This video of a climbing accident on Dracula (Frankenstein Cliffs, NH) is accompanied by Will Gadd's critical commentary and a slew of reactions from climbers. If you can cut through the melodrama, there are some good lessons here.

http://gravsports.blogspot.com/2011/03/ice-climbing-is-not-rock-climbing.html

If this has already been posted, I apologize for the redundancy.

I think Gadd's scolding comes from the attitude displayed about ice climbing as much as it does from the mistakes made.

Lots of mistakes pointed out by Gadd and others, which I won't repeat -- but one part of the video is worth watching closely: just before the fall, the climber's left hand is holding onto a TR -- apparently dropped from above to help him. He is fishing between his legs with his right hand for the ropes to clip to a recently-placed screw. Very shaky. When his right foot slips (which was not well-planted), he loads his left ax (leashed to his wrist), which pops. He then loses his grip on the TR and falls. If he had clipped to the TR, or to the screw he had just placed, he could have easily rested (he was pumped out) and avoided the fall.

Yes, three points of contact -- but one was a bare grip on a rope.

Agreed, lots of shenanigans. That climber was over his head, pumped out and making some poor decisions.

Scary!

Wow, that's a wild video. The climber definitely seemed over his head. He was lucky and hopefully learned a lot.

Scary, but as Gadd says, better to back off earlier on then to take the fall. Be honest with yourself and where you are at TODAY (be honest, hell... I rock climbed all winter so if I would get on a route at periods of my climbing career I thought were cruiser I'd be a moron since my form would be crap)

Accidents rarely happen because of 1 single decision but a whole series of decisions....

bright side is the filming was actually pretty good.

Actually I would like professional videos to show the decision process of expert climbers as the do routes. In both rock and ice routes it would be good to show them back off things when it made sense to. It would also be good to have them show what goes into a route. Personally I am getting snippets of people working fairly hard crack climbs (those that are between 5.12c and 5.13c/d'ish) and hoping to put together a video of a collection of climbs where the video of 95% the process and 5% the success, since most people don't ever see that.

CClaude wrote: Personally I am getting snippets of people working fairly hard crack climbs (those that are between 5.12c and 5.13c/d'ish) and hoping to put together a video of a collection of climbs where the video of 95% the process and 5% the success, since most people don't ever see that.

I would love to see the finished product. I too would like to see that in climbing movies. All there is in movies is pros sending incredible climbs. You don't see the much else or the decision making process.

For me, seeing this painfully honest evaluation from Will Gadd has improved my confidence that I need to get absolutely get good sticks at all times. I'll definitely be safer thanks to this.

It reminds me of the John Long "Climbing Anchors" books, where he shows a picture of an anchor and criticizes it. Those are tremendously helpful for bomber anchor design.

A dry list of principles to follow is good...a stark collection of counterexamples to go along with 'em is much better.