On 12/26/2013 5:03 PM, Jim Lux wrote:
Jim, I had somewhat the same feeling until I scrolled down to the
"selfie" of the guy taken from the top of one of those homebrew 200'
towers made from chain-link fence top-rail. You can clearly see the
safety lanyard made from dacron rope with frayed ends that is holding
him in place. While I greatly admire the vigor of an 85 year old guy who
fabricates and installs 200' towers by himself, nobody should be under
any allusions that what he is doing is remotely safe (at least when it
comes to the climbing part of it).
Yeah, I finally found that one..
I'm not so wild about climbing with just a belt. BUT.. if that's a
piece of kernmantle static line, which is kind of what it looks like,
I don't think that's the biggest of his problems. I'd worry more
about one of the innummerable welds popping loose when the hook pulls
on it. And it kind of looks like he's just looped it through the rings
on his belt.
But hey, safety is relative. When I learned to rock climb in the 70s,
the "state of the art" was a swami belt of 20-25 ft of 1" webbing
wrapped around your waist. You tied on with either a figure 8 or a
bowline (which is what his hooks are tied on with). That was
considered perfectly safe compared to crazy guys who would just tie
the rope around their waist, or even crazier guys who just went rope
free.
That this was a few short decades after the introduction of the
"belay" and anchoring the belayer to the wall, as opposed to the late
19th century approach of tie everyone to the same rope, and move
together, and "the leader must not fall".
So 'YRV thinks that he's ok, and while he's doing stuff that *I*
wouldn't do, and neither would most people, it's not like he's
climbing up that 200 ft tower with NO safety (which, in fact, people
do..). He's at sort of the 1960s-1970s safety practice level.
Should people take his example as one to follow? Certainly not.
Should we tell him "don't climb, until you have a certified harness,
and use standard industry practice, and by the way, are you a
certified welder?" I don't think so. He clearly knows the
consequences of failures (since he has the mishaps page).
It's sort of like people setting off on a solo sailboat trip across an
ocean. Or jumping horses over fences. Or off-road racing. It's a
fundamentally unsafe thing to do. There are more or less safe ways
you can do it, but that doesn't change a lot of things. Everyone gets
to make their own decisions (hopefully with good advice, but free to
ignore it).
Well, he is 85 and still climbing, so I guess he has either been very
lucky and/or he is being more careful than what the pictures suggest
:-). One can argue there is risk taking and there is stupid. Off-road
racing (to use on of your examples) is no doubt risky, but off-road
racing with all your lug nuts loose is arguably both risky and stupid :-)
In any case, if I make it to 85, I hope I am that spry.
73, Mike W4EF...................
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