Safety vs time

Recently at a climbing rock rally, where the more you climb in a time period, the more points you score, two talented and well practiced climbers perform a simul rap. One climber abs off the end of one rope end and the other, Marianne Pretorious, falls, sustaining head injuries.

Pretorious is one of SA’s most capable and accomplished climbers and mountaineers. So how does she end up in this position?

One truth is that we don’t often dwell, or like to dwell on the fact that climbing is presented to us as a dangerous activity, no matter how well trained or experienced you are. Read any route guide or practical mountain book and the first thing you invariably run into is the disclaimer saying climbing is an inherently dangerous activity that may result in serious injury or death.

But we climbers prefer to think of climbing as a positive experience such as fun, or an activity challenging both mentally and physically. Guess it’s easier to not dwell on the fact that it’s dangerous and unpredictable too. That would just be morbid.

But I think more pertinent is that this incident may have been avoided, if the climbers had paid more attention to safety in a trade off to ‘time saving’.

Marianne was taking part in a competition where time was of the essence. Simul rapping, however much time it saves, is a dangerous undertaking.

In response over the past weeks, there has been talk about safety and how we should be more conscious of trying to always take the least risk.

But what is safety, if not simply relative to one’s perception of ability?

Where one climber may feel simul climbing is a death trap, another climber well practiced in the act may feel the risk is minimal.

On a larger scale, one might argue that non-climbers would look at all of our sport’s undertakings as unsafe.

I think the point here is that in this sport, whether competitive or not, time plays an important variable, and climbers often ‘cut corners’ in safety if they feel safe about their abilities.

The question I want to know, is what you the readers think about this. It can be a hard truth, that off the rope at home we are quick to slam those cutting down on safety to make time, but on the rope we disregard it. It’s easy to say safety first and always, but if we are really honest with ourselves, how many of us actually practice this?

Tell us what you think by voting on this month’s vote poll.

In the last vote poll we asked what you thought was the safest way to belay. Of the 85 votes 31 % felt the old figure 8 was the safest, followed by the ATC (23%), the Gri Gri (20%), the body belay at just under 10 %, the Reverso (8%) and the Stitch plate and Variable controller at under 5%