Anton: It’s good to hear you didn’t mean to be rude. But leading with an ad hominem as you did… that really blanches anything you said following. I did note you said OP made a good choice turning around, but smacking someone out the gate like that was not the way to communicate what you wanted to. It was sort of tactless. In your defense, had OP been brazen and made bad choice after bad choice, your response would have been arguably gentle (as sometimes firmer rebukes are warranted). It’s fairly clear to me that this was not one of those situations. Few people would have got the “main point” you purport to have made given your wording and tone.

There’s a lot of undue shaming on online forums and I don’t want WZ to end up like that.

As to your comments regarding my perspective you are mistaken. I have summited many class 3 and a number of class 4 routes and finished multi-pitch climbing routes as well. I’ve also done a bit of canyoneering and I’m quite familiar with rappelling. My main point is having gone with an experienced partner affords you a variety of tools to mitigate risk. Perhaps I should have phrased it as such I understand my rec may have sounded kitschy. Fireman's belay is one of those tools. I didn't mean to infer it as a catch-all fallback. You obviously cannot use a FB in every situation, but it is a useful tool in a variety of situations and I have used it to help others as a backup on two occasions.


@jjoshuagregory (Instagram) for mainly landscape and mountain pics