything was done right. The vast majority of deaths are from rappel accidents that could be fixed by weight testing, using a prussik/assisted brake device and tying stoppers. If you are really concerned about something like this, it sounds like climbing on twin ropes could prevent rare rope snap accidents like this.
Like you said, freak accident. I view something like this like getting struck by lightning or having a heart attack. Driving to the crag is significantly more dangerous.
middle marks on ropes from the factory should be mandatory. No exceptions. I recently had a brush with death a middle mark would have prevented. was using a Beal rope that didnt have one from the factory. wasnt supposed to be our multi pitch rope so I had yet to put one on this very dark colored rope but we had it so we used it. I wont go in to the details of how this close call happened, yes mistakes were made, but a middle mark would have prevented the close call. Condolances to friends and family.
Idea for design :on your droptower Or on your testbench, have a large diameter tube ( metal or something) have like griptape on there to simulate the rock, a carabiner on that surface which you can adjust up and down to recreate the angle of the "rock" , so you can recreate the pinching effect.
What you also can do maybe instead of griptape (which might damage/ slide during testing) , use industrial paint with course sand dusted over it .
This whole deal makes me think we should talk more about drag, corners and other stuff that would essentially "increase" the FF. The pinching thing didnt have to be "absolute" for this fall become really harsh, if the rope is no longer new (i.e. fuzzy-ish and not slippery) and is touching some rough edges near that too pro, that alone would increase the FF significantly, right?
Many many multi pitch routes have zigszags and rock features thay "remove" significant rope lenght from the system when a leader falls.
How many times have you asked for slack but the belayer acually had you loose? Theoretical FF may be a bad idea.
Thanks for doing this video! I was there and it was very scary! Also I hope his family is doing as good as they possibly can after this. Also I have pictures of the cut rope if it means anything, but would rather not post them publicly
Seatbelts will absolutely help even in a head on collision, as long as the crash structure works. You may get fractures but that's generally preferable to dying.
My sincere condolences to the family and friends of the young man. I have five sons and can't even think of what it would be like... My thoughts and prayers go out to them. But I believe your analyzing and trying to explain what could happen is extremely important and necessary.
Sympathies and best wishes to family, friends, and rescuers!
We all know ropes tend to break in knots. Why...bends and compression in the knot. Test the strength reduction do to compression of the rope. If the biner pinched the rope against the rock resulting in an increased FF, the biner/rock pinch point functioned similar to a knot compressing the rope. Testing the effect of compression of the rope on strength might be telling. First pass test - put a cable clamp on rope and pull test. Thanks for your thoughts on this tragedy.
Unless there are pictures of the rope and the hardware on the rock I don't think you can even begin to properly explore what happened with testing. The only thing that blind recreating the accident could lead to is some repeatable freak loading that always results in a failure.
To test a fallfactor above 2 you could create a movable anchor point.
The rope would be fixed to guide rod and is stopped at the end.
Kind of like on a via ferrata which can reach a fall factor as high as 5!
Maybe using a spanset for half the rope length would be close enough to static.
RIP Danny. I wish your family and friends peace in their lives.
Can a rope actually get pinched between carabiner and rock to the point where the belayer feels no force? You’d have to somehow create a situation where it behaves like an ATC-style device in guide mode.
My thoughts and prayers go out to the family and friends of Daniel Gerhart. May you rest in peace Daniel.
Excellent analysis. Sorry for the loss of Danny.
This is super unfortunate. A completely freak accident that no reasonable level of attention or precaution could have prevented. RIP.
My condolences to the family
Be interesting to know if rope against rope burns was partly or the whole reason? As the rope becomes pinched then falls over the rope below the carabiner.
Thank you for a very humane discussion of the relevant technical details. My first thought is that with the information available, there isn't a way to reproduce the accident. I could see playing with a "rope grinder" of a carabiner pinching the rope onto a piece of rock in the slow-pull machine to see what happens, but I hare a hard time seeing drop tests working with such a thing. I think the other issue that should be considered is the possibility that the rope had been exposed to a strong acid. There was an accident some years ago where a climbing rope broke in a gymn and forensic analysis found it had been exposed to battery acid.
I think you speculated about what might have happened in the best possible way. Nevertheless, I want to ask you to consider doing something else when there is the next tragic climbing accident: ask everybody to refrain from speculations until there is more information. The tragic accident of Danny just happened and many people want to know NOW what was the cause - this is our natural human urge. But most people will see your speculation in this video (because it receives a lot of clicks due to our human nature) and very little people will ever learn about the follow up of the case after the evidence will be evaluated and after your speculation might be as well invalidated. What will remain in public domain and in intuition of many climbers is, however, your speculation rather than a more solid evidence-based hypothesis. I like and respect and learn from your videos but I'd prefer if you were the authority to slow down the crazy train of speculations in cases such as Danny's accident and suggest everybody to be patient and wait for some evidence provided by the official inspection of the rope before making a conclusion - even a speculative one. This accident is unlikely a result of design or manufacturing error of a piece of climbing equipment so there is also no urge for immediate publishing and issuing a warning to the potential equipment users. (NOTE: I assume there will be an official investigation which will at minimum inspect the rope and thus will be able to answer many questions. If due to any reason this is not expected to happen, my comment is mostly irrelevant - but more importantly, it would be extremely unusual - at least here in Europe - not to have such an investigation)
A possible option for a drop test where you can pull slack during the fall and get the rope pinched at the carabiner would be to use an alpine clutch/garda hitch? Just a suggestion, this definitely is not an easy test to do!
fall factor > 2:
two person tied with a rope, walk at the same time on ice (up, few point between). second one fall, pull the rope => first one fall and length of the rope becomes less than length of fall
test idea:
main dumbbell on the top of the tower (stable but on the edge). + rope + Garda hitch + small dumbbell somewhere near the ground(limit how much you can reduce the rope)
I think this is a really important thing to look into. How does popes getting pinched, or a large amount of rope drag in the system affect the forces? and how would crystals or a bur on the carabiner affect the rope?
