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Gmburns2000
Jan 13, 2009, 3:46 PM
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I've got two:
Getting too far above gear on unfamiliar terrain (Paralysis - about half way down) - This was kind of scary at first, because we had totally misread the route. One slip and...
My first Gunks 5.9 (about 1/3 of the way down) - again, another misread, but this time it was an easy mistake to make. I just couldn't hold on forever. 
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angry
Jan 13, 2009, 4:06 PM
Post #27 of 50
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http://www.rockclimbing.com/...Ghost%20Pro;#1426907
That's probably my closest call. Pretty accurate story other than the girl I mentioned in the story turned out to be scarier than rabid maggots crawling out of satans shit. That's another tale though.
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16stfd16
Jan 13, 2009, 4:17 PM
Post #28 of 50
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Registered: Sep 30, 2008
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I was at the Red last year on a rainy day, my partner and I headed to the curbside wall and decided to warm up on Sudoku and Action over Apathy and then try The Return of Frank Byron. But while I was tying in i realized the anchors on Sudoku looked pretty soaked so my partner suggested to start on Sudoku and transverse to AoA(why i didnt just climb AoA i have no idea). So luckily i made the transverse, but the next clip I was kind of leaning back on my left hand as I fussed with my quickdraw when my hand came off and I took a bit of a pendulum into a tree. I told my partner to lower me because I figured Id hurt my shoulder(plus i couldnt really get back on the rock) after a short rest I got back up and finished it, but a little scary, Im just glad I didnt drop during the transverse(hello ground).
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Carnage
Jan 14, 2009, 3:14 PM
Post #30 of 50
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Registered: Mar 27, 2007
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scariest "fall" - stone mountain NC.
i'd never gotten into anything serious at stone before. i was pretty comfortable in the 10's at the time and cruising 9's so i thought this 9 wouldnt be so bad(the great white way). The first part of the route is well bolted, especially by stone standards, prolly 6-8 feet apart. so clip, make a ridiculous mantle move to this tiny crystal, clip bolt, yell take, regain my composure.
i make the next few moves to the next bolt, but before i clip it i get that feeling. the feeling that im leaning back. on a the slab of all slabs. i think "omg its happening, falling on slab, this is going to hurt" my belayer saw me and was about to start taking. then eyes closed, waiting for it to happen.... then waiting... waiting..... and then i opened my eyes and i was still there. clipped the bolt as fast as i could, took again and thanked god.
scariest actual fall - new river gorge, flight of the gumby.
this was my first real climbing trip. i had led 1 pitch of easy pilot mountain shit before this trip, so this was my first chance to see what i could do. i wanted to try and get a lead fall in so that i wouldnt be scared of it.
it was the last day of the trip and we were going back to butchers branch so someone could work some route there. i had onsighted the route like 2 days before so i got up to the last bolt. there was chalk going up left to the arete, and up right, through some slopers. I remembered doing the slopers the previous time so i went to kinda layback the arete.
so im going up, the bolt still around my waist or my chest when i start to barndoor. so its one of those things you see coming so you have time to brace yourself for the fall. i think to myself "the bolt is at my waist, this wont be bad at all".
then i start falling. and i keep falling i fall long enough to think "hey, i shouldnt be falling this far, fucking belayer dropped me, that asshole." so i try to yell "fucking catch me!". all that comes out is me yelling "FUCK!" as loud as i can. rope comes tight i bounce up and cut my knuckles on the way up (i was pissed about the knuckles).
i get back on and finish the route, i have to. if i didnt the route would have beaten me, and everyone woulda though i was a pussy. i did the slopers this time. when i get to the ground my group was waiting for me. first thing they say was "you had a very manly scream". i go up to the belayer and im like "wtf was that?!". "uh, you were around the corner, i couldnt see you so when the rope started pulling, i though you were climbing so i fed you some slack" so what should have been a 2 foot fall, worked out to be a 30 footer.
