Close Calls

[EWolfe]

I was just reading John Long's book, and thought it would be cool to share some of our own "close calls". This has probably been done, but what the hey.

 

I'll start:

 

I was building a climbing gym in SoCal about 10 years ago, and decided to take a break from mixing and filling gaps with Bondo. I think I must have been a bit wacked from the fumes, and I was alone late working.

 

There was a corner of the gym that had been completed and had holds on it, so I booted up and started up the dihedral. The floor was a hardwood gym floor, and I had no crash pad, but the holds were big and the stemming good, so I proceeded upwards. As I climbed, I passed round holes in the wall, some big and some small, that would eventually get texture inserts to break up the regularity of the flat panels.

 

I went up and down the 30 foot wall several times, and as I approached the top of the dihedral for the third or fourth time, my calves started feeling a little pumped. There was a good sized jug at the top, so I went a bit further, hung off the jug and shook my legs out, hanging by both hand from the large, flat jug. As I went to shake out my right hand, the hold spun to the left where I was hanging from my other hand, and I went straight over backwards, plummeting upside down towards the wood floor 25 feet below.

 

The next thing I remember is my head whacking something, and as I recovered from my diziness, I could hardly believe I was even alive. As I opened my eyes, I looked around and the whole gym was upside down and the floor was less than 3 feet from my head. The back of my knees hurt like a sonofabitch, and my head was resting against the wall.

 

Here’s what happened: apparently as I plummeted, flailing, both of my legs caught in one of the holes that the round texture panels go in, saving me from major injury or death. I pulled myself up and gingerly climbed down the wall, the bruises on the back of my knees blooming already. Other than that, I was unscathed

 

I still cannot for the life of me figure out how, pitching off backwards on a vertical wall, my legs got caught. I swear to this day that some guardian angel gave me a push back into that wall so my legs would catch.

[Dru]

 

"No shit, there I was...."

 

I tried to go for a week without drinking coffee. On the third day, time slowed to a crawl. Even Spray was boring. I don't know if I will survive or not.

[dberdinka]

--- Cross posted from a similarly titled thread in the Freshie Zones about 2 years ago ---

 

Skiing down the White Salmon Glacier in February. We followed the best snow by staying close to the Northwest Rib. As we continued below the base of the rib we found ourselves below the Hanging Glacier. Dropping down a little chute I got cliffed out. I hollered up to my friends who started a long traverse torwards the ski area. I considered traversing 100 feet east into an enormous cone of avalanche debris (literally hundreds of feet high) instead I popped my skis off and decided to retrace my descent.

 

I still clearly remember hearing the tinkle of small ice chunks followed by an enormous CRACK! Looking straight up above me (like tilt your neck and eyes back) this wave of snow is pouring off the top of the Hanging Glacier, hitting a wall of rock on the northwest rib, deflecting back in my direction, turning in to this churning cloud. It gets bigger and bigger and bigger. The last I looked it's hitting the snow slopes I'm on below the rock cliff the Hanging Glacier sits on. It enormous.

 

I'm standing below a little projection of rock. I bury my skis in the snow, then my body and face. I close my eyes. What I really remember is the sound, so incredibly loud. And it just gets louder and louder and louder. Suddenly it gets dark and I'm being pounded into the snow by a malestroum of wind. This goes on, I don't know, for a while. I had this incredible sense of not really being alive, and not really being dead. Just waiting for whatever eventuality to occur. Hard to explain, guess you had to be there.

 

The noise begins to diminish, soon it's gone. All thats left is a powder cloud hanging over the valley. I claw my way up the gully, adrenaline now coursing through me, fumble with the binding cables and get the hell out of there.

 

The debris field in the white salmon drainage was up to 20' deep and at least a 1000' long. It all came down less than a 100' to my side. What I felt was the associated powder cloud that came thundering over the rock knob I was hiding behind and pounded me from above. My friends thought I was dead, ski patrol (who were watching us) though we were dead.

 

I don't ski below hanging glaciers anymore.

[EWolfe]

 

If you think that is a chestbeat, you are an insensitive, self-involved moron.

[Thinker]

my fav from Long's Close Calls is the guy who looks down from a climb and see's his belayer running away toward the river as he's being attacked by angry bees or hornets. There the climber is, hanging out with out a belay.

 

My own close call happened at a gym in Idaho Falls, ID. I agreed to go climb with a chick who said she'd been to the gym a few time before. While lowering from my 3rd or 4th climb, I suddenly felt myself free falling. The rope came tight and I 'bounced' about 10 feet off the deck, and then proceeded to rush the rest of the way to the (padded) floor. (she didn't have much experience with a grigri and was obviously having some difficulty with it). I got up, walked around the corner, and started cursing at myself. The whole gym saw what happened...I must have drawn their attention on my way down with a few choice words that Chaps would never consider uttering.... Once I got calmed down and decided I needed get back on the plastic the owner of the gym backed up her belay and gave her some much needed pointers on the proper use of a grigri....I still hate those fuckin' things. I never did climb with that chick again...and I never did fuck her, as much as she wanted it.

[Alpinfox]

....I never did fuck her, as much as she wanted it.

 

 

[Dru]

 

If you think that is a chestbeat, you are an insensitive, self-involved moron.

 

You'd have to have a pretty boring life to be chestbeating about a gym accident. It was more a comment on the direction these threads usually drift to... 20 posts down and someone is describing how, after their partner left them for dead in a crevasse, they sewed their own arm back on with dental floss and a Russian titanium ice screw, blasted their way out of the crevasse with Nitro, pushed their Islamic terrorist captor off a clif, then crawled for three days to a techical, Class V whitewater rapid that they floated down on a log, then tamed a wild burro and rode it 5 days to a hospital.

