25 years, I failed to tie my knot and my partner did not catch the error because we did not practice the buddy system. I took a 14m fall onto the wooden floor of the gym (or should I say, through the floor ?). To this day I still love with the consequences of a few seconds of complacency.
The informal group of climbing friends I belonged to always practiced the buddy system and we introduced many newbies to climbing. Over the course of their first session with us they got used to being asked to check if I had tied on correctly. Later in the evening I would deliberately tie incorrectly and not a single one of them ever spotted the mistake, until I gently said “are you sure?” They would look again and then see the error. Until I threw in the deliberate error all I had done was to teach them to look, but not to see. After that they never failed to look and see.
In my caving group we do buddy check after gearing up (which may be a crossover habit because many are also divers). Occasionally something gets spotted but I think the main mechanism working here is that knowing a buddy check is coming, you self check properly in order to avoid looking like a tool. A rare example of ego actually being useful in the mountains...
“A man who is not afraid of the sea will soon be drowned; but we do be afraid of the sea and we do only be drowned now and again” J.M.Synge
25 years, I failed to tie my knot and my partner did not catch the error because we did not practice the buddy system. I took a 14m fall onto the wooden floor of the gym (or should I say, through the floor ?). To this day I still love with the consequences of a few seconds of complacency.
Stay safe and keep you buddy safe.
The informal group of climbing friends I belonged to always practiced the buddy system and we introduced many newbies to climbing. Over the course of their first session with us they got used to being asked to check if I had tied on correctly. Later in the evening I would deliberately tie incorrectly and not a single one of them ever spotted the mistake, until I gently said “are you sure?” They would look again and then see the error. Until I threw in the deliberate error all I had done was to teach them to look, but not to see. After that they never failed to look and see.
In my caving group we do buddy check after gearing up (which may be a crossover habit because many are also divers). Occasionally something gets spotted but I think the main mechanism working here is that knowing a buddy check is coming, you self check properly in order to avoid looking like a tool. A rare example of ego actually being useful in the mountains...
Indeed!
Synge used ‘drownded’ in the quote. Alas spellcheck robbed it of its poetry whilst I was distracted typing!
Words matter. Would a buddy system have more appeal to those fragile, dare I say macho, egos were it to have different name?