sorry for the wall-o-text
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the_swooper
Jan 14, 2009, 3:25 PM
Post #31 of 50
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one time i went for a 60ft screamer when my blue tcu and a fixed rp blew on leaning tower. with no partner to catch my fall, i was stuck with my finger pinched in my grigri i was belaying off... ouch.... very scary because at that point i realized i don't even know how to bail on such a steep overhang! didn't have a clue how to aid climb either. forced self education... |
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dlintz
Jan 14, 2009, 4:09 PM
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I'm not sure if the thread is still available but a former rc.com regular took a 150+ foot fall on a rappel several years ago, saved only by the unanchored rope getting tangled. There was a lot of drama on this site regarding her ordeal so I'll leave it to someone else to post links or names. Regardless her story was mind-boggling.
d.
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the_climber
Jan 14, 2009, 4:53 PM
Post #34 of 50
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dlintz wrote: I'm not sure if the thread is still available but a former rc.com regular took a 150+ foot fall on a rappel several years ago, saved only by the unanchored rope getting tangled. There was a lot of drama on this site regarding her ordeal so I'll leave it to someone else to post links or names. Regardless her story was mind-boggling. d.
I remember hearing about that.
Didn't Kate take a huge aid fall and deploy every single screamer she had placed? I remember hearing something like 12 screamers.
As for my scarry fall.... well um... mixed climbing on a sand bagged route, foot hold blowing out and ummm.... rock exploding around my cam placement (it held the previous fall... yeah, the term "crater" comes to mind.
Don't fall with ice gear!
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dlintz
Jan 14, 2009, 5:30 PM
Post #35 of 50
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the_climber wrote: dlintz wrote: I'm not sure if the thread is still available but a former rc.com regular took a 150+ foot fall on a rappel several years ago, saved only by the unanchored rope getting tangled. There was a lot of drama on this site regarding her ordeal so I'll leave it to someone else to post links or names. Regardless her story was mind-boggling. d. I remember hearing about that. Didn't Kate take a huge aid fall and deploy every single screamer she had placed? I remember hearing something like 12 screamers.
Different story/person. I checked the original thread, she removed her trip report detailing the fall. The person essentially rappelled off her rope, freefell approximately 140 feet before being miraculously caught by a tangle of ropes (she would've fallen much farther to the ground, this was on a big wall in Zion).
d.
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the_climber
Jan 14, 2009, 5:38 PM
Post #36 of 50
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dlintz wrote: the_climber wrote: dlintz wrote: I'm not sure if the thread is still available but a former rc.com regular took a 150+ foot fall on a rappel several years ago, saved only by the unanchored rope getting tangled. There was a lot of drama on this site regarding her ordeal so I'll leave it to someone else to post links or names. Regardless her story was mind-boggling. d. I remember hearing about that. On another fall note, different story:Didn't Kate take a huge aid fall and deploy every single screamer she had placed? I remember hearing something like 12 screamers. Different story/person. I checked the original thread, she removed her trip report detailing the fall. The person essentially rappelled off her rope, freefell approximately 140 feet before being miraculously caught by a tangle of ropes (she would've fallen much farther to the ground, this was on a big wall in Zion). d.
I guess I should have noted I was trying to comment of two sttories in that post... oops.
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Spidermonkey.Rosi
Jan 14, 2009, 7:24 PM
Post #37 of 50
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Registered: Jan 11, 2009
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Anyway's I hadn't realized the hill before because it was barley steep at all but I kept tumbling at a faster rate. My leg smashed through a log and didn't help slow down my fall at all. The smash on the log did help me regain focus a little bit though. All at once I grapped my hands into the brush and dirt and held on for dear life. Becuase the next thing I know I was hanging off a gigantic cliff. With all my strength I pulled myself over the cliff side and up the hill. My brother heard the log break and that's what got his attention. By the time he seen me I was dragging myself up the hill.
