[Music]
so yeah luckily the climber survived
this incident happened last year and now
I had an opportunity to talk to her he's
our coach so I trusted them but before
that I hope that for every climber
watching it is immediately clear that it
was a Blay's mistake however what I
wanted to do is to look into the details
so I upscaled the footage and looked
frame by frame did some pixel peeping to
see what else can be learned from this
experience and there is quite a bit to
uncover so I hope that we can stay
somewhat civil in the comment section
because it is a quite sensitive topic so
Sara is a professional climber from
Saudi Arabia and she was on a training
camp with French coach is to prepare for
upcoming World Cup The Climb there that
was the the warm up for me oh no it was
the first one wow the first climb of the
day no this is what I do always I go to
climb and then I fall just to get rid of
fear of falling yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah
so a routine fear of falling training
ended up in broken legs and spine now
for everyone new to the sport or for
those who still needs a rem reminder
petzel who makes grigory the device used
in the incident is recommending to give
slack like
this or alternatively if you want to
give slack fast you can press on grigory
scam and give slack like this however
you must maintain at least three fingers
on the Rope at all times and I already
made multiple videos showing what
happens if you don't follow these
recommendations and press on the cam
with f holding the
rope and also in some cases you don't
even need to press on the cam the gri
can still slip now despite all of that
throughout the years I've seen so much
of No Hands belaying Everybody Knows
whose clip I should insert here or all
kinds of Dev gripping techniques you can
imagine so that at least her coach was
kind of holding the Rope between his
index and middle finger but like come on
how much grip do you have when you hold
the Rope like this it's so easy for the
Rope to fall out compared to what petel
recommends and on top of that he was
both giving and taking slack with the
same hand now on a first glance assuming
he would have good proper grip on the
brake side of the Rope giving slack and
then taking slack like this wouldn't be
a big problem however that teaches you a
wrong muscle memory and as we will see
later that actually caused a huge
problem and another a bit of
controversial topic is the usage of
gloves it's really not that comfortable
to hook on the grigory slip with the
index finger when you have gloves and
his gloves looked really thick so maybe
even gripping the Rope like this is not
comfortable with such gloves maybe
that's how he invented this dangerous
scissoring technique to hold the Rope
like this so personally I'm not a big
fan of using gloves with assisted
belaying devices because I lose the
feeling of the Rope I lose the dexterity
and all these devices need is like
couple of hundred G tugging on the rope
for device to lock even if you're
pressing on the cam and you're holding
the Rope it will still lock and you
don't need to hold much and the Rope is
not going to fly and burn your hand all
right the next problem that many pointed
out was that the bler was not paying
attention to the climber actually I
watched the whole climb many many times
it was a warm-up climb and in the
beginning the coach did watch her climb
and in general he looked like an
experienced belayer who had a good
situational awareness and slack
management however once she passed
midpoint of the climb he stopped paying
attention and on top of that he was also
distracted by the conversation with the
other coach I actually heard them
talking the whole time but I didn't say
anything cuz I trust his
years of experience and he's our coach
so I trusted him I don't let anyone talk
while bling me I'm really careful with
bling and I always check my BL so now
okay I understand it's a warm up and
you've been belaying for thousands of
hours in these situations so looking up
all the time would simply kill your neck
however clipping is extremely critical
moment because we are actively disabling
the safety of the G so it's super
important to look up during these
moments or you can simply use the blay
glasses and not have these neck issues
anymore and what really pisses me off is
that it was not one coach in that
situation three of them actually there
was three coaches one belaying and two
others were talking to that one seeing
the bad baying and we said
nothing yeah
and that's how we arrived to the
critical point she was clipping one
before the last Quick Draw and the
blayer intuitively probably felt that
there is more of the route to be climbed
but she took her test fall the Rope
started to get tight and the grigory
started to engage he probably thought
that she's climbing up and she needs
more slack so he pushed down on the
grigory to disengage the cam and tried
to give more slack and to his surprise
the Rope popped out of his left hand and
From This Moment till the ground there
was less than one second he desperately
tried to grab the rope with the left
hand remember the muscle memory so yeah
he only managed to do so when it was
already too late
and on top of all the mistakes it was
really not her lucky day she landed
right in front of the crash pads so yeah
maybe every gym owner can also learn
something from this now some of you
might think why he simply did not let go
the grigri well let me show you at this
moment he pressed on the cam to give the
slack and now I'm going to play the rest
of the clip in real time speed ready
3 2 one
done you go there as an athlete and you
trust the coaches and uh and you don't
even think that something like that can
happen and yeah how how are you how are
you recovering now it's good it's good
it's going really well uh now I'm fourth
month after I start walking finally okay
uh cuz the first three months was wasn't
I couldn't walk both feet was broken so
I couldn't but now it's going really
well do you think you will get back to
climbing yeah for sure I'll go back to
climbing nice yeah but take time even my
my back and foot my left foot I have to
do another surgery just to remove the
plates they put on what a story huh yeah
man you're such a strong person you're
smiling while telling the story is
incredible
I have nothing else to do I cried a lot
so I'm done with crying I I can't
believe it so I'm I'm laughing at
it wow I really hope that uh you will
come out of this story much
stronger and
uh hopefully even climb much harder
after all of
this you so
much so yeah a lot of things had to
align for this incident to happen bad
baying technique distracted belayer
giving slack midall however this is not
a unique case after Sara posted her
story on Instagram a lot of people
reached out to her and told that They
too had similar situations so the only
unique thing about this one is that it
was actually captured on camera and the
most important that all of these can be
easily avoided by simply following pel's
recommend recommendations of how to use
grigory instead of being creative or
thinking that I've been belaying for
multiple decades and I've never seen
Gregory fail because I think that this
coach learned his mistakes in a hard
way yeah so if you want to send some
love uh this is sar's Instagram and uh
every time I make a new grigory video I
think that this is going to be the last
G video I'm making and I have the same
feeling now but it's kind of deu feel
so let's
see climb safe