Crazy things you've seen at the crags

well, once i was switched belayers while at a resting jug, there was only one gri gri around and nobody told me to clip myself to a bolt, nor they've taken any precautions...just took the grigri off the harness, and clipped it to the other guy. (but in my first year or so of climbing, i've done asshole things as well!)

ah i have not seen it directly but on an italian website there are two nice stories that will fit well here. one talks about a guy toproping without draws in, someone gets to the same anchors and unclips the rope. The guy is now freesolo 10 meters from the ground. They solve the situation throwing a quickdraw up to the guy, who gets it, climbs to the closer bolt and clips in.... The other talks about a guy starting this 7a that's hard for him. There's a boulder problem right in the beginning. He's stuck in a very ackward positions and shouts "take". The belayer takes in and pulls the climber to the ground, since he forgot to clip the rope... climbook.com (if you can read italian)

A good friend of mine was climbing in the rockies when the a unit from the army came in for a day of climbing.  The leader/guide (?) proceeded to put on a gear sling, and lead up a trad line.  At the top he set up an anchor, then took off the gear sling, still quite heavy with gear, yelled "rack" and dropped it to the ground.  Not sure of the rational, perhaps he felt it was too heavy to carry down while rapelling?

We arrived at a crack and saw an older guy belaying his mabye 10 year old son. The rope was not long enough, so they extended the rope with a thin Reepschnur (5-8 cord?). The young boy climbed on toprope and the older guy belayed him without any tool (no hms,grigri,etc.). He just held the rope (at the beginning the cord) in one hand and looked arround.

One day i was climbing at Rumney. I watched a guy climb up a 13a. At the 3rd bolt he fell. What happen next scared the shit out of me. His bran new beal rope, that he had been bragging about somehow tore open right to the core and with and awful ripping noise streched about six feet. He came to a halt about ten feet off the deck. Looking up, all he saw was six feet of white cord. hahaha he sceamed soooo loud.

A friend's story, but I'll share. A girl was sport climbing on a route fifty yards or so away. She reached the top and set up the anchor off the chains to lower back down. Somewhere along the way she lost track of where she was in the process, unclipped her backup thinking she was secured to the rope, leaned back and fell to the bottom of the route (about 30ft). He said he was one of the first to arrive at the bottom of the route... she had a lot of broken bones ("a mess" I think was his word choice) but she survived the fall.  Second story -- again through a friend -- Several crags in Connecticut are also stomping grounds for drunk high school students. They like to throw things like bottles from the top of the cliffs. He was belaying one evening and a bunch of drunk kids threw a VCR from the top of the cliff, it blew to pieces 20 or 30 feet from where he was standing. Always wear a helmet.

So one time we were a bunch of guys and moving to a crag. Nobody in our group was there before exept me. As we arrived I talked about some routes I have done and what they felt like. I showed them a nice line and told them that it has cool moves. So after some warmup two of my friends began to climb the route. The first one was only able to climb the first three quickdraws, so it was to the other guy to complete the route. The whole thing has about 8 pieces but the main crux is after the 3rd quickdraw. So my friend enters the route and we came together to wach him. He passed the 3rd draw and I began to wonder where he has all the other pieces. He was entering the crux section and passed it very well. To this point I thought hewould have had his draws all on the left side, where I can´t see them, so I said nothing. As he passed the crux he wanted to clip in the next draw and here he realised that he forgot all on the ground. We wanted to help him and throw him some draws but he began to get nervous. He screamed and sweard a few times before he jumped in the rope. He was so pissed that he even stopped climbing for the day!

It happend in frankenjura last year, i was for second time there and i didn't know that i am not allowed to climb till above, so i climb and suddenly i just realized there are no more bolts (the top was approx 5 meter below me)....hmmm.... i saw a tree above and i was thinking i have to go there but the one who belay (he knew that it is not allowed to go above) did not give me anymore rope....it was the most intresting down climb ever did :))

Here is mine ... We wanted to climb a 12 bolts route, but we realized we had just 11 quickdraws, so i decided I would climb and clip the first two, then downclimb and recover the first one, so to have enough for the hard part of the route. So I followed my plan, clipped the first two, down climb, unclip the first one, climb up again towards the third bolt. But in the process I touched the second (and only) quickdraw with my foot, accidentally unclipping it!! So I found myself free soloing between the second and third bolt, with my forearms starting to be pumped because of the additional downclimb/reclimb ... I guess just adrenaline pushed me towards the 3rd bolt, where I could clip again. So finally ... always double check the quickdraws when you clip them, because a badly clipped draw can even be unclipped by unintentional touching with the foot ...

Many years ago I watched a very inexperienced couple climb an easy route in Frankenjura. She was leading, he was belaying. Obviously she had never climbed outside the gym before, he had a little experience. At some point two thirds up the route she could not move over a little crux. There was a Bühler bolt which can be used for rapelling. She did not know what to do and asked the belayer. He told her to untie, thread the rope through the bolt, and tie in again. She did exactly that and somehow managed not to fall down 15 meters while being untied.

Nothing whatever to do with near accidents but a cool true story. Training one day at our local crag Im at the crux of a hard (for me) route, I get stopped in my tracks coz theres a barbie doll already hanging from the crux hold, I laughed so hard I fell off! If you visit the crag you may meet her, she will be free soloing all the hard stuff in stillettos, always on a different route, and now topless!!

Here is some crazy shit captured on video at a local gym in Prague. A Dutch climber captured it while training there.

This is the same thing I have seen. Scary shit!

Once, while abseiling from an 1800Ft wall, I saw some climbers going up through an easy route, they move slow and clumsy. At one point we share the same belay point and while I was pulling the ropes down to set next abseiling point, I noticed that they had labels all over their slings, quickdraws and nuts. I asked them why they did not just ripped them off and climb without those hanging trademarks labels. They answered me something like “No way!, we want to reach the top of this mountain that´s all.  Tomorrow, we´ll go to the shop, hand the rack over and get the money back”. No comment. -------------------------------------------------- A couple of climbers, I will not say their names, were on a big wall about 1800Ft high and C4 most of the pitches. The third day of climbing, they dropped the last bottle of water accidentally, so they decided to finish the route, anyway! That night, they could not eat because of the dryness of their mouth.  In the evening of next day, they come across with some climbers, about 500Ft on their right, who said they would leave some water close to the top. When they reached the water on the sunset, they were so thirsty that the first one to reach the bottle took a slung straight away, but the second climber took the precaution of washing his mouth and spited the water out before taking a proper drink of water. A few minutes later, the first climber started feeling sick and puked up the water with bile on his hands but drank it back again a few times, while the second one screamed, “No mate!, don’t vomit the water, give it to me if you don´t want it”.