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Rock climbing mistake (video)

Can you see what he did here?

He put his anchor in an hourglass-shaped crack (you can see this at 2:26 in the video), instead of a bottoming crack, and when he put his weight on it, instead of jamming in the crack the downward force pulled it through the narrow section and it popped out.

If you freeze the frame at 3:10, you get a good view of the crack, and I suspect the anchor failure and fall could’ve been avoided by using a larger nut just above where this one was placed. (A video here shows how it’s supposed to be done.)

They’re climbing Lost Arrow Spire (photo at left) in Yosemite Valley, where the granite rock is great stuff to climb on, but this crack is badly pitted from past pitoning.

This is a lot easier to watch in a chair than from a ledge.

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