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.