skiers and climbers

[Macson]

Is it "normal" for skiers to run over ropes on glaciers??? I don't think my little 3 man team was hogging up the Easton, so I'm a little pissed that some jackass figured he should run over my rope with his metal edged skis. Then again, I've only been climbing a few years....maybe this happens all the time.

[wayne]

That should never happen period

I would have been tempted to clothes-line him

[whidbey]

Bitch slapping if possible would be in order. If that doesn't work......

[mountainmatt]

Thats crazy! If you see the guy again, make sure that you pull up the slack and catch him at the knees...

[ashw_justin]

Accidental/intentional? Apology? He should pay you the amount of a new rope. Which he can obviously afford, since he's probably wearing $1000 on his feet. It's too bad you couldn't treat him to a little base-work with your crampons...

[scot'teryx]

That's totally rude and wrong. I still don't get it when stuff like that happens. They probably had no control or were just ignorant.

 

Amazing how many times I have seen people pass rope teams on the uphill side when ascending as well.

[Macson]

I'm not sure if it was intentional or just bad skiing. We were descending and I stopped and said hi to his partner....asked him if he wanted me to go to his left or right so I would be out of their way. He said to me that it didn't matter since they could easily turn. His partner was still 500' up....looked like he might have been trying to get up the nerve to keep going.

 

He crossed the rope by the end climber so I didn't know about it until it was already done. My partner yelled "hey, do those skis have metal edges?" and the guy yelled back "oh ya, sorry" and kept on going. We were on a pretty wide area just below the crater.

[DirtyHarry]

Maybe he didn't see the rope until he had skiied over it.

[skykilo]

I agree that skiers shouldn't go over climbers' ropes, but once I was hauling ass and didn't see the rope at all until I was on it. But I jumped the rope, so I didn't do any damage. Those guys were still pretty pissed. Whatever.

[JoshK]

Wow, if he actually ran the rope over that is pretty damn dick. Unfortunately, you'd have no way to catch him.

[catbirdseat]

Maybe he didn't see the rope until he had skiied over it.

Not enough brains to figure out three people just might be roped up on a glacier.

[lI1|1!]

skiing over someone's rope is totally wrong and there's no excuse. probably an accident/clueless/sketched.

 

i don't think there are any "right of way" rules between skiers and rope teams and i don't think we need any, but conflicts can arise. a little heads up and patience can go a long way when sharing the mountain. i have had a rope team walk blithely in front of me while i was skiing some bulletproof on a volcano. no biggie, i stopped a few minutes and let them go by (if they had waited 10 seconds i'd have been out of their hair...)

 

again not finger pointing here, just sharing point of view:

 

don't assume a skier is the super expert who can doing anything to get around you.

 

don't assume a skier can or wants to just stop anywhere. skiing is about things like fall line and run out and not hitting rocks, etc.

 

communicate - both parties can shout or point their intentions.

 

skiers will often wait to descend until the snow is a little softer, then descend a lot faster than rope teams, so passing will occur. letting them pass can be a necessary courtesy on constrictions.

 

dude, let me take my line, i'm like shredding here, ok.

 

thanks for reading!

[glm]

You could give him the benefit of the doubt that he honestly didn't see the rope until he was on it - a rope lying on the ground isn't visible from above, and climbers DO travel unroped on the Easton a fair amount - it's pretty safe for a glacier.

 

However ... he should have stopped and apologized and I think a line of climbers is a pretty good indication that there could be a rope between them, so I'm not too convinced of that argument either.

 

I was on the Easton some years back ('98, the BIG SNOW year), and there were a whole bunch of snowmobiles on the glacier and my big worry was that one of them was going to hook us and take us for a ride.

 

The point is, everyone should look out for others on the mountain, whether it's running into ropes, not dropping rocks, or whatever and this guy was, at the very least, rude for not stopping.

[Macson]

Bottom line is, life's too short to hold a grudge. He was probably just immersed in the moment. It was pretty sweet snow that time of day, and I was certainly jealous that they were getting a nice ride down while I was just about to start post holing!

[mattp]

The point is, everyone should look out for others on the mountain, whether it's running into ropes, not dropping rocks, or whatever and this guy was, at the very least, rude for not stopping.

 

True. I also think that everyone should expect other parties NOT to do so and take appropriate precautions.

 

In this case, I'm not sure there were any appropriate precautions, but I don't find it hard to picture such a thing as somebody skiing over your glacier rope and while I'd be yelling at the guy too I think there was probably little harm done. Inspecting the rope, can you even tell where the "damage" occurred? What does it look/feel like?

 

Whether it is the Easton Glacier on Mount Baker, or the Outer Space route on Snow Creek Wall, chances are better than 50% that, on any given day, somebody is going to do something you think is either obnoxious or maybe even dangerous. I'm not making excuses for all the idiots in this world, but one way to minimimze that is to climb non-standard routes.