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| Approach to The Maul |
Translated by Yumiko Mori
I still clearly remember what happened exactly at the moment. While avoiding rocks falling on me at the belaying point of the first pitch, I was ready to catch my partner that could happen any moment. Soon after, I felt a strong pull on the rope together with my partner's scream. At the same time, I realized that there were a set of face-sized rocks falling fiercely toward me. Having already taken secure at the spot, there was no room for me to dodge so only option left for me was trying to brace my body as small as I can, hid my neck and head and pray. In a split second, a rock hit my head and I was blacked out... Luckily I recovered just after a few seconds but then another rock hit my right shin...I heard my partner shouting to see if I am okay. But the impact that I had on my shin was too strong to answer right away. The only good thing was even though I had been hit twice I still managed to hold onto the rope and remain belaying. Thanks to the adrenaline kicking in(?), the pain on my leg started to disappear and I was able to move the leg. Knowing that I didn't fracture my leg was a big relieve for me at that time. Then I asked my partner to climb up to the anchor that caught him and take a secure.
While communicating how the situation that each of us was in, I told him that although my helmet got a huge crack,it still has served its purpose. No noticeable injury was found on my head, after touching my leg over the pants, it felt like there was some sort of cut but judging from the pain, I concluded that it should be just a minor scar without giving it a further thought.
"I can only get to go alpine climbing once a week with my current schedule" "It took four hours of approach to the line today" "Guilty for not completing the objective,going back home and giving up just after first pitch" were the few human factors and thoughts that run through my head. And to make the things worse, story of Steve House continued to climb after losing one of his shoes and Doug Scott surviving from Orga while having fractured his leg during his expedition in Pakistan somehow came up in my mind. "If I always choose to bail just because of such a small setback, I will never get to where I want to be. And this is the time I can really practice pushing my boundary, just try and see how far I can go" This was how I decided to continued to climb...
After reaching where my partner was, we discussed our conditions (mainly our physical conditions) from very subjective point of views and agreed on continuing to climb. I remembered that Boswell's record explained that the second pitch wasn't a crux but it's got the worst protection of all pitches. After passing the halfway of the pitch, I noticed that the rock condition drastically changed, I felt almost all of the holds that I had to use seemed to be floating. From my experience, I can tolerate the risk of taking runout to a certain degree, but losing the hold that I need to use was above my skill set. This situation was exactly what Rocky's topo describes as "Catastrophe loose rock" Just a few meters before the anchor of the second pitch, the chockstone- key hold, moved and looked like it can drop anytime. At the moment, my fear of dropping this chockstone and potentially hitting my partner distracted me and I was not able to mantle. "Okay that's it for the day" I told myself and decided to climb down to the last protection which was 5 meters below. As I lowered myself, I accidentally stepped on the loose rock and it was as if I was receiving punishment of all my poor judgement for the day, I fell from the shoulder and hit hardly against the wall.
As a result, I ended up having 5 stitches on my shin, horrible bruised and frozen shoulder and (possibly fractured) ribs and whiplash on my neck. Luckily my partner didn't have any injury from this accident.
Because of that I had to take 2 weeks off from my work. And with the plenty of spare time I had, I decided to reflect on this accident.
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| Thank you Millet you ARE my live saver! |
The importance of the human factor and mindset
Most of the incident report tells the details of the accidents and they say that they could or should have done in this way and why they took such actions in that situation and so on. For me this is all about "What if..." therefore I am doubtful that this would serve as a tool to enhance the risk management skills. Not necessary everyone takes the same climbing style and individual's tolerance level toward the risks also vary.
I would say "human factor"-Human's behavioural pattern, in my case, it was poor decision making process, that was the culprit of causing this accident. If you have been climbing many years, you might be able to relate to this. This fall could also be attributed to the unnecessary motivation that I had. But often the case, the internal emotion and thoughts could be the main culprit but not openly shared and because of that not so many people discuss them as much as other technical or conditional aspects of the situation when we investigate the case. Most likely people would simply conclude that "he pushed too much" or "He didn't have enough skills to accomplish that line" I feel there is no room for me to argue about that kind of opinions. However that wouldn't benefit anyone, so I would like you to bear with me while going further details in this article.
You need to have an appropriate mindset to address human factors. If you are an independent climber, researching about the route and preparing for it must be essential parts. This also means that you are expecting uncertainties=risks beforehand and preparing for them. Although this often ended up just being a theory on paper and not so useful at the actual site.
