What a tragedy. As I said, I did not know Tina, except through her posts, and thank people for posting their remembrances of her.
I have not been in the rock climbing world since 1978. For up to date information, I turn to a person who like me learned to climb in the early 19070's at Stony Point and Tahquitz. Unlike me, he was a rock climber rather than a mountaineer, and has been continuously rock climbing at a high level ever since. He is a well-known figure in the Las Vegas rock climbing community, where he is fondly known as 'Scary Larry', because of his preference for some gear and techniques considered to be wildly outdated and unsafe by new generations of climbers. Also the co-author of a book on rock climbing in the Las Vegas area:
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/33672792-red-rock-odysseyI turned to him to find out whether rappelling from old slings is a common practice:
'Larry,
I follow a discussion board that reported the death last weekend of a 50 year old woman at Joshua Tree, a woman who was liked, respected, admired and had many achievements.
I was stunned when it was reported that the cause of death was rappelling off an old nylon sling. And that this was not unusual at rock climbing areas. Is this true?
Ed'
Here is his answer:
'That is terrible. It is pretty common for people to rap off existing in situ webbing. On heavily trafficked routes, tat anchors are often redundant, 6 or 8 or more pieces of rope or webbing with rap rings or carabiners. And generally several of those strands will look brand new. Normally when I encounter those situations, I will back it up with my own gear until the last person is going down and everything looks solid, but many people will just thread the rope and go. In addition to the lack of paranoia among many is the factor that most climbers these days carry only sewn webbing runners, so they are not prepared to easily augment an existing rap anchor. There is not much detail regarding this particular case, but it sounds like a more remote area without the traffic to keep the webbing current. Sad story any way you look at it.'
I still can't get my mind around it. There is so much emphasis on 'safe' equipment today: helmets, padded harnesses, ropes that take many UIAA test falls, factory-sewn slings and runners, etc. Reminds me of something Royal Robbins said in the 1970's. He was put off by discussions of 'safe' versus 'unsafe' equipment, and said the important thing was to understand your equipment and its limitations.