Butch Hillhurst

Yesterday around 3 pm a guy had a rap accident in Corridor at Skaha. I was there immediately along with 2 local climbers who were nurses. He had one strand of rope through his ATC and the other end was going up to the anchors. It appears he clipped only one strand of his rope into his ATC when rapping instead of 2 and so fell about 70 feet. When we arrived he was prone and breathing but unresponsive verbally and to ocular stim. We didn't want to move him-- no collars etc-- and we took vitals but he was on his way down. We CPR'd him when his heart stopped and got a pulse back and then the EMTs showed and took over. They had him on O2 etc but they called it after an hour of CPR. From the initial lack of responsiveness to the incredible damage he'd sustained-- doing CPR on him he had basically a destroyed sternum-- it was probably a lost cause from the get-go but we did our best. Anyway the nurses were solid. My heart goes out to his wife who was there. Check your rap and other setups, ppl, I don't EVER wanna watch another guy die.

thanks ppl for reading it. My Dad can walk, is home, can even go up and down stairs on his own. McBennett and all white hispters are now in Burning Man where he is spinning fire whilst wearing a neon purple bodysuit. And of course every time we are out climbing we think "is it worth it?" and yet we go. Ruben Dario *did* define desire as "the question that has no answer."

It's this hopeless thing with climbing: as soon as you feel awesome about someting you feel/sound elitist ;-) It was a great trip and an amazing day. I'd like to get strong and ballsy enough for the Watchtower next. I am glad some ppl liked the trip report.

Trip: Bugaboos - Beckey-Chouinard Date: 8/18/2014 Trip Report: Here's a TR for the Bugs http://gumbiesoncrack.blogspot.ca/2014/08/da-muddafuggin-beckey-chouinard.html Gear Notes: 2x .3-#3, 1 #4, a few nuts, blue alien, tiblocs, grigri, lots of slings, 70m rope Approach Notes: 21 hrs Applebee-Applebee via SW side of Pigeon in and South face icefall bypass raps of Snowpatch on return. COuld be done much faster via B-S col but this was impassable. Best option for 2-days: bivvy at Pigeon-Howser and save yourself the descenet and re-descent/re-climb-out-of East Creek.