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  • The Prescription—Top-Rope Solo

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    American Alpine ClubA
    In this month’s Prescription, an expert climber made two crucial errors in her rope ascension/top-rope solo system. She fortunately escaped with relatively minor injuries. This accident was featured in the 2024 Accidents in North American Climbing. On October 8, 2023 Whitney Clark was ascending a fixed rope at the start of Valkyrie (17 pitches, 5.11+) when her single ascension device was jammed by a sling. She fell 30 feet to the ground. Clark wrote to ANAC: “We woke at around 6 a.m. and made our way to the fixed line from the day before. The days were short and we had many pitches to do. My partner, Luka Krajnc, went first, using a Grigri to jug and then transitioning to climbing. About 40 feet up, he clove-hitched the rope to a bolt. I then started jugging with a single Micro Traxion. Thirty feet up, I leaned back on the rope. My body weight wasn’t supported because the sling around my neck [part of the top-rope solo setup] got sucked into the device and caught in the teeth of the Traxion. The rope was sliding against the sling. I hadn’t tied a backup knot.” Clark attempted to wrap the rope around her leg. But her rope was new, thin, and slippery. She wrote, “I grabbed the rope and slowly started sliding down. Eventually the rope burn was too painful and I let go. I hit the ground, landed on my feet, and fell backward. I struck my lower back and then my head. I was wearing a helmet. Because the ground was angled, some of the force was dissipated, though I landed six inches from a large rock spike. “I never lost consciousness but was in a bit of shock. Luka rappelled down and did a spinal exam. He got me comfortable, and I sat there for a while. I had pain in my back and my left ankle. I used my inReach to call for a rescue while Luka retrieved our stuff. I started crawling and butt-scooting to where a heli could reach me. I would have loved to have self-rescued, but it’s a 16-mile hike out. It took about 2.5 hours of crawling to make it to a flat place. Four hours later, a helicopter airlifted me to the Visalia Level III trauma center.”  Whitney Clark’s progress-capture device failed when the as-yet-unused retention sling got stuck in the device as she was ascending. It is common practice to use a sling and an elastic connection to hold the progress-capture device upright as one climbs along a fixed rope. Photo: Luka Krajnc Top-rope soloing is becoming increasingly popular. In this video, Pete Takeda, Editor of Accidents in North American Climbing, and IFMGA/AMGA guide Jason Antin are back to provide an accident analysis and give you some quick tips on how to mitigate risk when top-rope soloing. Top-rope soloing is an integral part of modern climbing. Currently, only one device (the El Mudo) is designed and commercially available for top-rope (and lead) soloing. There are many ways to configure these systems and we’ve demonstrated one possible solution here. Solo top-roping allows a climber to self-belay when no partner is available, for a team to work on individual sections of a route without the need for a belayer, or for two climbers to move simultaneously, as in this situation. The errors Clark made were using only one device to safeguard her progress and not tying a backup knot. “I was jugging by pulling on the rope, syncing up the slack, and sitting back,” Clark said. “The route was meandering and the fixed line didn’t allow me to readily climb, so I decided to jug straight up the initial blank slab. The sling around my neck was going to hold the Traxion upright [allowing the rope to feed freely] once I started climbing. I haven’t done any top-rope soloing since the accident. I probably will at some point, but I will definitely use two devices. This was the first time I only used a single progress-capture device.”  (Source: Whitney Clark.) Each membership is critical to the AAC’s work: advocating for climbing access and natural landscapes, offering essential knowledge to the climbing community through our accident analysis and documentation of cutting edge climbing, and supporting our members with our rescue benefit, discounts, grants and more. Plus, get the new 2025 member tee! https://americanalpineclub.org/news/2025/2/11/the-prescription
  • 0 Votes
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    GrippedG
    Conditions are prime right now in parts of Europe for late-year projecting The post Prudence Morgan-Wood and Claudia Ghisolfi Climb 5.14b appeared first on Gripped Magazine. https://gripped.com/news/prudence-morgan-wood-and-claudia-ghisolfi-climb-5-14b/
  • Popular Canmore Crag Cougar Creek Reopens

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    GrippedG
    One of Canada's busiest rock climbing canyons is open again, and yes there's even a fun ice climb up there The post Popular Canmore Crag Cougar Creek Reopens appeared first on Gripped Magazine. https://gripped.com/news/popular-canmore-crag-cougar-creek-reopens/
  • 0 Votes
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    AlpineSavvyA
    Think you're good at solving climbing problems on the fly? See if you can figure out this one! https://www.alpinesavvy.com/blog/head-scratcher-can-you-solve-this-rappel-problem
  • My Helmet by David Rozul

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    ClimbingZineC
    I hold and turn my helmet like a classroom globe, dragging my fingers over each mark, each sign of wear. Every indent, every groove represents a route, a pitch, a move, a memory. Note: this piece is published in the new Zine, Volume 17, now available to order. In my hands is my beaten-up shield.… https://climbingzine.com/my-helmet-by-david-rozul/
  • Slab climbing and hiking near the Grimsel

    Pics and trips
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    stk@mountains.socialS
    1/2 Yesterday my wife and I flew from the heat into the mountains. We did some climbing and hiking near the Grimsel. Slab climbing on granite. It's challenging for the calf muscles and for the mind as there is just noting to hold on but perfect to train your trust in your feet as well as finding and feeling tiny pockets for placing your feet.#climbing
  • Take Our 2024 Climber Survey

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    Access FundA
    https://www.accessfund.org/latest-news/take-our-2024-climber-survey
  • Scotch On The Rocks by Greg Petliski

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    ClimbingZineC
    Words are from the traditional song “Wild Mountain Thyme.” The basis of this trip was simple: climb rocks and drink scotch. The weather, being highly Scottish, even in the so-called drier month of May, lent itself more to the latter than the former. But hey, we still managed nine days of climbing out of twenty;… https://climbingzine.com/scotch-on-the-rocks-by-greg-petliski/