| Name | Age | Sex | Injuries | Injured areas |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Whitfield, Erro | Not recorded | Female | Broken tooth, cut lip | Head |
Steve Knutson and Jim Wolff of the Oregon Grotto, and Phil and Erro Whitfield of the Vancouver Island Cave Exploration Group entered Oregon Caves at 1:00 p.m. and proceeded to the South End. A scaling pole, consisting of five 5-foot sections with a cable ladder attached to the top, was used to investigate a 30-foot-high dome. Always, when someone was climbing, the other three held the scaling pole in place. Phil Whitfield and Steve Knutson each ascended less than half-way up but climbed down. At 4:40 p.m. Erro Whitfield climbed nearly to the top of the pole. Her weight caused the pole to start to bend. The pole slid along the wall of the dome until the pole bent and crimped in the middle section. Ms. Whitfield fell, landing on Wolff. She received a broken tooth and a cut lip.
Analysis: "The pole, although used with success in other situations, was obviously not strong enough to be used without care. The pole was five 5-foot sections made of 1 1/4 inch-diameter steel tubing (zinc coated) used for TV aerials. Wall thickness of the tubing was 0.038 inch. Six inches of one end of each tube was flared to fit over the next section. Its strength was such that both careful placement, so that bending of the pole be as limited as possible, and careful technique in climbing, so that the weight of the climber stays over or as close to the axis of the pole as possible, were necessary.
When a climber is on the cable ladder of a climbing pole setup, and not too far near the top, his weight is carried by the axis of the pole because the cable ladder is attached to the top of the pole. If the pole is also set up so that it can be prevented, by the handlers at the bottom, from bending too far in any outward direction, and is leaning against the wall being climbed, then the setup is stable. This is the way a climbing pole should be used.
In our case, however, the climber (Erro Whitfield), while near the top of the pole, used the pole as a handhold, thus putting a sideways and/or outwards force on the pole. Things would perhaps still have been OK but the pole in its placement could slide along the wall and bend in direction of Erro's weight. This it did, resulting in the accident.
The injuries in this accident were much less than they might have been if Erro's fall had not been broken by her falling on Jim Wolff, one of the three handling the pole at the bottom. It must be pointed out here that the climbing pole did not belong to any of the people using it. In fact. they did not really have much idea of the potential or ultimate strength of this pole, though it had been used successfully on previous occasions. When using homemade equipment. it is absolutely necessary to test to acceptable limits and preferably to prepare duplicate items and test one to destruc- tion.
Another item of interest here is that Erro was not wearing a chin strap on her helmet. When she struck Wolff and a boulder at the end of her fall, the helmet came off. At that point, the helmet coming off was of no consequence but if the fall had continued, the helmet's protection was obviously lost. A chin strap should always be worn while doing any sort of climbing in a cave." (Knutson)
Hemet came off
This record was last updated on 27th Apr 2024 at 23:11 UTC.