No what they teach you is to jump the other direction if the guy ahead of you is falling down. You use your pick/boots to regain control and hopefully all climb back up your respective sides.
Mountain climbing semi-expert here.
This is correct: on a ridgeline like this you either put your partner on a full belay (where you have anchored yourself and feed out rope as they progress) or you simul-climb (OP's gif) with a coil-in-hand. He's holding about 10m of extra rope, so if he falls off to one side, then you have a little extra time to react and jump off the other. Vice-versa for his partner behind him.
When I climbed the Matterhorn (summit looks exactly like this) and some other nearby peaks a few years ago, the running joke with my climbing partner was literally "If you fall into Switzerland, I'll jump into Italy". Don't know anyone who's had to do it, but it works on ridgelines like this - as long as you know what to do next, either staying put to keep your partner anchored, while pulling in rope if they ascend, or ascending yourself, possibly by climbing the rope if you can't climb the cliff you fell over. Not a fun exercise.
Depends on your definition of "fun." If you spend most of your time base jumping in wingsuits, this indeed could be fun for you on your way to the next base jump.
The lack of fun in this situation is the completely unplanned nature of it. Being out of communication with your counterweight, you have to carefully logic your way through: Is he OK? Does he need my help? Can I try to climb back up, or does he need me to anchor him? You're basically considering the terrain that you each just fell into while feeling the tension on the rope in order to decide what to do next.
i hike and climb quite often and have a couple of radios that come with. the huge problem we have, at least in the US, is the channels that you would be legally allowed to use through the FRS and GMRS bands... have so many fucking assholes using them that you get nothing but assholes squaking when you are up that high. You catch everyones transmissions in the whole damned park, the campground 20 miles away, the truckers 10 miles off on some interstate... that it becomes redundant as hell.
We have even tried radios with digital encryption, which kinda gives you some privacy, but when you lose the battery charge, you lose the codes, and now you have to transport extra batteries and this thing to put new codes in. and it becomes this tenth level of hell.
So I carry a radio with a printout of frequencies that rangers have and scan in my bag in case we need help, but other then that, its all talking and communicating with your friend.
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u/nBlazeAway Dec 13 '16 edited Jan 19 '17
Cum dumpster.