As a saying goes” Better safe than sorry”, when we are climbing, we always make some little mistakes which is seemed harmless but extremely dangerous in fact. So, to avoid these types of danger, the followings you should pay attention to.
- Keep the rope behind your legs:
When we are lead climbing, please, make sure the rope does not slide to the back of your legs. This kind of situation always happens when you need to climb across the protection under your body or when you climb vertical crack.
The bad result:
Your foot is wrapped while you are falling off a climb. As a result, the strength makes you turn around and your head or back would strike on the rock.
How to avoid:
Raising your awareness of managing ropes and making sure your belayer is concentrating on your movement, you should get enough preparation before you start a new trip.
- Your rope is short:
It is the thing that belayer should especially pay attention to. Every time you lower a lead climber, please, ensure your rope is long enough. For example, it is commonly to see that some careless climbers climb a 35-meter route with just 60-meter rope.
The bad result:
The rope slid out of the belay devices, then lead climber fall off to the ground.
How to avoid:
The most efficient way is inquiring relative messages and understand how long the ropes you need. In some special routes, an 80-meter rope is necessary.
- Lazy belay
This is another thing that belayers should treat seriously. A large quantity of types of lazy belay maintains potential danger and laziness is the hardest instinct to overcome. So belayers are easy to make mistakes, rope is too long or short, leaving out lead climber’s situation, standing too far from the cliff and daydreaming, for instance.
The bad result:
The lead climber crater because there is too much slack or belayer is pulled up and into the rock then climber hits something.
How to avoid:
Be a good belayer and keep concentrating on your climber. In this way we are able to avoid careless mistakes which are harmful to both belayer and climber. Communicating with your climber all the time is efficient as well.
- The rope slid out of the belay device when you are rappelling
Sounds impossible? However, annually, there are numbers of climbers find their rappel rope run out until they are rappelling. This type of situation always happens when the climber and the belayer rappel at the same time. This mistake is just as normal as the mistakes mentioned.
Bad result:
Climber crater and get injured terribly.
How to avoid:
Keep a new habit which remind you tie a Double fisherman's knot at the end of all of your rappel ropes. Because a single fisherman’s knot is too weak to stop falling when it withstands heavy pressure. Don’t rappel with your belayer or climber at the same time unless it is necessary.
- Unclear instruction
As the climber move to a taller and taller position, the communication between climber and belayer is getting more and more difficult. For example, the word “safe” is similar to the word “take”, when climber is moving, he would say “take” to the belayer which means he needs rest, however, as he become upper and upper the belayer can’t hear his words clearly and think “take” in mistake for “safe”.
Bad result:
Climber will fall down because of the lack of protection and the belayer would try to grab the rappel rope to prevent the climber from cratering.
How to avoid:
Chose words which are difficult to make mistakes such as “secure” and “take” instead “safe” and “take”. And belayer can also keep eye-contact with climber in order to judge whether the request of climber is right or not.
- Fall from top
If you are setting up a top rope, you need to move to the protection first. The prosses of setting up the top rope is sometimes difficult because we have to ensure our own secure first, then we can set up the top rope. In addition, remember to extent the anchor when the rope is next the edges. We fall dawn because we are unable to fix ourselves on the rock; the rope is cut dawn by the sharp edge and climber fall down.
Bad result:
Climber dies from trauma.
How to avoid:
Climb ensure their safety first then, try to set the top rope.
- Rookie with too much confidence.
You just watch a video on your phone and think that you can be a trad climber. Then, you buy a rack of shiny gear and is ready to become a rising legend, challenging the most difficult route in your level without thinking twice. However, actually you simply don’t have spare power to place protection devices into the right position, being unable to confirm whether the nut is appropriate for the crack you read because you can’t even read the size of the crack rightly. When you down, rip your gear.
Bad result:
Climber dies from trauma.
How to avoid:
Keep hamble and never choose a route that is too hard to finish. You are supposed to train day and day, acquiring common knowledge as much as possible and being familiar with your protection devices. What’s more, you need to master different types of techniques, so, you will have a chance to be a really capable trad climber.