Accident Report: West Face, Leaning Tower

Photo by Cheyne Lempe

On Sept. 27th at 8:25am 911 received a call from a climber on the West Face of Leaning Tower reporting a climber fall. At the time of the call, the patient was hanging unconscious 10’ below Guano Ledge on their lead line after taking an approximately 20’ lead fall near the start of pitch 4. The Park Ranger taking the 911 call told the climber that YOSAR would be assessing the situation and call them back.

Following the call YOSAR mobilized two teams – a hasty climbing team to start climbing up the route to Guano ledge and a top down rescue team prepared for a 1200’ lower with litter to pick-off the climber and continue to the ground. Without a landing zone at the top of Leaning Tower, it was necessary to insert the rescue team using short-haul shuttles. A group of 6 were inserted just below the summit of the West Face at Dano Ledge (pitch 8), with gear to build two 1200’ lowering systems. A Park Ranger with a litter was lowered to within 40’ of the climbers, and tossed a bean bag pull cord to be hauled into the overhanging wall. The patient was packaged into a litter at 12:20pm, lowered to the ground and then flown from the base of Leaning Tower to El Cap Meadow. The partner of the injured climber rappelled to the ground with the YOSAR climbing team, and the YOSAR members at the summit descended via the Leaning Tower Chimney.

Photo by Cheyne Lempe

A follow up interview was conducted with the partner of the injured climber:

The two climbers were visiting Yosemite for their first climbing trip to the Valley. They both started climbing about 5 years ago and started trad climbing 3 years ago. They are experienced climbing together, but consider themselves to be “more free climbers” with experience climbing in Washington State including a few multipitch climbs. Leaning Tower was their first big wall attempt and first aid climb. They said that it seemed like a good introductory wall because the route looks like it is “mostly bolt ladders” on the topo. The accident occurred on the second day of climbing after sleeping on the popular bivy “Ahwahnee ledge”. They spent the night alongside a soloist who was also attempting the route, and noticed a soloist on the pitch below Guano as they were beginning to climb in the morning.

In the morning the leader started off Guano ledge and clipped a bolt as their first piece before penduluming to the right around a right facing corner to access a thin crack. They proceeded to aid up the crack without leaving any cams for protection as they were concerned about rope drag after the pendulum. As the leader stood in ladders on a red micro cam, the belayer remembers hearing a “pop” and seeing their partner swinging sideways back around the corner. The belayer considered the fall to be large but not severe and called out to their partner to see if they were alright. The leader was unresponsive on their line, and the soloist at Awhanee told the belayer, “he’s shaking”. For about a minute the leader appeared to be having a seizure while the belayer attempted to call 911 on their cell phone. They were unable to get a call out, and asked the soloist to try calling. The soloist reached 911 and was transferred to YOSAR to discuss a rescue. While on the phone with YOSAR, the leader remained unresponsive but moaning.

After getting off the phone with YOSAR, the soloist traversed a fixed line 15’ from Awhanee to Guano to assist in bringing the leader up to Guano. At that point the leader had regained consciousness but still seemed disoriented. The belayer and soloist lowered their haul line with an auto locking carabiner to the leader to clip in to their belay loop in order to be hauled to the ledge. Despite articulating the plan to the leader, the leader proceeded to take the carabiner off the haul line and clip it to a gear loop on their harness. Realizing that the leader was unable to respond appropriately in their current mental state, the soloist rapped to the leader to clip them into the haul line. The other soloist was also on Guano at this point, and the three climbers built a 6:1 mechanical advantage system to haul the climber up to the ledge. The belayer estimated that it took about 10min to get the leader up to the ledge.

Once at Guano, the belayer monitored the leader, checking pulse and breathing, and attempting to keep them as still as possible considering concern for spinal injury. The leader was “irritated” about the immobilization and wanted to move around the ledge. As the climbers monitored the situation, there was a quick conversation as to whether they should call back to YOSAR. The soloist said that YOSAR was planning to call them back, and that their phone was on. The climbers discussed rappelling the route with the injured leader, and deferred to the experience of one of the soloist’s who was on their third attempt of the route. The soloist cautioned against rappelling, saying that it was “extremely hard to get back into the wall” due to the overhanging nature of the route.

Photo by Cheyne Lempe

A few hours later YOSAR lowered into Guano and took the leader to the ground in a litter. The leader was flown to El Cap meadow and then transferred to ground ambulance for transport to Modesto. CAT scans and X-rays revealed no major injuries and the climber was released the same day.

Take-Aways

In the right place, a leader can fall 100 times over and never get injured, in the wrong place a single fall can be guaranteed to cause injury. When leading, we make judgement calls concerning the terrain beneath us, “If I fall here, are there any ledges I may hit?” More difficult is to judge the severity of a pendulum fall. Although counter-intuitive, a pendulum fall is often more dangerous than a vertical leader fall. A 6 meter sideways swing generates the same force as a 6 meter downwards fall, and exposes the body to more significant injury than landing feet first. It sounds as though the leader did not consider themselves to be at great risk, because they opted against leaving protection as they aided upwards after the pendulum. When the micro cam they were standing on pulled, they were pulled off balance as they swung back left. A few right facing corners created ledges to impact during the swing, and they appeared to have hit the back of their head during the fall, beneath the line of their helmet.

A few factors contributed to this accident:

The belayer noted that they were anxious to get moving quickly because of the other parties on the wall, and that the leader was potentially moving faster than they would have otherwise in order to exit the bivy.

On popular walls like the West Face of Leaning Tower, The Nose on El Cap, and the Prow on Washington Column you will often see multiple parties of different experience levels sharing bivies and belays. Be cognizant of your experience level and plan accordingly for sharing the route with other parties. Sometimes it is important to move quickly past bottlenecks of climbing parties, but at times it is better to slow down and allow other teams to pass. Conversely, if it looks like your progress is contributing to stress for another climbing team, communicate with that team to make sure everyone can proceed safely.

The leader avoided clipping their first pieces after the pendulum in order to avoid rope drag on the pitch.

Climbing up after a pendulum is a notorious big wall scenerio. There are many locations where it may seem better to “walk” cams after a pendulum in order to avoid creating a “Z” in the rope and terrible rope drag. Using long runners can be effective in reducing rope drag in these situations. If there is no way to runner out your placements for reduced drag, one could climb up clipping gear as they go, then place multiple good pieces and lower down to back-clean the problematic placement(s).

This was both climbers first big wall aid climb and the belayer commented that they may not have been bounce testing their placements regularly.

Both climbers were experienced free climbers with little aid experience. While free-climbing it is rare to test placements beyond a quick tug. Direct aid tests every placement with at least body-weight. Had this climber bounce tested the micro cam from below while still weighting their lower piece, they may have discovered that the placement was not sufficient before trusting it as their sole piece.