Regardless of the mental preparation, most of the behaviours and decision made in the mountains are likely to be twisted due to the relationship with your partner, your mental state, environmental condition such as weather and time. However this doesn't mean that the risk that you came up with during the preparation phase disappear. It is just the reality is far from the risk that you expected in terms of size or type. The most important thing is properly realizing and acknowledge the differences of the anticipated risks and the what's actually happening at the moment.
We decide to go to a certain objective because the risks you anticipate would be within your skills, knowledge and experience. Or even though it's above your current level but might want to push your limit (In this case, you really need to be careful) and believe that's still manageable. This time I have already recognized the possible looseness of the rocks from the record by Greg Boswell during the preparation phase. But by actually going there I learned that its condition was way worse than I expected. It was represented by the cause of the initial fall of my partner. The rock that came off was the size of a human and as it dropped it broken into face-sized pieces. Also it was along the gully and to make the things worse, there was a sharp hike in the temperature on that day. Looking back, now I would say this was a suicidal thing and my understanding of the word "Loose Rock" got another definition.
When there is a significant gap between the estimated risk and reality at site, that means that your risk management wasn't functioning properly. For example, when the weather forecast says that there would be snow but the amount of the snowfall was more than you expected or having seen an avalanche when there was low avalanche risk. In those cases, we need to reassess risks objectively. I believe the inherent risk of solo climbing stems from here as well. Your judgement tend to be quite subjective and you only get half of the information. By discussing and sharing opinions with partner, we can make decisions based on objective and unbiased perspectives.
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| Risk is always present in the mountains |
This time we skipped important process of mindset and continued to climb. This lead us to another accident which put us in a further dangerous situation. Risk is inevitable as long as you are in the mountains and climbing also avoiding the unexpected accidents is quite hard. If you are a serious climber, there will be some occasions that you have to take a big risk. (Don't worry! This is when you go on a private one, when I am working as a Guide I wouldn't-Always safety first) Yet I am certain that as long as you catch the signals from the mountains, pause, discuss and mindset, a lots of accidents could be prevented.
I heard more accidents than previous years in the Rockies during this winter. This whole experience also made me to think about the balance of being bold and careful.
Almost two months have passed since the accident and my body is finally fully recovered now. In April, I am planning to do a short expedition with Takeshi -Our member in the Rockies and hopefully I can share some exciting stories with you after that.
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| Mountains can be cruel and beautiful |
Lastly I am going to share some of the lessons that we learned from this accident.
Investigation of the incident and reflection
1．Recognition of the route condition
Like I said earlier, I knew that route can be very loose from Greg's record. It's been quite warm like Spring until February, especially the temperature was above 0 at night on the day of the accident. I could have taken the temperature into consideration but it was a rock line so didn't give it much thoughts. But obviously I should have paid attention to an idea of the ice and snow around the route could have contract the rock and warm temperature could expand the rock. Especially having contracted rock on the gully stabilize the condition and consequently lower the risk.
２．Belaying point for the first pitch
At that time I thought that my belaying point wan't a problem since I positioned myself slightly off the line that my partner was climbing and there was a overhanging rock right above me. However I should have taken a few points into consideration that as the lead climber goes up, the range of the falling rock could significantly changes and especially within a formation such as gully, the rock could hit against the wall and change falling directions completely. In this case, I should have positioned myself at the lower place.
３．Lack of communication
We should have evaluated each other's situation and made judgement objectively. Neither of me and my partner were much communicative type and we are kind of people who tend to go with flow. The important thing is that we should know each other's personality well and address the problems.
I learned that face sized rocks that hit me was initially the size of the human on our way back to the car. It was very fortunate that the rock broke into pieces as it was heading toward me and just thinking about what if it didn't break and human size rock hit me was extremely horrifying. If I heard that story before I went on the second pitch I wouldn't have continued.
４. About Gear
After the first accident, our rope was damaged and the inner part was exposed. We should check gears thoroughly not only our body after the accident. If we had a long descending with a rope like that, it could have lead to another horrible accident. Also if you climb the alpine route especially along the gully even there is a spacious ledge, in order to prevent the damage from the falling rock or ice, we should have coiled neatly and keep them close to you.
5.About Injury
When an accident occurred, make sure to check the condition of your possible injuries with your eyes. Bruises and fractures often influence the movement right away but other injury such as lacerations you don't feel the pain even though it's quite deep and severe. When the rock hit my shin, I only touched over my clothes if I had seen the actual wound I wouldn't have continued. Actually I was stunned when I first saw the condition when I got back to my car...
Thank you for reading the long story an hope you all would enjoy the safe spring climbing.
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