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Spidermonkey.Rosi
Jan 14, 2009, 10:39 PM
Post #38 of 50
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Registered: Jan 11, 2009
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0h yah and my shin which was the part of my body that hit the log, it swelled up to the size of a large egg.
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graniteboy
Jan 15, 2009, 2:04 AM
Post #39 of 50
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Although I could jabber about stuff like me taking an 80 ft ice climbing fall, grounding, and walking away....
My actual favorite falling story is about how some guy on Denali (1987) fell hundreds of feet down the Messner Couloir, broke his back, and I inherited his food cache...which consisted mainly of Pop tarts and Moose Jerky. Yum.
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mar_leclerc
Jan 15, 2009, 4:41 AM
Post #40 of 50
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Registered: Jun 1, 2008
Posts: 156
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I took another epic fall today. I led a rock route (it was warm for a January day) and afterwards I was TR'ing it at slipped. For some reason the rope stretched a lot and I hit the ground. Yeah, I totally look a 6ft ground fall. Pretty Epic..
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aerili
Jan 15, 2009, 7:20 AM
Post #41 of 50
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Registered: Jan 13, 2006
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The Fall Before the Climb
So this one time I was visiting my brother and we were gonna go climbin'. We exited the house through his garage when he suddenly realized he didn't have his house key. No way to get back in except to scale the house to the upper story.
No real scalable parts to his house, even for a couple climbers.
Enter our Peking Circus act. I stand on his shoulders and was trying to pull down on a some flippin' thin-ass wood edging or whatnot along the edge of the roof at the utmost of my ape index.
My bro decides (without informing me) that the best way around this is to shoulder press me from his shoulders to his head. Via my feet.
All of a sudden, I feel like I am standing on a bowling ball for some reason. What the?! I feel like a desperate acrobat who just lost her mojo and who has become the "top" half of a Drunken Man on Stilts act.
No way to look down to see what's going on either because both hands are outstretched and grasping at the wood thingamajingy!
Oh. This isn't going to be good.
I end up pitching straight backward from a height of ~6'+ onto a soft and fuzzy wooden deck. My right hip, ribcage and elbow take the brunt.
So, are we gonna go climbing now or what?
(This post was edited by aerili on Jan 15, 2009, 7:22 AM)
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tarsier
Jan 15, 2009, 10:17 AM
Post #42 of 50
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Anybody remember the story about the dog (black lab I think) that fell off the top of an ice climb and it's owner managed to catch the dog and finish the climb?
I saw a guy drop like a rock at the gym last week because he clipped the autobelay rope to his gearloop. Duh.
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dingus
Jan 15, 2009, 12:39 PM
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Stu and I decide to go climbing. We get in his truck in Modesto and other than food and gas breaks, we don't stop till we get to RMNP.
Prime climbing season too. We no sooner arrive and we're hiking. 24 hours prior I was in my bed in Cali, now we're hiking into the base of the Northcutt Carter on Hallet Peak, one of the Fifty Classics.
So like we do the climb eh? Stu leads p1 and promptly gets us off line. Muttering I lead off up a very steep hand crack arching away from where I know the line goes (with all my vast experience you see).
I pull through a bulgy section. Above is a 50 foot face with some fixed pro halfway up, capped by a 4-foot roof. Above the roof is a ledge. That ledge will connect us back into the regular route, as I can see the belayer from the team ahead of us (who I'd just discovered).
After a few moves the crack pinches too a seam. I reach the pro - nested blades, literally. Who places this shit????
I clip it anyway, no other options.
20 feet of stemming, no chance for pro and quite difficult. Northcutt Carter is 5.7ish and I'm thinking - this is pretty hard for 5.7. Actually I'm not thinking that (and that is part of the problem). Absorbed in the climbing I'm not heeding the OFF ROUTE warning signs.
I was suffering some bad rope drag because of the bulge and a short sling below.
