allison

I'm not doing anything tomorrow night and therefore have no excuse for not coming except that I'm not sure if I think you guys are cool or scary....and unless Stefan's there I might not know anyone in the crowd, is there a secret handshake or something I might need to know about to recognize y'all?

Stefan's not German, he's from Milton!

Hey, Stef, why are you so obsessed with people's "real" identities? Is this "Bozo" all over again?...

Keep in mind that all of the Interior Dept. websites (including NPS) are shut down indefinitely due to a completely unrelated snafu in the Bureau of Indian Affairs.

Johnny, don't sweat it. Your visual is all wrong. It looked a lot like sprained ankles until the Xrays. And BTW sorry to mess up your thread with an accident. Probably not the best place to talk about it...

quote: It brings to light a risk that one commonly encounters on sport-climbs that seems to have gone unacknowledged on this board by some folks who maintain that there's no difference (in terms of risk) between leading a sport route and top-roping it. Yeah, there's a difference. Esp. if the route is not overhanging! quote: Anyway, sorry to hear about your ankles. Too bad about the doc bungling it too! There's another place (other than sport climbing) where people have too much of a sense of security, the hospital! Here's what sent me back for the third opinion. I couldn't bear weight on either foot. Considering the results WITH a successful surgery, it could have been a lot worse if I'd not gone back in.... quote: Well if decking was a possibility then it was either not a sport climb or a poorly bolted one. I think the bolt placement was pretty close to OK. Maybe #2 could have been a little closer to the ground but in this case the groundfall potential would have been if Suzie had been belaying inattentively....and who hasn't done that in their lives once or twice? quote: was belayer using a GriGri or what type belay device? No, she was using an ATC. I will say that we were all new enough that we didn't have the 'dynamic catch' in our belaying repetoires at that point. I know how to do it now though.... quote: I wish you speedy and continued healing, Thanks a bunch. I don't have everything I had before, and I have to use different gear, but life continues to improve with the funny ankle. I go the greatest compliment a couple of days ago at Mt. Flatchelor....I was zipping down some run making perfect short-radius turns (on the 'cheater' parabolics) and some hottie guy told my buddy that I was a great skier. It made me feel pretty darn swell. Now if I can just get the cut back into my strut in the bumps and the crud, well, that'll all be good!! [ 02-06-2002: Message edited by: allison ]

Oh, I definitely am not trying to start some sort of one-upsmanship on the "worst bone" issue.....it's just that it has given me waaaaay more long-term suffering than I could have ever imagined.

It happened so fast I can't say for sure, but that's probably what happened. When the rope went taut, it went very taut. And yes, decking was a consideration. I used to think I was lucky I didn't deck because I would have been really fucked up, but now that I've lived with this sad ankle for a while I wonder if the injuries from decking might have been better. Turns out the talus is considered the worst bone in your body to break.

OK, I see you guys were busy while I was writing down my story, so I'll clarify before you do it for me: When I said 'no operator error' I meant that there were no badly tied knots or faulty rap setups, that sort of thing. I fell because my shoes were dirty, but the normal expectation that you can't get hurt by taking a simple fall like that, well, it didn't quite work out that way. Raf, I was pretty close to hitting my belayer when the rope went taut. It's been a few years now but I'm thinking 6 or 7 feet off the deck [ 02-06-2002: Message edited by: allison ]

Sure, I'll indulge you. July 5, 1996, climbing for the first time at Skaha. It was my first summer, I was a new climber but had been climbing a lot, at many different areas with a variety of partners. My skills were just fine. I started up my second lead of the trip, a little 5.8 called Like It In Her Panties, and I fell off between the first bolt and the second bolt. In recreating the events I now know I was reaching back to grab a draw off of my harness for the second bolt when I fell off. My partner caught me in time to keep me from decking (THANK YOU!), but when the rope went tight I slammed heels-first into the rock, swung out, and slammed in toes first. The first impact cracked my right heel bone and compound-fractured the body of my right talus bone, and the second one broke my left foot, one of the metatarsals. FYI the route is pretty much dead vertical. The accident was my fault, but the consequenses were surprisingly serious. I fell because I'd forgotten to clean the dirt off the bottom of my shoes. The ER in Penticton misdiagnosed all of the breaks. My (now former) doc at Group Death also missed all three broken bones despite the talus being broken in 2 directions. Finally an orthopod looked carefully enough at the Xrays, several days after the accident. The talus is pinned together now. I was off work until September of that year and didn't feel completely healed for about 6 months. It was 5 and a half years ago. It's been a hell of a rough recovery. I have pain in the ankle about every other day, sometimes bad enough to keep me up at night. I couldn't run, ski, or backpack until the last year or so. I am still scared to lead and rarely do it any more. I am a lame-o toproper and don't enjoy climbing nearly as much as I did before. Lightweight backpacking gear and trekking poles finally got me fully back on the trail last summer. I can run now, but not very far. I just started downhill skiing this season with the help of parabolic skis. I don't have enough rotation to carve a turn on straight skis. So.....living with this every day for a while now I am a little sensitive to the whole idea that sport climbing is perfectly safe.....

Yeah, what AlpineK said!!!!

OK, this is a little off-topic, but the notion that you can't get hurt sport climbing, or that it's perfectly safe, has come up again in this thread. It just drives me nuts when I hear that. I took a perfectly normal fall with no operator error (other than falling) or equipment failure, and did not deck, and got seriously fucked up physically. Sure, it's safer than the other disciplines of climbing, but I found out the hard way that it's darn easy to break both of your ankles while clipping the bolts. It was pretty hard to explain to my mom after I had convinced her that sport climbing is "perfectly safe." [ 02-06-2002: Message edited by: allison ]

I'll tell you what I think: This board is an extremely entertaining place to lurk. I have been lurking for weeks. A good sturdy flame suit might come in handy with this crowd. That's what makes it entertaining, but sometimes it's more fun to watch you guys slam each other around than get into the fray. This is my first post. You guys are a riot.