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How To fall.....? 11-Sep-2005 At 9:36:52 PM DaCrux

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My partner fell whilst leading Blow by Blow at Arapiles – it’s only a grade 15 but it has a “slippery, bouldery, unprotected start”. After unsuccessfully trying to place an RP about 2-3m up, he decided to downclimb (it was getting dark, the rock was a bit wet, we were both pretty tired after doing a few other climbs and not getting any sleep the night before because of some bogans who decided to set up their tents around ours at 1:30 am, *insert any other excuse here*). He lost his balance and half fell-half jumped and landed on his right foot pretty heavily (from about 1.5m). It didn’t look too bad so I put a cold rock on his ankle for about 10min, told him to put his boots on and we slowly made our way back to the campsite. He could still move his ankle and there was only a bit of swelling so I put a compression bandage around it to immobilise it and reduce the swelling and told him to keep his foot up. After 2 beers, 3/4 of a bottle of wine and some capadex he couldn’t even feel any pain… until the next morning when all the bruising started coming out. He got his ankle x-rayed the next day and it turned out he had a pretty nasty spiral fracture – ended up with a full leg cast for 6 weeks and he couldn’t put any weight through his leg. So my tip would be: don’t fall.