Rappel accidents: the most avoidable deaths in climbing

Rappelling is the part of climbing where nothing is trying to stop you. There is no crux, no pump, no falling. You build a system, you weight it, and you slide down a rope. And it kills competent, experienced people every year, reliably, in a small number of recognisable ways.

The reason is that rappelling has no built-in error tolerance. On lead, a mistake is often caught by the next piece. On rappel, the system either works or it does not.

Going off the end of the rope

Consistently one of the two most common fatal rappel errors. The rope does not reach the ground or the next station, the ends pass through the device, and the climber falls.

The fix is trivial: knots in both ends, every time. A stopper knot in each strand takes ten seconds. Do it before you throw the rope, so it is done regardless of what happens afterwards.

The common objections — the knots might jam in a crack, or I can see the ground — are worth examining. Jamming is a real but recoverable problem; going off the end is not recoverable. And "I can see the ground" has been the last assessment of a great many people, particularly in poor light, in wind, on overhanging terrain, or when the rope ends are out of sight below a bulge.

The related error is uneven ends. Rappelling on a doubled rope with the middle mark ignored means one side is short, and the short side reaches the end first. Find the middle. Mark your ropes.

Rappelling off the wrong thing

Anchor failure on rappel is the other big category. Old tat that has been in the sun for years. A single rusted piton. A block that moves. A tree that is dead. A ring worn nearly through.

Inspect the anchor before you commit, and inspect every component, not the general impression of it. Slings degrade in ultraviolet light and the damage is often invisible — a faded, stiff sling is a warning sign. If you find webbing you would not personally have left, replace it. Carrying a few metres of cord and a couple of rapid links for exactly this purpose is standard practice for anyone doing much descending.

The awkward truth is that leaving gear costs money and people are reluctant. That reluctance is a documented contributing factor in rappel fatalities.

The unattended first person

The first person down has no backup at the anchor and no one to check them. That is when errors are most likely to be unnoticed.

Have the second person check the first: device threaded correctly, carabiner locked, harness buckled, knots in the ends, anchor sound. Say each item out loud. Then the first person down checks the anchor from below where possible and confirms the rope reaches.

Losing control of the descent

Too fast, hands get burned, control is lost. Or a rock falls and hits the climber, or they lose consciousness, and there is nothing holding them.

Use a backup. A friction hitch — an autoblock — on the brake strand, extended below the device, is the standard solution. It is one piece of cord, it costs nothing in speed once you are used to it, and it converts an incapacitation into a hang rather than a fall.

Extending the rappel device on a sling above the harness, with the autoblock on the leg loop below, is the common configuration and it works well. It also keeps the device away from your clothing and hair, which is a separate and unpleasant failure mode.

Miscommunication

"Off rappel" heard in the wind when it was actually something else. The second person starts down while the first is still weighting the rope, or the first pulls the rope while the second is still attached.

Wind and water noise make voice communication unreliable at exactly the distances involved. Agree signals in advance — rope tugs, whistle blasts — and use them. Do not act on a shout you are not certain of.

The rope that will not pull

Not fatal by itself but the cause of many epics that become fatal. Before you pull, make sure the knot joining the ropes is on the correct side of the anchor, that the ropes are not twisted around each other, and that nothing is running over an edge or through a crack that will trap it.

Pull the correct strand. Mark it if there is any doubt. Pulling the wrong one wedges the knot into the anchor and leaves you stranded halfway down a face.

The general lesson

Every one of these is prevented by a habit that costs under a minute. Knots in the ends. A backup hitch. A partner check. Inspect and replace the anchor. Agreed signals.

The people who die on rappel are not people who did not know these things. They are people who knew them and were tired, or in a hurry, or twenty metres from the ground on a route they had done before. The habits have to be automatic precisely because that is when they are needed.