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Biggest/Nastiest whipper with no sad ending


Eduardo Slabofvic

22-Sep-2010
10:22:18 AM

Mikl's thread on near accidents has made me think of this one.

Give us your war stories on the biggest whipper you've had or been a party to that has not ended badly.

To get the ball rolling: -

On a very early trip to Frog, a sometimes Chockstone poster went bridging up Ethic Mans Dilemma. Choosing to be the ethic man, and not the careful man, he found himself at about three quarter height and a fair way out from his gear bridging wildly in what must have felt like the stratosphere. Needless to say, a foot popped and down he came. He may have ripped a piece (that I’m not sure of) and the belayer was not the most experienced on the planet, but he pulled up about 2 feet from the ground. That was the first real lead fall any of us had ever seen.

One of mine was on Running on Empty, I missed the secret hold on the traverse (it’s a secret, so don’t tell anyone) and came off after much phaffing about, kicking the cam under the flake out on the way past, which tipped me upside down. I pulled up, head first, on the side runners close enough to touch the ground with a bent elbow.


nmonteith

22-Sep-2010
10:44:57 AM

Watching some Euro fall off whilst seconding the traverse bit of Seventh PIllar on Taipan. He fell off right at the start of the traverse with about 13m of sideways unprotected rope between him and his belayer. For some bizarre reason he was lugging up a large briefcase full of camera gear - so when he pitch off the weight of the bag clipped to his harness pulled him badly off balance and he went head first down sideways in a huge swing screaming like a maniac.

mikllaw

22-Sep-2010
12:18:38 PM

I wrote this up for the SRC in 2002

Fuddy Duddy? Bloody Muddy!
I’d guess the date was 1973, the highpoint of the modern climbing era, when John Croker and I stood beneath the awesome gash of “Fuddy Duddy”. From where we were it looked about 2 inches shorter than Everest, and would probably take a wee bit more huffing and puffing. My glorious leader, John Croker, was the gentleman climber of Sydney Grammar School, and my mentor in things vertical (he once let me place a R.U.R.P. in a scrap of sandstone in his backyard). I was a few years younger and about half his height and half his weight.

Rain, rain, rain. A very wet summer followed by more rain. Unlike the current breed of climbers who are content to sit about sucking down cups of chino all day long and then burst out on some 2 move show stopper, after months of rain John was keen for something BIG.

Fuddy Duddy was the obvious line for the apprentice hardman. I once saw 10 people from the SRC watching somebody repeating it. What is it? A big easy flake1 up a wall (pitch 1) followed by an awesome corner crack, which is wide and blank.

The belay method of the day was entertaining too, you wrapped the rope around arm, then around your back and hung on. Oddly enuff, no-one was ever dropped whilst on a waist belay (probably too painful). Earlier in history when they said “The leader never falls”, what they meant was “The leader never falls and lives to tell the tale”. With this modern waist belay it was more like “The leader never falls without being beaten up by their seconds”. Even small falls were much worse to hold than to have happen to you.

The first pitch has faded into insignificance with the passing years, but I’m sure we left our undies on it. The belay was a small chosspile ledge with an anxious looking bolt down at ankle level. While John was arranging his magnificent rack I managed to place my only piece of gear at waist level and clip into it, a little Clog # 0 hex on 4 mm shoestring, just 48 cents from Paddy’s ( I was very proud of this and re-tied the knot countless times in class).

The first 40 feet of corner was wide and unprotectable, ending at a big blackboy (or “grass tree” as they are confusingly called these days by politically correct people who have seen neither grass nor trees). The rest of the corner looked easier (because it was further away).

Off he went, armed with a rack of weird-arsed gear and a head full of heroic ideas. This was John’s idea of a good time, but he did keep stopping and throwing his big MOAC wedge (about twice as big as your thumb, 2” or so) into the 5” fist gobbler and being disappointed by the results of his experiment. After one particularly frenzied tossing episode, he resumed laybacking like a man of steel.

mikllaw

22-Sep-2010
12:18:54 PM

Part 2

10 feet down and 30 to go.

All I could really see was bum and boots as he shuffled up the crack, some poxy break on the edge of the corner gave him a bit of respite where he could continue playing toss the MOAC with the crack. I re-seated the Clog 0 in the crack and wrapped the rope around my left arm.

20 feet down and 20 to go.

Tiring of the MOAC game he resumed his laybacking and got within a few moves of the green oasis of the blackboy. Progress had been slow to this point when suddenly one of his feet slipped in the muddy crack as he was reaching up. As I’d never seen anyone fall off leading before I wasn’t too worried by his apparent disdain for the golden “3 points of contact” rule

30 feet down and 10 to go.

The adrenaline generated by the muddy boot spurred him into action, the next 10 feet to the blackboy was a piece of gymnastic excellence, smoothly executed, high speed laybacking. I didn’t know he had it in him.

He grabbed the blackboy with one arm, two arms, and then threw a leg over the top of it and tried to lever his carcass on top of it. Finally he gave trying to transfer his carcass to the top of the blackboy and started reaching for the lucky MOAC again. With a sad, wet sucking noise, the blackboy pulled out of the muddy corner and launched John, itself, and a lot of muddy rubble, across the heavens.

As John rode the blackboy like a witch, silhouetted against the sky, it was briefly very quiet and peaceful. As he drew level with me, suddenly everything started happening very fast and he rapidly shrunk in size as he disappeared down the gully below.

There was a hot, fast, screaming sound as the faithful Kinnears #4 nylon hawser sped through my little paws and cut into my school jumper. I didn’t seem to be retarding his magnificent progress much until a knot wrapped around my hand and the locked the system, and myself, up totally.

