Injured Climber? Let's Escape the Belay

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If you’ve been following along on the blog or the YouTube channel for awhile, you’ve probably gathered, by now, that I’m a big believer in climbing teams being self-reliant. Every so often, I come right out and say it. Far more often, it’s the implied message behind pretty much any of the how-to videos we do. What’s the point of a how-to video, particularly one that is contingency based to either alleviate a problem that has happened, like today’s video, or is designed to mitigate a risk, if the subtext isn’t “how to I keep myself and my team safe.”

But today’s video is kind of a hybrid. Yes, there’s a procedure, and that procedure needs to be executed by the person holding the rope. But it is also a procedure that either allows us to move on to the next self-rescue procedure or allows us to simply go get help.

Sometimes getting help just makes sense.

I’ve called Search and Rescue once. It turned out me and my partner were able to self-extricate, but SAR met us at the trailhead. It wasn’t entirely clear to me that things were going to go our way, and cutting the time of SAR reaching us should things continue to compound would have been important (winter storm conditions). I sheepishly told one of the SAR guys, “Sorry for wasting your time,” upon meeting them at that trailhead, and he said, “You did the right thing. We like these kinds of calls.”

To be fair to myself, I was in communication via my satellite communication device with them throughout, allowing them to tailor resources to the changing need. It’s not like we had an army of SAR volunteers out on our call when they could have been out helping another emergency. We had one SAR guy and a sheriff deputy with a snowmobile.

That being said, I still made the call… well, really a satellite text.

One of the evaluations we need to make when dealing with an issue is, “am I likely to help this situation, or am I likely to make it worse?” Maybe we see this most clearly with things like avalanche or rockfall victims. The first thing we are supposed to do as partners or responders is figure out if it is safe to get into the terrain where help is needed. If we get that wrong, we now have a new victim and a lot more complicated of situation.

Not everyone is going to have the necessary skills or gear or emotional steadiness required when an accident happens. I think we should train (physically, mentally, and emotionally) to be ready for such an eventuality, but none of us know how we are going to react in a time of crisis until we’ve been through crisis. Or, on the flipside, maybe something that is pretty darn complicated to do alone is pretty easy if we have just a little help. I think the scenario I give in this video is one example of that type of thing.

So, sometimes just getting ourselves free to move while keeping our partner in as safe of situation as we can is the right first step. That might allow us to get that nearby help. It might allow us to take on the next thing to do. So, being able to get out of a belay isn’t help, but it helps us get help.