Tree Machine

I'd agree over confidence and complacency can play a part, but under-training or ignoring industry standard practices can be equally the reason.

When I started climbing I was ignorant to some basic safety 'rules'. It was more the norm to just be on rope, make a cut. Or climb up without a rope and just do the cutting while fliplined in. I look back on those early days and wonder how I never had an accident while aloft.

But that's what happened to this guy. He wasn't tied in twice and we know this because had he had two points of attachment, one would have been there when the other failed.

It's also an assumption on my part that it was a failure at the attachment point. The report says his harness was unbuckled, but I believe that was poorly worded by first response, or the writer of the article. You unbuckle your harness to get in and out of it. You disconnect or unclip or untie to re-route your lifeline or flipline. He still had his harness on. He didn't unbuckle and fall out of it.

It would be a very, very rare instance where two points of attachment both failed at the same time. Possibly this could have been a gear failure, dee ring blown out, failed eye splice or a dozen other possibilities, but regardless, even a full-on mechanical failure of an attachment point, had the second tie-in been there, he'd have gone home that evening like every other. There was a critical moment where he was in the tree, not attached by flipline or lifeline.

I am very, very sad for the climber and his family . I am also sad for the many who have fallen in the past for more or less the same reasons.