On April 20, a climber fell to his death while being lowered, due to the webbing on one of the anchor’s parting and not being properly clipped in to the equalizing anchor. In the case of the webbing, it was only masking tape that connected (and hid!) the ends of one of two webbing anchor slings. This accident was particularly noteworthy because the climber had purchased the webbing the day before and did not realize that masking tape joined two pieces of webbing. The webbing came off the spool that did not have one continuous length. (Source: Bill May)

(Editor’s Note: This kind of mistake has only been reported once before to ANAM — many years ago. It is — or should be — fairly common knowledge that webbing, unlike rope, comes packaged in this manner.)