Some of you may have heard that there was a deadly caving accident in Switzerland some time around last New Years (29th December 2012 or so). As the Swiss are very thorough, they've of course investigated the cause of the accident and finally published their findings:
http://www.speleo.ch/~site/images/stories/documents/unfall_dokumentation_de.pdf (German)
http://www.speleo.ch/~site/images/stories/documents/documentation_accident_fr.pdf (French)
If you speak neither German nor French, the pictures are still very instructive. The accident happened on the traverse shown in Fig 1, which is obviously done using handjammer and footloop. Incidentally, they happened to have a photo of the SRT kit in question which was taken on the way into the cave at the very same spot where the accident happened later on. They've hence reconstructed the SRT kit setup as shown in Fig3: The handjammer was attached to the long cowstails using two snapgates! In the other two pictures, they remind and recommend everyone to use mallions or at least screw gates for the job.
The danger should be quite obvious, and in the UK most people use a separate safety cord with mallion anyway, but just keep it in mind if you are experimenting with alternative setups.
PS: And the casualty was just passing one of the knots on the traverse, when she noticed that she was no longer attached to her handjammer, so she didn't have a second point of attachment at the time.
http://www.speleo.ch/~site/images/stories/documents/unfall_dokumentation_de.pdf (German)
http://www.speleo.ch/~site/images/stories/documents/documentation_accident_fr.pdf (French)
If you speak neither German nor French, the pictures are still very instructive. The accident happened on the traverse shown in Fig 1, which is obviously done using handjammer and footloop. Incidentally, they happened to have a photo of the SRT kit in question which was taken on the way into the cave at the very same spot where the accident happened later on. They've hence reconstructed the SRT kit setup as shown in Fig3: The handjammer was attached to the long cowstails using two snapgates! In the other two pictures, they remind and recommend everyone to use mallions or at least screw gates for the job.
The danger should be quite obvious, and in the UK most people use a separate safety cord with mallion anyway, but just keep it in mind if you are experimenting with alternative setups.
PS: And the casualty was just passing one of the knots on the traverse, when she noticed that she was no longer attached to her handjammer, so she didn't have a second point of attachment at the time.