Climber Injured on Rainier - 7.2.08

PI Article

Scary stuff.

I haven't seen any reference to the victim being roped up.  What's going on here?  I assume he was roped.  But, if he fell 25 feet, then that would represent a lot of slack in his rope.  I guess if in a middle position, 10 ft. of slack in each direction.  Well, there is just no info on this, not even in Gauthier's blog. 

So, if one is properly roped and folks are trained... should one fall 25 feet?  Of course the reality is that anything can happen.  I have fallen through snow into stream run off, up to my neck... so I know how sudden things can happen.

Considering slack in the rope, a second or two delay in arresting, and then rope stretch, 25' is not insane. A hour to extract, on the other hand... that's a damn long cold hour for the person in the slot.

It's pretty easy to go in 25 feet if you're the upper person on the rope team and you have more than 30 feet between people. Just fall, slide into crevasse near the downhill person on the rope team, and then hope they can arrest your fall.

My personal experience with a crevasse fall is that a variety of factors can put the person quite a few feet into a crevasse: 1) Rope stretch, 2) the arresting climber can fall or slide a few feet before they manage to stop the fall, and 3) the rope cutting into the lip of the crevasse. We had the middle climber on a 3-man rope team fall in a crevasse. He was down about 15 feet. Uninjured, he was able to prussic out, but it took close to an hour. It takes time for the upper climbers to set up an anchor, then catch your breath, hang your pack, change gloves, set up prussics, untie and re-tie the prussics as they ice up, etc.