Admit your mistakes. Share so others learn.

So this week we just returned from Robber's Cave State Park in Oklahoma. We were there Sunday through Wednesday to do some hiking, climbing and rappelling. Unfortunately, much of our activities were displaced due to a poor setup on my part. You see, I implemented a poorly designed rigging for a rappel and my wife fell. More details will be revealed as the blog continues.

We were on a short cliff (only 15') so i could introduce Lori to the basics of rappelling before we went to the larger cliffs up by the cave.  I rigged a fireman's belay with redundant nylon webbing to a single 'bomb-proof' anchor.  As my story will reveal, it proved to be a near fatal rigging.



So to hook-up, I had two straps individually wrapped around a large healthy oak tree.  This thing was massive- it must have had an 8 foot circumference at least because I couldn't wrap both my arms around it.  Anyway, I wrapped double in case a strap or knot failed- not likely but I wanted to be careful and make everything redundant.  Unfortunately, the unforeseen happened- and it almost ended tragically.
  I'm sharing my negative experience here so others may learn.

So Lori had her feet too close together and started to twist to the right.  Doing so caused the rope to slip into the crevice.   Even though I pulled on the double rope locking her in immediately, she continued to fall- not because she was slipping on the rope, but because the rope itself was falling into the crevice.  The horizontal slide of the rope and vertical drop combined for a 4' vertical fall and 8' horizontal swing into the granite wall on her right.  

[ASIDE: Making matters even worse- she wasn't wearing a helmet.  I had waived off the safety of a helmet thinking this cliff was so elementary and no loose rocks were to be found, we didn't need it.  How terribly wrong I was!  We always wear our helmets now no matter how rudimentary the cliff!]

She hit the wall HARD with her back, elbow and back of her head.  It knocked the wind out of her and even caused her to momentarily black out.  Her elbow was severely scraped and bruised and her back is black in several places.  She also received a significant knot on her head.  Fortunately, the window of time indicating a concussion has passed and x-rays showed nothing broken so we consider ourselves fortunate and blessed by God's mercy!

So my conclusion is I should have rigged my webbing to different anchor points.  Even though my second anchor point was smaller and further away, it would have provided the necessary connection point that would have stopped the rope from falling into the crevice when Lori slipped.

Conclusion: when connecting your rigging, consider the strength of your anchors but also consider how the choosing of your anchor points will allow your rope to swing/move.