The roof has a crack in it and from a poor stance I fidget a nut into it, and then amazing even myself I go for it.
Now the roof turns out to be quite difficult. I get my head and shoulders out past the lip and eventually grasp some decent holds above. I tried to heel hook and rock my way over but I'd grabbed the holds backwards relative to this purpose.
I pumped out and fell trying to correct this configuration. The rope drag was a significant factor.
One nut under the roof, 20 feet down to the nested blades, another 30 feet or so to the next pro below that.
This is not an ideal situaiton batman. Northcutt Carter tops out at 12k, luckily not TOO FAR from the road so when I break both my legs maybe the SAR extraction won't be TOO traumatic.
You know how falls go - you're falling, and then you're not.
When I stopped I was just below the pins. Amazingly the nut under the roof held! What with double ropes, end of pitch and slack, I'd gone over 20 feet even though technically the pro was 'at my waist.' (welcome to mountaineering)
Phew!
I hollered something down to Stu, heard something bellowed back, had no idea what really.
And I stemmed back up to the roof. The stem moves felt much harder the 2nd time around.
When I got to the roof my heart froze. The nut held indeed, BARELY and by miracle. It was nearly tweaked out of the crack and was only held in place by a small nubbin. I'd clipped a screamer to it but the screamer did not zipper. I tugged it out of the crack with a gentle motion.
Now scared and vibrating, I replaced the nut with a Friend and giving myself no chance to pause at all, launched back into the roof.
This time I'd got my hands in order and the rock over move worked. I just brute forced my way through the rope drag, it was awful. I stood up, shaking a bit and made the last three moves to the ledge, pitch over.
The other belayer, a British woman belaying her husband (good climbers both) had watched the whole thing from her perch, though to that point we hadn''t said a word to one another.
"Nice lead," she says. "It looked hard."
"It WAS hard!" I explaimed though altitude induced breathing fits, head spinning from a lack of sleep and waves of adrenaline pumping though my veins.
"I thought I was witnessing a bloody accident when you pitched off," she said. "It looked really hard."
I didn't tell her about the nut as I went about rigging my belay. It was hard to pull the rope up with all that drag.
Now my partner? Twas Stu, as I said. Stu was my alpine mentor and one of the best that ever deigned to tie in with the likes of me. He'd led me on a tour of the vally 'Classic 10's' that summer. He taught me ice climbing. He'd cajoled me into the hardest climbs and leads of my life.
He was my better then and he's my better now, a clear headed climbing MACHINE. He can and did take on hard and dangerous 5.11 leads deep in the wilderness and pull them off with boldness and skill.
He'd worked for Robbins for some years as a teenager and young man - as a guide too.
So Stu knew his shit and was fit and vastly capable.
He fell following that roof. When he finally pulled it after a significant struggle on his 2nd attempt, making it look even harder than I did, his eyes locked onto mine.
He said,
"GODDAMN DINGUS! (pant pant pant) That was (pant pant) fucking HARD! How'd you do that????""
He had this shining look in his eye, as he lasered into mine. It was weird. I could tell he thought I was fucking crazy and maybe a little bit stupid for doing that. I could see that thought etched in the fabric of his face. (non verbal communication is bloody well powerful in close climbing teams - I'm telling you, he WAS thinking exactly that)
But there was something else in his look - something new.
RESPECT.
I had snatched a pebble out of Master's Hand and we both knew it. He could not quite believe I had left no footprints in the rice paper.
We continued the climb and topped out before noon. We were in our designated pay camp spot down in the tourist part of the park well before dark, cooking dinner and headed for some well deserved sleep.
We were to blitz into Petite Grepon the next morning for a one-dayer on that and then down the back side to Stewart Glacier (name correct? Its been a while).
Anyway, thumbing the guide book in camp we saw it - I'd done a variation to the 2nd pitch of the standard route - 10b I think the boook called it. At about 11k, without any beta or even knowing anything at all about it.
