Page 116 - Rappelling

chapter five

Rappelling Safely

Accidents—Analysis and Prevention at a key belay or rappel device. It’s as if the mind
skipped a step, or the brain said that everything was
Although rappelling is a simple technique, statis- correct and complete, when in fact it wasn’t—a
tically a high percentage of rappelling accidents cognitive blind spot.
end in a fatality. Why is this? Perhaps rappelling is Psychologists theorize that once the brain
so rudimentary that the fine points of safety are determines what is important, it fills in the picture
sometimes overlooked. Distractions often keep the with whatever your expectations believe should be
rappeller from doing basic safety checks they would there. These failures of awareness happen to all of
routinely perform (see Reepschnur accident, page us at one time or another, but we’re not aware of
150). Often rappelling is done at the end of the day, them, so we don’t realize what we’ve missed! A
when climbers are tired, daylight is fading, and the systematic and routine checklist is helpful, but what
adrenaline of an exciting climb is gone. we really need to look for is what might be wrong,
Inattentional blindness is a term psychologists not what looks right.
use to describe the neurological phenomenon that Pat Ament, the great Colorado climber of the
occurs when the brain fails to see something obvi- 1960s and 1970s, writes in his book Rock Wise: “As
ous, when attention is distracted or focused on with all of climbing, it is attitude that saves or kills.
something else. Psychologists who study multitask- There is no better beginning than within the mind,
ing have found that most of us aren’t the multitask- in the form of complete concentration. There is no
ers we think we are: Our brain is simply switching room for oversight or for dismissing what is logi-
back and forth from one activity to another, deac- cally understood. Keen intuition must evaluate all
tivating one area of focus to process the other task. which strikes both mind and eye. Preparing a rappel
In my role as an examiner for guides’ certification is a process of reasoning and advancing through a
exams, I’ve seen examples of inattentional blindness regular chain of tests until a synthesis reads go.”
many times during complicated technical scenarios, Analyzing rappelling accidents tells us what can
where the guide has moved his focus without see- go wrong and what to do to keep it from happen-
ing an obvious error, like a carabiner unlocked ing to us. Since 1951 the American Alpine Club has

published their annual Accidents in North American
Mountaineering, which details what went wrong
in various climbing and rappelling accidents. Let’s
take a detailed look at the most common rappelling
Young Matthew Waugh on a belayed accident scenarios.
rappel, Tuolumne Meadows, Yosemite
National Park, California. Scenario 1: Rappelling off one or both
ends of the rope. Believe it or not, this happens
Pho to by Gre G ePPerson
with some regularity, and almost every year there

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