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General Climbing Discussion

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The ones that you have got away with... 16-Mar-2012 At 3:13:22 PM oldtraddad

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My fist route on El Cap was the Salathe. Was lucky enough to meet two other climbers who I had never climbed with and we decided to have a mission together. After a semi hanging bivi on our second night at Sois le toit or whatever the 1 foot ledge is one or 2 pitches below el cap spire we were beging to feel worked and stoked (one of the party felt we shouldn't climb in the dark to reach the better bivi in spite of my insistance I was happy to get the rope up)
A day or so later I had led the great roof onto the head wall and was on a shitty tcu in a flake peg scar (recently pegged I thought) when the rope went tight. Screaming for slack I had no idea why it took so long for the rope to come (found out later my belayer had tied me off so he could take a dump from the hanging belay). When the slack came, as it did in armfuls, my body swung outwards, the piece pivoted, .... and pulled. As I fell my feet clipped a little ledge and my body pitched into a backwards somersault, the rope winding from my harness through my legs up my back (rather like a string round a yo-yo. The resulting spinning stop smashed me up a little with a degree of rope burn a smashed SLR camera and a sinking feeling I may have done serious damage to my back. After reaching the belay and the others cleaning I was very keen to start up the headwall before my back seazed up totally. It was on this pitch about 30 metres out that things started to go wrong .....