Tourists going along those narrow plank things stuck into the cliff face. “via ferrata – metal rungs secured to the mountain”
So how many tons do these things hold?
Via ferrata in Italy is so much better. First off, I don’t even think it’s safe to have more than one person on a segment at a time - when you fall, you slide down to the previous anchor into the wall. You also get fucked up, worse than regular mountain climbing, because the fall factor can go way over 2 and you can hit whatever metal stuff is on the wall.
I know we need to shit on China every chance we get but…
That is perfectly normal and it is clear that the team that let this article through has never been out to Yosemite or any crowded wall. I prefer to stick to the less crowded routes (and am not huge on big walling) but I’ve definitely run into a few multipitches where my partner and I kind of just hang out at the anchor waiting for the people ahead of us to get far enough that we can go again. And when they are taking ages to progress on a 5.9… we tend to wait until they are almost at the next set of anchors before even starting. I think our record was two hours because we were pretty certain we would have to rescue the idiots in front of us… and we did. Was basically wait until their leader was panicking and then jug up to get them sorted and then have them rappel back down with us because we didn’t feel like having to walk around their splatted corpses when we got down.
Also, based on the picture, this is a via ferrata route and they were part of a tourism group. For those not familiar, those routes aren’t “real” rock climbing as they involve staying constantly clipped in to fixed metal cables with a personal anchor and often involve using outright ladders. They (allegedly?) go back to World War 1 and 2 when troops would need to traverse mountains to get to the enemy. They are REALLY fun and I encourage them to people doing the tourism thing but you also almost inevitably get stuck behind someone because you probably don’t have the skills to clip past them to keep moving.
But this isn’t someone who is in direct on a single cam or even someone clipped in at an anchor. It is basically the equivalent of leaning against a railing on the side of the road.
It sounds like everyone got out ok, so this is my first thought after reading
“This is frightening! Someone like me afraid of heights might just wet myself up there!” wrote one Chinese online commenter.
If you’re afraid of heights, why the hell would you be up there? Wrong turn on the way to the corner store?
That quotation and the other one in the article seem to be from comments on the social media posts, not comments from people actually on the cliff.
And we know the worth of social media comments…
I clicked the link and was really surprised not be on the onion.
This seems like a great idea on so many levels…
Finishing your climb before any afternoon thunderstorms is often one of the good ideas when you are climbing a very long metal cable.
I can tell you have climbed a few mountains before
At first I thought those two in the foreground were making out…