It was a landmark day for me - I knew in my bones that day, I could do this work, I could handle myself when things got grim. I never looked back either.
But the weirdest thing of all?
STU DID NOT KNOW I'D FALLEN.
He never flet a jolt. The rope did come tight but he thought I was down climbing. With the slack and the springy nature of double ropes, the rope drag below me had served as an effective belay.
Weird huh? Take a 20 footer and your belayer doesn't even know it - doesn't believe you when you tell him.
Cheers
DMT
(This post was edited by dingus on Jan 15, 2009, 12:42 PM)
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kachoong
Jan 15, 2009, 1:57 PM
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Pleasure to read, as always, Dingus! Nice job on the climb... 
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robbovius
Jan 15, 2009, 2:06 PM
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tradrenn wrote: angry wrote: I've had much more epic falls from a bike than I have climbing. Hey, me too. Last time I touch a bike I broke two of my arms. Fuck that cycling shit, climbing is safer.
you have more than two arms? shit man, PICS!
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chossmonkey
Jan 15, 2009, 2:25 PM
Post #46 of 50
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tradrenn wrote: angry wrote: I've had much more epic falls from a bike than I have climbing. Hey, me too. Last time I touch a bike I broke two of my arms. Fuck that cycling shit, climbing is safer.
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tradrenn
Jan 15, 2009, 5:49 PM
Post #47 of 50
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Registered: Jan 16, 2005
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robbovius wrote: tradrenn wrote: angry wrote: I've had much more epic falls from a bike than I have climbing. Hey, me too. Last time I touch a bike I broke two of my arms. Fuck that cycling shit, climbing is safer. you have more than two arms? shit man, PICS!
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robbovius
Jan 15, 2009, 5:55 PM
Post #48 of 50
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tradrenn wrote: robbovius wrote: tradrenn wrote: angry wrote: I've had much more epic falls from a bike than I have climbing. Hey, me too. Last time I touch a bike I broke two of my arms. Fuck that cycling shit, climbing is safer. you have more than two arms? shit man, PICS!
eww. fuck that. I call photoshop shenenigans!
(This post was edited by robbovius on Jan 15, 2009, 5:56 PM)
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greenketch
Jan 16, 2009, 6:02 AM
Post #49 of 50
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Registered: Jan 12, 2005
Posts: 501
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My Best falling story was also one of my biggest learning experiences.
Several years back I was projecting a piece in the North Cascades that never did get done. Aside from being virgin it was also at the limit of my abilities. I "just had" to get up there one weekend but none of my regular partners were available. I accepted a belay slave that said he was good. (Mistake #1)
This particular route was on an Arete with two little roofs that made it sort of an exagerated sawtooth. As I climbed there was a fair amount of little junk falling from the virgin rock. My belayer hid under a little overhang at the bottom. It was hard to communicate but I figured what the heck. (mistake #2)
The second roof was larger than I thought from the ground but had a real nice loose fingers crack. About 6 feet from the arete and 4 before the lip The crack widened and I was able to get a bomber knuckle jam in. Then just as I felt good and went for "a couple more moves then some pro" (mistake #3) I peeled. I was left hanging from one arm with a belayer I couldn't talk to and he couldn't see me. The nice part was that bomber knucle jam wasn't comin out.
After much flailing and attempting to yell for help he pulled on the rope to see if I was still there. I was able with his tug to get some pro in and french back onto the rock and start working on unjamming the fingers.
It's not so good to stack up mistakes all on the same fall. Those fingers were sore for weeks.
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potreroed
Jan 16, 2009, 4:46 PM
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Registered: Sep 30, 2001
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I took a 30 footer once and the rope caught me just before I hit the ground. What with the rope stretch I landed on my feet on the ground without getting hurt. Unfortunately, I wasn't wearing a harness and my ribs were pretty sore for a few days!
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