[slothrop]

Dru, quit shitting on the parade.

[ivan]

my own buddy jesus chest-beat (wtf, how is being incredibly stupid and coming balls close to dying something to be proud of? i share my great stupidity mostly 'cuz i think it's funny) - anyways:

 

at 3 a.m. in the winter, halfway up the right side of the ice cliff glacier my partners and i discover we left the ropes at the cache (interestingly, these are the only sober guys i've climbed w/ lately - i think maybe i'm ultimatley safer when a little bit senseless, certainly more paranoid). we've already come up stuff we don't wanna downclimb, the ice is very thin over the slabs and dinnerplating - we decide to just go up n' over the normal way and screw our original objective. i go first, get through the last, short vertical section - get both tools onto a flat section, but it's all powder snow and really flimsy ice - i think "be careful here" and next thing i know i'm flying backwards down the cliff. i sail over the heads of my partners below, bounce twice while experiencing hte most violent and disgusting feeling of acceleration i've ever know - i see sparks from my crampons, feel my arm nearly yanked off as a tool catches and is ripped away, my headlamp dissapears and in the darkness, in just those few short seconds, i felt a complete acquiesence to my impending death - no sense in fighting i thought, this bitch is over, just shut up and take it - then i cratered into the deepest powder snow and instantly stopped, my helmet packed with 6 inches of totally compressed snow. i'd fallen 40 meters, not quite vertical of course, a crampon point was broken and i'd lost a glove along w/ the tool, i could hardly breathe for a half minute - but i was ALIVE MOTHERFUCKER!!! what a great way to feel!

 

on a more amusing note, one of my partners reported later he had to fight the urge to puke for the next 5 minutes at the vision of me passing over his head

[Alpinfox]

 

Wow.

[111]

I was just learning about gear climbing and being a proficient sport climber and top roper of cracks, I moved up to the 5.10 range without a gear fall. I was quite comfortable with leading on gear and didnt think much of getting on Mantra .10a in Smith's lower basalt gorge even though the book warned of tricky gear. got up to about 20 feet and got too pumped, hollered "falling" and dropped onto a .5 cam. it blew and I decked and only broke my foot. what I landed on (I maintain this kept me from becoming a paraplegic) was my belayer who had the good sense to protect a knife edge boulder which I would have hit square in my back. I am now getting back onto the horse but a littl emore cautiously now.

[Bug]

That was stupid.

Welcome to the club.

[ivan]

more intersting than the actual accidents, i think, is to discuss how folks react in the minutes and days afterwards. for my own incident, initial joy was overcome a few minutes laters w/ intense fear, especially the fear that i was in fact already dead but in some sorta "jacob's ladder" type fantasy world, or that i had missed some glaringly deadly injury that would any moment make itself know. over the next hour, as i hiked down to fetch a rope to help my stranded homeboys, i underwent a complete atavastic regression - like a primeval rat in the jungle of 2 million BC i was sick w/ naked fear at every sound of wind in the rocks, every rustle of snow crystals down the slope - convinced that sudden death, denied it's most certain prize, was on its way to collect.

 

hours later i was happy but still dumbfounded, repeatedly reliving the experience and laughing over it for medication - amazed and still kinda waiting for the other shoe to drop

 

days later and stretching to today i don't attach any radical significance to it at all - just a very lucky lesson and a distinct fuck-up to avoid in the future

[Dechristo]

more intersting than the actual accidents, i think, is to discuss how folks react in the minutes and days afterwards. for my own incident, initial joy was overcome a few minutes laters w/ intense fear, especially the fear that i was in fact already dead but in some sorta "jacob's ladder" type fantasy world, or that i had missed some glaringly deadly injury that would any moment make itself know. over the next hour, as i hiked down to fetch a rope to help my stranded homeboys, i underwent a complete atavastic regression - like a primeval rat in the jungle of 2 million BC i was sick w/ naked fear at every sound of wind in the rocks, every rustle of snow crystals down the slope - convinced that sudden death, denied it's most certain prize, was on its way to collect.

 

Yes, examining individual's responses to calamity are, imo, the better part; though, I doubt all would remember or elucidate as clearly as you.

[specialed]

Almost died last weekend on the rope swing at the lake.

 

No shit. My leg got caught in the rope and there I was swinging back into shore upside down headfirst into a rock.

 

Luckily I was able to pull out at the last minute

[Stefan]

Had a climbing accident. Broke both ankles. It's on this website somewhere.

 

What I remember most about during the fall: I knew for some reason I was not going to die, due to my line of fall. I really thought for a brief moment before I cratered: "Shit. My wife is going to be pissed off at me."

[ivan]

"Shit. My wife is going to be pissed off at me."

man, i'm always thinking that...

[jmace]

i used to rely on that technique, your lucky you got away unscathed.

[specialed]

Experts only.

[Cobra_Commander]

this is why I stick to sport marriage.

[Ireneo_Funes]

You should try marriage bouldering...it's just like dating, but with some obstacles thrown in.

[Cobra_Commander]

and without all that pesky protection to fiddle with!

[Ireneo_Funes]

[Dechristo]

Almost died last weekend on the rope swing at the lake.

 

No shit. My leg got caught in the rope and there I was swinging back into shore upside down headfirst into a rock.

 

Luckily I was able to pull out at the last minute

You were screwin' upside-down on a ropeswing?!

 

You're one talented SOB!

[MPaul_Hansen]

PS There is a similar thread on www.nwhikers.net

"Close Calls from Rockfall"

 

Some feel there are useful bits of information to be gleened from such accounts and from other similar sources such as "Accidents in North American Mountaineering", by AAC.