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Biggest/Nastiest whipper with no sad ending 24-Sep-2010 At 8:21:29 AM evanbb

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Mine's fairly boring....

Climbing at Medlow Bath with Dan a few years back, I was being dragged out of the house to help recover from the flu. I should have known trouble was coming when I struggled up the gr 14 warm up, but didn't think much of it.

Dan then lead the first pitch of Schwing, a 2 pitch 18 that has a fun little roof just before the first belay. I wobbled up to the belay and set off on the second. Near the top, a few carrots around the place, I started fatiguing. But fast. Really fast. I went from going okay to completely exhausted in a few moves. Weird, I blamed the flu. So I stopped in a half decent stance and tried to clip my safety to the nearest bolt to take a breather. Daisy chain goes up... woops, it's a carrot. Need a bolt plate. Drop first bolt plate. Manage to get second one on. Woops, not high enough and safety biner too fat for bolt plate. Move up half a move to a stupid stance and try again. Ahh, I remember, that biner still doesn't fit. Might try a quickdraw? (I wasn't thinking very clearly, can you tell?) Got a draw on, excellent. What next? I'll try clipping the rope or something. Start yarding up slack. Took a couple of decent handfuls.... then utterly without warning I was in the air, and still holding slack. I think the free fall was only about 5m? I stopped about 7m below the bolt.

At the time I weighed about 93kg and Dan would have been 65, dripping wet. From the belay you go right a few metres under an overhang and around. Dan had travelled 2m across the belay, skinned both knees completely, managed to hold me and ended up somewhat upside down. There was silence for a few moments before... 'Ev, did you just fall clipping' 'Yup'. Then laughter. Lots of it. The flu sucks.