Roped climbing incidents, as the reports describe them.

This page reports categories of accident as the publishing bodies name them. It does not explain how any of the systems involved work or how to use them; that is taught in person. The top-rope and lead page describes the roles in roped climbing in general terms.

Recent trends the AAC has reported

The American Alpine Club's editor of Accidents in North American Climbing (ANAC), Pete Takeda, said in June 2023 that he was seeing new kinds of accidents, and named crowding at crags, learning from online video, and grades among the contributing factors. In June 2025 the AAC described a data project led by Dr. Valerie Karr of the University of Massachusetts, which applied grounded theory analysis to 20 years of accident data to look at how human behaviour contributes. The factors it discussed included risk normalisation, what it calls the mentor trap, and attitudes towards fixed gear.

For the 2026 edition, which covers 2025 accidents, the AAC said on 28 July 2026 that its editor had received about 30 percent more reports than the year before. The trends it highlighted were a rising number of top-rope soloing accidents, a continuing high number of lowering accidents, hazards involving stick clips, and knee entrapment in inverted offwidth cracks.

From the AAC's monthly Prescription series

The Prescription, a companion to ANAC begun in October 2020, has reported these figures:

• The 2020 ANAC described six accidents involving failed rappel anchors, three of them fatal (January 2021 issue).
• Two fatal accidents in 2022 were attributed to a broken rappel-anchor sling (June 2025 issue).
• ANAC recorded 14 published rappel accidents in 2023, eight fatal, and the 2025 ANAC reports 15 rappel incidents involving 23 climbers, with five deaths. The AAC said the trend showed no sign of easing (June 2025 issue).
• Three accidents reported in 2023 involved a quickdraw unclipping from or snagging on a bolt hanger (November 2024 issue).
• Each year brings a handful of free-solo accidents, nearly always fatal (August 2025 issue).
• Lowering has replaced rappelling as the leading cause of roped climbing accidents in the AAC's data (August 2026 issue).

By discipline: Caroom's 30-year analysis

Eliot Caroom's 2020 study of ANAC narratives from 1990 onward (Rock and Ice, republished by Climbing in 2022) tagged several factors per accident and broke them down by style. He found:

Caroom reported that 76 of 251 rappel-error incidents, nearly 30 percent, were fatal. Descents made up about 32 percent of his sample against 26 percent in ANAC's larger yearly tables. He cautions that his sample is not random, that his multi-factor tags are not comparable with ANAC's single immediate cause, and that the article gives its base as both 2,770 narratives and 2,724 incidents.

Canada and earlier reports

The Alpine Club of Canada drew three themes from the six Canadian reports in ANAC 2018 (blog, February 2019): overhead hazards such as rockfall from parties above, lowering and rope-length incidents, and parties stranded after underestimating a route or going off route. Fifteen years earlier, ANAC 2003 recorded 34 US climbing deaths, above the ten-year average, and listed inadequate or pulled protection and lowering errors among the common causes.

UK near misses: the BMC's database

The BMC's page on its incident and near-miss database (undated) says about 20 percent of climbing reports fell under belaying failure or error, which it considers almost all avoidable. Several reports showed unfamiliarity with a particular belay device. Citing German Alpine Club (DAV) research, the BMC states that human error, rather than the device, is the leading cause of belaying accidents, although people often blame the equipment. Recurring themes were distraction, incomplete set-ups including unchecked knots, and breakdowns in communication between climber and belayer.

Indoors, the DAV and the gym association KLEVER reported 29 ground falls in roped climbing in German and Austrian gyms in 2024, two of them fatal, mainly from tie-in and belay errors; the gym safety page has the detail.

One club's own figures

The Mountaineers, a Seattle club, publishes incident data from its own programmes. Its report through the end of 2025 records 31 incidents in 2021, 30 in 2022, 36 in 2023, 42 in 2024 and 45 in 2025. Slips, trips and falls were the largest category every year, though their share fell from 55 percent in 2021 to 38 percent in 2024 and 2025. Near misses and safety concerns made up 44 percent of 2025 incidents. It also publishes incident rates, but the report does not state what they are measured against.

Gear failure, standards and recalls

The UIAA says its Safety Commission, founded in the 1960s, reviews accidents to judge whether standards are adequate and to identify poor technique or misuse, and that its standards aim to minimise accidents caused by equipment failing through inadequate design or quality control. The commission also shares recalls and warnings.

The UIAA and the BMC documented one gear failure in detail, on via ferrata sets. After a fatal accident near Walchsee, Austria, on 5 August 2012, in which both lanyards of a set broke, the UIAA issued a worldwide warning on 13 September 2012. It said the maker had found the lanyard's strength dramatically reduced after intensive use, even though the set met the UIAA standard. A second round of recalls followed in February 2013 after testing of used and aged sets; the BMC reported a serious ageing problem in more than one design. The BMC dates the emergency meeting 6 February 2013; the UIAA release places the meeting in Munich without a date. They may be the same meeting.

Other recalls in the research, each as the publishing body gave it:

• Black Diamond Camalot and Camalot Ultralight cams: Black Diamond's announcement is dated 13 April 2016 (as the BMC reported it), while the US Consumer Product Safety Commission notice is dated 19 May 2016.
• Beal Birdie and Edelweiss Kinetic first-generation belay devices from listed 2019 batches, and certain Salewa welded ring pitons (UIAA recall page, posted 16 March 2021).
• Black Diamond Vision harness, all sizes made from 1 January 2018 to 26 February 2025 (UIAA, 28 February 2025, relaying the maker's statement).
• Certain Petzl SIMBA and SWAN full-body harnesses sold from July 2021 to November 2025 (Health Canada, 14 May 2026).

A recall listing says nothing about any individual item's condition; the maker's own current notice is the reference for any product. The recalls page in the equipment section has the full list, and gear lifespan sets out what makers publish about retirement.