The Prow – Stranded Rappelling
INITIAL CALL
On October 14th 2018 at approximately 6:45 pm Yosemite dispatch received a report of stranded climbers attempting to rappel The Prow on Washington Column. The reporting party stated that his partner had rappelled down the wrong anchors with a haul bag attached to him and that he was now stranded in space and unable to ascend his ropes.
EVENT/ACCIDENT
On October 12th, a team of climbers started up The Prow on Washington Column. Although one of them had attempted to climb the route previously, the two were fairly new to wall climbing. Their plan was to spend two nights on the wall. They also planned to leave their haul bags at Tapir Terrace (pitch 8), climb to the top, and then rappel the route and pick up their gear on the way down.
After completing the climb, the team rappelled back down to Tapir Terrace and retrieved their haul bags. They continued rappelling straight down from Tapir Terrace until they reached a bolted belay station that they had never seen before (this turned out to be the pitch 6 anchor for the route Ten Days After). Because of its fall line from Tapir, and the fact that one of the bolts had welded rap rings on it, the team assumed that it was an anchor for a rappel route down the face and committed to it by pulling their ropes.
At this point, the first climber began rappelling from the anchor with his haul bags attached to his extended belay device while his partner waited at the anchor. Although there were 3 bolts at this anchor station, the climber only used the single bolt with rappel rings in place and did not back this up with any of the others. The climber was on an ATC and was using a prusik for a backup. He only had a knot tied into the end of one rappel rope.
After rappelling nearly to the ends of his ropes, the climber found himself in extremely steep and unknown terrain. He could tell that he was probably off route, but assumed that he would still be able to make it to an anchor somewhere. He saw an anchor deep inside a big corner system to his right, and attempted to get himself to it by putting a cam on the end of his rope, throwing it, and “hooking” a flake to pull himself in. While he was able to catch the flake with his rope, he realized that his plan was not going to work due to the location of the anchor on the wall in relation to the hooked flake.
Overlay of The Prow route on Washington Column. The red line shows the route, while the green line shows where the climbers rappelled straight down and into unknown terrain. Photo courtesy of Eric Sloan and Yosemitebigwall.com
After many attempts to find and reach rappel anchors, the climber found himself stuck in space with large haul bags hanging off of him, in the dark, and unable to think of ways to rectify the situation.
The team decided to call for help and at approximately 7:00 pm YOSAR was connected with the stranded party through dispatch.
RESCUE
Upon receiving the call and getting a clear understanding of the situation, YOSAR began prepping a team to climb to the party and assist them safely to the ground. However, while this team was prepping, rescue personnel walked the party through steps they could take to potentially fix the situation on their own.
First, the climbers were instructed to backup the current rappel bolt by using quickdraws to add the additional bolts into the rappel. They were then instructed to tie the ends of the ropes together at the bottom to close the system.
Then, YOSAR instructed the rappeller to attach a prusik onto the ropes above his rappel device and clip his haul bags into it using a sling. He was then able to lower a little bit to transfer the haul bags onto the prusik and be free from their weight.
Rappelling with haul bag on an extended ATC. (Note: daisy chain looks doubled up only for clarity purposes)
The climber was instructed to attach a prusik above his ATC and to clip his haul bags into it with a runner.
The climber then lowered himself and the bags until they were being held by the prusik. He then unclipped the haul bags from his ATC. The climber was now free from the bags and able to ascend.
After accomplishing this, the climber was instructed on how to prusik back up his ropes to the anchor station to get himself back to a position of relative safety. The climber did not feel comfortable ascending the ropes with a prusik, and so rescue personnel gave them another option.
They instructed the climber at the anchor to use a prusik to attach one end of one of the rappel ropes directly to the anchor. As there was already a knot on the “pull rope” side of the anchor, the prusik was attached to the “fixed” rope side, which would essentially give the climber two layers of protection (see photo below). Once this system was set up, the climber was able to ascend up a single rope to the anchor using jumars.
The teams rappelling anchor rigged for single line ascension. Note that the anchor has been backed up by a runner from another bolt. The climber at the bottom of the rappel can now ascend on the green line, which is being held by the prusik. The prusik is attached to the “fixed” line, and not the pull line, which puts a knot on the opposite side of the anchor for an added layer of safety.
SAFETY NOTE – When using a “knot block” to fix a rope, it is important to use a knot on a bight and then clip the bight onto the fixed end of the rope to keep the knot from pulling through the anchor point. It was not possible to set up a true knot block in this scenario as both ropes were already weighted. This is why the climbers were instructed to use the prusik.
Eventually, the climber got up to the anchors, bringing with him warm clothes and food and allowing for the team to be relatively comfortable for the night.
While this was happening, a team of rescuers had ascended another party’s fixed lines on the first few pitches of The Prow to make verbal contact with the stranded group. After determining that they would be safe for the night, they descended and made plans to check on the team in the morning.
The next day rescuers ascended back up another party’s fixed lines to make contact with the team. At this point, one climber had managed to descend back to their bags by down jumaring and un-attach them from the “hooked” flake. The rescue team members were then able to throw a rope to the climber at the bags and pull him into an anchor on The Prow. Once they had gotten the ropes and one of the climbers to this anchor, one of the rescuers ascended the team’s lines to the other climber and assisted him in rappelling down to The Prow anchors.
The rescuers then assisted the team with descending the fixed lines back down to the base.
Rappelling with Haul Bags – When rappelling a route with haul bags, ALWAYS send the bags with the second person. It is important that the first person down the ropes is free to swing around the wall, looking for anchors, and has the potential to re-ascend the lines if off route.
Self Rescue – Having basic self-rescue skills could have gotten these climbers back up to their anchor without calling for SAR. Skills like ascending rappel ropes with prusiks are very basic and extremely important to know if putting yourself into a big wall scenario.
Leave Some Energy in Your Tank – A climb is far from over once you reach the top, especially if you are rappelling the route. Once these climbers realized they were on the wrong rappel route, provided they had the skill to get back to the anchors, leading up the pitch above them could have gotten them back to an anchor they could swing to The Prow from. Fatigue while descending is the source of many climbing related accidents in the park.
Have Redundancy in Your Anchors – One of the big red flags upon receiving this call was that the climber was hanging on a single bolt. Just because fixed gear does not have rappel rings on it does not mean it shouldn’t be used. Leave some carabiners behind and accept it as a cost of climbing.
Close Your System – Always tie the ends of your ropes together, or tie them into your harness while rappelling. If you find yourself in a situation like this, you do not want to be worrying about rappelling off the ends of your ropes.
Find Your Rappel Route – There is an incredible amount of information available on The Prow and Washington Column. Had these climbers done a little more research beforehand on rappelling the route, perhaps they would not have found themselves in this situation. Furthermore, when rappelling into unknown terrain, never fully commit to a rappel you don’t know will get you down.
Consider All Descent Options – The standard descent from Washington Column is to walk off via North Dome Gully. Walk-offs are considerably less risky especially if running on empty. Generally, the consequences of a slip during a walk-off is much less than mis-rigging a rappel in technical terrain.
North Dome Gully is brutal and we got lost twice on the way down. However, that is way more palatable than having a rappel epic as described.