I wonder how often things similar to this happen, but the outcome is less tragic.
I.E: This summer I had a 10m whipper on a slab. It was a low-angle slab, but I luckily fell off the edge of the slab into a gully so it was a fall in empty air. Anyway, my belayer said he could not feel me falling (and I was out of view). He did not realize I fell until I stood up. There was quite a lot of rope in the system 40 or 45 meters. I assumed rope-drag and rope-on-stone friction was the reason he did not feel the fall, but now I am wondering if the rope got pinched.
Edit: There was no visual damage to the rope. We were using two ropes.
I outweigh my belayer by 60 lbs and we noticed that It doesn't take more than a few sharp bends in the rope before there's so much drag that lead falls start feeling like top rope falls to the belayer
The MtnProject drawing and analysis seems fairly clear; testing over a broadly curved rock section, with coarse texture, could replicate the binding of the strand from below, as the section from the biner to leader is trapped by the force of the fall - the abrasion under the biner could initiate the tearing of the fibers, while the binding effectively creates a factor two fall - maybe more, if several feet of slack slide down initially. Not really that hard to imagine, and surprising only perhaps as on that terrain climbers rarely slip, and never just jump off.
It might not recreate the scenario exactly in regards to the pinched on a rock, but perhaps for the nicked carabiner and the pinch working in tandem to create this failure, you could use a Garda hitch (alpine clutch) with the top binder having the notch in it. Thanks as always for the insight and open dialogue.
I think the pinch theory would be nice to test, because it might happen again... even proving a factor 2 when it is supposed to be 1.5 would be enough to prove it can happen..
What if, you setup rope and carabiner on a ledge, have the belay side towards the wall and climber side away from the wall, mount two L brackets with a gap of a rope width. Have the ropes stacked in the gap created with the L brackets. Climber side of the rope stacked on top of the belayer side. Drop test it. The goal is to simulate a scenario where the climber strand pinches on the belayer strand when falling. The L bracket ensures the worst case with perfect stacking.
Would be really good to try and recreate this scenario as this does seem to be a scenario which many climbers could experience.. in fact i think i was belaying my dad on a top rope with this sort of pinching occuring just a couple of weeks ago. Clearly not as risky with it being a top rope but the principle is the same.. extend those runners folks!
As interesting as this channel is from a materials and physics perspective I always try to remember that every point of data is potentially a life. Events like these really drive that home.
From railways to aircraft and rock climbing, the safety regulations are often written in blood. 😢
Take/get several pictures of the rock where the carabiner was and have a stone mason make a copy out of the same type of rock. Anchor the rock rigidly and attach a carabiner in the same spot on your copy.
I know nothing about climbing but ill wager this situation could not be re-created.
Perhaps if the carabiner had an offset around the sides it would have prevented the rope from being pinched
You mentioned factor 10 fall on a rope pinched. Seems like it wouldve that in combination of being bein pinched as in an atc in guide mode, and over an edge im a horizontal placement. See what it doo
if you are 10 feet above the carabiner, fall, the rope feeds back through the draw, then when you are level with it, the rope pinches with 1 foot from harness to draw, that would be a factor 11 fall (10 feet to draw, 1 foot past, on one foot of rope). that would be the test to do.
would the gunshot noise imply that the rope wasn't cut from a burr? It makes more sense to me that the sheath might have been friction cut/melted by the rope on the rock then when the compromised rope was loaded it failed?
If the belayer never felt the load it seems like the rope would had to have been pinched. But are you saying that more slack out may have helped???
Genuinely tragic, I hope we can learn from what happened and all be a little bit safer. May he rest in peace.
An eyewitness to the fall recently added to the mp discussion, "The rope was definitely taught against a sharp edge and the tension created by the fall was enough to go through the rope."
Well, assuming that is true, then that seems to be the answer. Occams razor - The simplest explanation is usually the most likely. Rope got loaded over a sharp edge, rope was cut. That’s an important difference from the rope breaking. My sincere condolences to the friends and family of this phone man.
Why would you choose to whip on that!?
Would there be a loud 'bang' if the rope was simply cut over an edge?
The rope cut the rope. You're not supposed to have nylon on nylon or metal on metal contact. A rope will cut itself in half.
Megajul pinches?
makes me wonder why we aren't climbing with doubles or twins in america…
Somebody at Staunton State Park just had a rope cut randomly on a rappel a couple months ago
From the explanation I’m assuming due to the slack to the belayer never getting tight, and the snap sound. It sounds like it was in deed pinched higher “probably where the belay” was and like you said snapped due to less rope available above the anchor.
The slack was taken up down the line somewhere, that’s where the failure was most likely located. What caused it exactly isn’t present unless you can get ahold of all his gear
Guide the rope with a plywood on each side of the rope in a tapered angle to guide the rope as it falls so it can pinch
it be good to test the rope. or send it to mammut for testing.
As someone who is trying to get over fears and climb better, this takes me a step back... Not gonna lie, it's scary
Isn't that kinda the point though? For me anyway my fear motivates me to do everything right, learn, and double check. When I'm putting the rope back in the bag at the end of the day it's a different feeling of accomplishment than hiking Mt. Washington. They might take the same overall effort, but the possibility that things could go badly wrong really fast makes it distinct. The risk is what helps us focus; and as with any risk it will statistically catch up to someone eventually. Not trying to be cold, and what happened to Danny was outta the blue sky as far as I know, just saying that the risk IS the reward kinda. Not really sure how to put it better, but I hope you know what I mean.