Apologies for the lack of content, but On the Line is days away from being published, so I’m deep in last-minute edits. One new bit of content that I' wrote today is part of the book’s appendix, and came about due to my editor asking the question, what’s the science behind panic grabbing? I have covered the problems of panic grabbing in the book extensively, but not its cause. And so, even though it’s a pain in the ass to be still adding new stuff to this book, I penned something on the subject, which I thought I’d share below (it’s not been edited BTW).
If anyone wants to support the project, go to this page (this link works!).
In the military and law enforcement, water sports, and aviation, the effects of instinctual – panic – responses – how one reacts to a real and imagined threat – are now well understood. These effects are combated in several ways: safety methodology and protocol – such as not having your finger on a trigger; simulation training, which reduces the shocks that can trigger such a response; and education, how instinctual responses can hijack a person’s brain and perhaps kill them or others. But for some reason, even though these same issues affect climbers and kill and injure climbers, there is zero interest in the subject. Why?
In Australia, between 1992 and 2010, 103 would-be rescuers were drowned, pulled down by the person they were trying to rescue. The mechanics of such a tragic event are well understood: the drowning person goes into an automatic drowning response in which they no longer attempt to swim or tread water or try and seek help from others (shouting, waving) but instead will involuntarily focus only on keeping their mouth above water by pressing down with their hands while holding their heads back. If anyone gets close to someone in this state, they will instinctively grab at them to save themselves, even if this results in both drownings. This panic response is well understood within life-saving, so swimmers are now taught, “Reach or throw, don’t go”. This panic response is also mirrored by how people needlessly die in rip tides, the survival instinct and the panic response to swim to shore rather than swim parallel to it and escape.
One climbing story of a panic response is my own. I was working in a climbing and caving shop, and one day, an expert caver – Moose – who worked there offered to show me how a Petzl Stop worked. The shop had a climbing wall, so we climbed the ladder up into the eves of the shop where a static rope hung down next to it, and he supervised me attaching the Stop to the rope and then the devices to my harness. Once fully loaded, he told me to wait, climbed back down to the floor, and told me to pull the red handle on the device and rappel down. Now, I knew how to rappel, and I’d used a GriGri before and assumed I’d depress the red handle and descend slowly and gracefully down under control. “OK, down you come,” said Moose. I pressed the handle. Whoosh. I hit the ground, landing on my feet. What had happened was rather than a slow and controlled descent; the second I pressed the handle, the device had zero control over the rope, and I just dropped like a stone.
To make matters worse, rather than control my descent with my control hand on the dead rope, I let go and grabbed the rope above the Stop while my other hand was clamped down on the red handle in a death grip. Moose looked at me. I looked at Moose. I held up my hand, glassed and burnt from holding onto the rope, and Moose just high-fived it and laughed.
Other manifestations of irrational and counterproductive panic responses in climbing include letting go of the break strand when belaying to stop yourself face-planting into the rock, failing to release your hand when squeezing an ABD to give out slack, and then the leader falls, inability to move – frozen in your tracks – when rocks, or snow, is coming towards you. Apart from belaying, TRS is perhaps the climbing activity most vulnerable to such panic responses, with accidents often being due to the climber grabbing – and so disabling – the thing that is supposed to keep them from hitting the ground. Rather than a drowning man pulling their rescuer down, it’s a falling climber pulling their safety device down with them.
Many terms are used for the issue of a dangerous outcome to an automatic response, which in this case is falling, but perhaps the most easily digested is Daniel Goleman’s ‘Limbic hijack’. In such a ‘hijack’, the limbic system, the emotional, impulsive, and instinctual part of the brain, temporarily overwhelms or ‘hijacks’ the rational and thoughtful part of the brain, particularly the pre-frontal cortex, the part of your brain that deals with complex cognitive processes (thinking!). Unlike some forms of limbic hijacking, such as a pilot’s brain losing all ability to think, gravity makes any such hijack extremely fast (9.8 m/s2) and unforgiving. Before your pre-frontal cortex returns online and you snap out of it, you or someone else probably hit the deck.
Anti-Hijack methods
The more a climber climbs, the more experience they gain, and the less hijackable their brains become. One reason for this is that experience, which, as Mark Twain reminds us, comes from making bad decisions, is the experience of being hijacked before. They are also more comfortable in situations and environments that can trigger such a response in someone new to such experiences and places. But how can you excel in anti-hijack protection?
Become an expert in the tools of your trade. A climber belaying for a thousand hours with a belay plate is much less likely to be hijacked in the first hour of using a Petzl GriGri. A climber who has never used a belay plate and has been handed a GriGri for the first time is dangerously exposed to a hijacking. The climber with a thousand hours on both devices should be hijack-proof. So, when using new tools and devices, be aware that you are vulnerable, pre-plan how you might get hijacked, and take steps to avoid that happening.
Maintain your skills. Safe practices become automatic when you’re constantly climbing. Still, the risk of hijack can creep back if you have significant gaps between doing them, especially if they have not yet become automated. One reason is you can’t fool yourself, and a sense of non-automation, or feeling a little out of control, can stimulate a panic response.
Train it out. A climber escaping the system for the first time could easily end up grabbing a friction hitch in such a way as to cause it to slip, panic, and let go of their rappel device and fall to the ground. A climber who has practised climbing ropes on friction hitches, practised multi-self rescue scenarios, rappeled with a back-up hundreds of times and knows every friction hitch inside and out would not be so easily hijacked. When training for TRS, train appropriately and simulate expected scenarios and unexpected critical events.
Be aware of your surroundings and environment. If you’re climbing in the wet, the ground is sandy, or it’s dark, or there are other climbers nearby, could this increase the risk of a hijack? If you’re rappelling down a cliff in the rain, and your feet slip, might you put out your break hand to stop a face plant? If you can anticipate a threat, you can generally find a way of avoiding it.
Avoid complacency. If you read in this book that X device can be turned off by panic grabbing, don’t just assume that would never happen to you. Rather than being complacent, be quietly vigilant and adopt a healthy expectation and suspicion for things going wrong.
Adopt an anti-hijack mindset. If you study these issues and understand how they might affect you and others, you can reduce their likelihood and reduce the impact if they occur. Having done a lot of scary stuff, I can now keep the “I’m going to die” blind panic at bay because I understand just what it is that I’m feeling. If all else fails, when you feel that hijacker’s gun put to your head, just count to ten, breathe slowly, and wait until you’re free of it.