Do everything right, and climbing is actually pretty darn safe. Still, some people assume they can guess at the technical bits and everything will be fine, like this person a friend of mine rescued recently:

"I was teaching a belay class when, out of the corner of my eye, I saw a girl yanking on the end of a loose rope. To my dismay, she was belaying a climber with no belay device. The climber was at the top of the wall, 'tied in' to the grigri. He was weighting the rope and the belayer was supporting his weight with her bare hands."

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Have you witnessed anything cringe-inducingly dangerous from uninformed climbers, either inside the gym or at the crag? We want to hear about it. Tell us what happened in the comments and your story could be featured in an upcoming issue of our print edition.

photo: laurelfan/Flickr; http://ow.ly/urtIh