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The singularly most dangerous thing ... 25-Oct-2005 At 4:14:18 PM sticky

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disclaimer - I'm not this dangerous these days, I swear...

Rapping off Uncle Ben's on the Chief at 1am, without prusik or knots in the end of the rope, still three or four raps off the deck to discover that the portaledge was some forty metres away to the right. Which led to three quarters of an hour of running across the wall, rope wrapped around leg, doing desperate one handed lunges for the portaledge, and then penduluming back across the granite face. I won't ever forget the sound of the rope against the rock.

Finally made it - but the last rap of the night off the Flake Ledge (at about 3:30am) was into the forest - again no headlamp, had knots this time which was nice as I ran out of rope 20m off the deck, pitch black, can't see my hands, tired after 24 hours nonstop and not thinking, decided the easiest way to solve it was to stand on the small ledge I could feel underfoot, get off rope and hope that my partner tied in to the tree ten metres above me and gave me enough rope to reach the deck.

He lowered to the tree, didn't trust it, gave me a body belay (!) and dropped all the gear he was carrying -including the pig, and then gently lowered himself off the tree. If I'd been thinking on either occasion I'd have used the jumars I had on my harness all along....

Still wake up thinking about how to do things better on epics like that.