[DarkSighted]

Originally Posted by Faust ↗

The issue is that his “rappel-rope” ran out? He forgot it was not the full length I presume

I hate it when that happens.

[Kinky_John]

If that happened in England you'd have known when he hit the ground by the mandatory collective "WHEEEEY"

[trollbridge]

Balin was not an "influencer." He was a young rising star in the climbing community, both ice and rock wall climbing. He only posted to social media when his friends pushed him to show off his accomplishments. He was not running the livestream that his fall was caught on. It was streamed by another social media user, who posts about the national parks and happened to be using a scope to follow various climbers on El Cap that day. Balin was actually only known as "orange tent guy" on the livestream, as his porta ledge was orange.

Balin was Lead Rope Soloing, a niche climbing style where there is no belayer and you are hauling your gear behind you. You can search it if you want to understand the mechanics. Having reached the top of the wall, he was undoubtedly exhausted, dehydrated and hungry. All of these things contribute to lack of full mental acuity, and when you are LRS, there is no one there to help ensure you go through your checklist before making a big move.

Having reached the top, Balin needed to haul up his gear bag. As you can see in the video, it was snagged on a small overhang. I personally would have tried lowering the bag a bit first, to see if I could get enough swing going to pop it out from under the overhang. But that's just me. He chose to rap down to the bag to free it, and that was his last mistake.

Balin clearly didn't have enough rope to get down to his bag, and the fact that he just went for it without even checking the length of the rope (let alone verifying that he had tied a knot in the end), shows how exhausted he must have been. It's incredibly sad to see.

What's worse is that you clearly see Balin try to grab the rope holding his gear bag as he falls past it. Then it seems he made a second attempt to grab that rope as he fell, because you see the gear bag rope suddenly get pulled to the left and swing for a moment.

I hope he hit something on the way down and was not conscious for that entire fall. If he was conscious, I hope his mind went blank and he couldn't process what was happening. I have similar thoughts about what happened to the passengers of TWA flight 800, and Malaysian airlines flight MH17. Did they know they were dying? Did they feel everything as they fell?

In any case, Balin's mother spoke to various news outlets trying to make it clear that her son was not some influencer trying to make $ off of climbing videos, or trying to sell some hipster climbing gear. He was just a young guy passionate about climbing, and sending some incredible routes.

[CurioW]

Originally Posted by trollbridge ↗

Balin was not an "influencer." He was a young rising star in the climbing community, both ice and rock wall climbing. He only posted to social media when his friends pushed him to show off his accomplishments. He was not running the livestream that his fall was caught on. It was streamed by another social media user, who posts about the national parks and happened to be using a scope to follow various climbers on El Cap that day. Balin was actually only known as "orange tent guy" on the livestream, as his porta ledge was orange.

Balin was Lead Rope Soloing, a niche climbing style where there is no belayer and you are hauling your gear behind you. You can search it if you want to understand the mechanics. Having reached the top of the wall, he was undoubtedly exhausted, dehydrated and hungry. All of these things contribute to lack of full mental acuity, and when you are LRS, there is no one there to help ensure you go through your checklist before making a big move.

Having reached the top, Balin needed to haul up his gear bag. As you can see in the video, it was snagged on a small overhang. I personally would have tried lowering the bag a bit first, to see if I could get enough swing going to pop it out from under the overhang. But that's just me. He chose to rap down to the bag to free it, and that was his last mistake.

Balin clearly didn't have enough rope to get down to his bag, and the fact that he just went for it without even checking the length of the rope (let alone verifying that he had tied a knot in the end), shows how exhausted he must have been. It's incredibly sad to see.

What's worse is that you clearly see Balin try to grab the rope holding his gear bag as he falls past it. Then it seems he made a second attempt to grab that rope as he fell, because you see the gear bag rope suddenly get pulled to the left and swing for a moment.

I hope he hit something on the way down and was not conscious for that entire fall. If he was conscious, I hope his mind went blank and he couldn't process what was happening. I have similar thoughts about what happened to the passengers of TWA flight 800, and Malaysian airlines flight MH17. Did they know they were dying? Did they feel everything as they fell?

In any case, Balin's mother spoke to various news outlets trying to make it clear that her son was not some influencer trying to make $ off of climbing videos, or trying to sell some hipster climbing gear. He was just a young guy passionate about climbing, and sending some incredible routes.

Thanks for writing this up. I did not know much about this and learned a lot just from reading your post.

It did occur to me earlier that all the news article titles I saw claiming he was "livestreaming", didn't square with the fact that there wasn't a single video of himself streaming in this thread.

[akham]

Originally Posted by MoonBloom ↗

Learn how to use yt-dlp, then you can archive using mega.nz, google drive, etc. if they are too big to upload to the forums here.

Hey MoonBloom I just wanted to thank you for pointing out yt-dlp! I'd not heard of it before and was using an inferior (freemium) solution. I switched to yt-dlp after you mentioned it and it works perfectly. So, thanks for the pointer!

[TheFairOne]

Originally Posted by trollbridge ↗

Balin was not an "influencer." He was a young rising star in the climbing community, both ice and rock wall climbing. He only posted to social media when his friends pushed him to show off his accomplishments. He was not running the livestream that his fall was caught on. It was streamed by another social media user, who posts about the national parks and happened to be using a scope to follow various climbers on El Cap that day. Balin was actually only known as "orange tent guy" on the livestream, as his porta ledge was orange.

Balin was Lead Rope Soloing, a niche climbing style where there is no belayer and you are hauling your gear behind you. You can search it if you want to understand the mechanics. Having reached the top of the wall, he was undoubtedly exhausted, dehydrated and hungry. All of these things contribute to lack of full mental acuity, and when you are LRS, there is no one there to help ensure you go through your checklist before making a big move.

Having reached the top, Balin needed to haul up his gear bag. As you can see in the video, it was snagged on a small overhang. I personally would have tried lowering the bag a bit first, to see if I could get enough swing going to pop it out from under the overhang. But that's just me. He chose to rap down to the bag to free it, and that was his last mistake.

Balin clearly didn't have enough rope to get down to his bag, and the fact that he just went for it without even checking the length of the rope (let alone verifying that he had tied a knot in the end), shows how exhausted he must have been. It's incredibly sad to see.

What's worse is that you clearly see Balin try to grab the rope holding his gear bag as he falls past it. Then it seems he made a second attempt to grab that rope as he fell, because you see the gear bag rope suddenly get pulled to the left and swing for a moment.

I hope he hit something on the way down and was not conscious for that entire fall. If he was conscious, I hope his mind went blank and he couldn't process what was happening. I have similar thoughts about what happened to the passengers of TWA flight 800, and Malaysian airlines flight MH17. Did they know they were dying? Did they feel everything as they fell?

In any case, Balin's mother spoke to various news outlets trying to make it clear that her son was not some influencer trying to make $ off of climbing videos, or trying to sell some hipster climbing gear. He was just a young guy passionate about climbing, and sending some incredible routes.

Man... That is so fucking sad. I hope if he had any thoughts on the way that he had some good ones about his loved ones. Oof. Thank you for sharing!

[CatBatMan]

Originally Posted by Faust ↗

The issue is that his “rappel-rope” ran out? He forgot it was not the full length I presume

Subscription rope.

[CatBatMan]

That last photo of him with the blue shirt gives some serious Matthew Lillard vibes.