This is where the account stops. I’m told that after a few minutes of me unable to move, John got off the rope and stopped me having a rope grafted permanently to my back. Some climbers came up and freed me from the biggest knot they’d ever seen.

John got himself some more gear and moved on to become the legend that we all know today. I got into trubbl at boarding school for cutting up a new jumper and I wouldn’t second anyone for 2 years. I never saw the Clog 0 (or the MOAC) again.

1 Which slid down the hillside in heavy rains a few years after (or maybe it was John Croker’s fall that did it?) leaving a chimney instead.
2 I think this closed up a few years later when the flake went for a slither.

gfdonc

22-Sep-2010
1:37:45 PM

Sometime in the 80's I managed to convince two friends - one of them is now a noted conservationist - to have a go at Ozymandias. Neither had any prior aid climbing or long route experience. I'd already been on the North Wall twice so figured "what could go wrong"?

I'll call them B and C for unobvious reasons.

So the trip started badly when B managed to kick the haul bag off Fuhrer ledge. I've told this story on several occasions, but to give you the quick version: when a haul bag loaded with gear free-falls 80m it kinda explodes. I got the job of rapping two ropes tied together down into the gorge, on a recovery mission. I had to retrieve articles of underclothing from the surrounding trees.

Much later, we arrived at the bottom of Ozy with slings and tape holding together a sad-looking haul bag. That's not the whipper story though.

Pitches 1-4 went without too much drama, until the weather closed in on about pitch 3 and we nearly got stormed off. We still somehow managed to make Big Grassy that night. In the morning, it was sunny again, and we decided C would get his first aid lead on the next pitch, which didn't look too bad. Well at least not until he got on it.

Some hours later he asked to be lowered off (wait, we'll get to the whipper bit), totally strung out by the experience. I took over. The rope was running all over the place, not well extended, catching under/around edges, and didn't look good, but so as not to waste time I went straight back up the ropes to continue.

Turned out the rope drag was horrendous and I was having trouble pulling rope through to step up, so I got into the habit of pulling up some slack as I worked to finish the pitch. Then, near the belay, a cam blew and the gear below it popped. I got to count slowly as the wall rushed past, hard to estimate the length but at least 10m, perhaps 15m, in free-fall on the steep rock. I pulled up, a little shaken, and managed to finish the pitch.

Scary part was, when the others joined me, they had no knowledge I'd fallen. I'd been pulled up by rope drag.


bluey

22-Sep-2010
1:45:08 PM

I've regurgitated my Lamplighter tale to many a fellow climber - my mate took a whipper while I was belaying - in short, she got off route on the second pitch about a couple of metres before the top of the pitch (crazy offwidth that other lost leaders had confusingly chalked up), peeled off, a couple of pieces popped and she ended up level with me at the belay ledge at the end of the first pitch. Scared the bejeezers out of both of us.

Winston Smith

22-Sep-2010
1:54:06 PM

Mikl that is f&(*ing hilarious. I never tire of hearing that tale.


Hans

22-Sep-2010
2:48:25 PM

awesome story mikl. Sounds horrific and hilarious.

23-Sep-2010
1:11:02 PM

On 22/09/2010 bluey wrote:
>I've regurgitated my Lamplighter tale to many a fellow climber - my mate
>took a whipper while I was belaying - in short, she got off route on the
>second pitch about a couple of metres before the top of the pitch (crazy
>offwidth that other lost leaders had confusingly chalked up), peeled off,
>a couple of pieces popped and she ended up level with me at the belay ledge
>at the end of the first pitch. Scared the bejeezers out of both of us.

This might be related to Bluey's story and happened about 2 years ago at Araps, involved 2 girls and 2 pieces of gear popping. Otherwise, here is another Lamplighter story.

I was about to lead the last pitch of Judgement Day which traverses slightly below Lamplighter when I heard a loud crack. My belayer and I looked up to see a helmeted girl falling head first straight past us. I thought they were on the third pitch according to the guidebook and the fall seemed to go on forever. 20m would be a conservative guess because by the time she stopped falling she was well below where we were sitting.

Fortunately the cliff below Lamplighter drops away so there was nothing but air to hit. If there were rocks this one would have been a fatality.

To the girl's credit, they got straight back on the climb to recover their gear.


bluey

23-Sep-2010
1:53:47 PM

On 23/09/2010 kg wrote:
>On 22/09/2010 bluey wrote:
>>I've regurgitated my Lamplighter tale to many a fellow climber - my mate
>>took a whipper while I was belaying - in short, she got off route on
>the
>>second pitch about a couple of metres before the top of the pitch (crazy
>>offwidth that other lost leaders had confusingly chalked up), peeled
>off,
>>a couple of pieces popped and she ended up level with me at the belay
>ledge
>>at the end of the first pitch. Scared the bejeezers out of both of us.
>
>This might be related to Bluey's story and happened about 2 years ago
>at Araps, involved 2 girls and 2 pieces of gear popping. Otherwise, here
>is another Lamplighter story.
>
>I was about to lead the last pitch of Judgement Day which traverses slightly
>below Lamplighter when I heard a loud crack. My belayer and I looked up
>to see a helmeted girl falling head first straight past us. I thought they
>were on the third pitch according to the guidebook and the fall seemed
>to go on forever. 20m would be a conservative guess because by the time
>she stopped falling she was well below where we were sitting.
>
>Fortunately the cliff below Lamplighter drops away so there was nothing
>but air to hit. If there were rocks this one would have been a fatality.
>
>To the girl's credit, they got straight back on the climb to recover their
>gear.

Yep that would be us. It was a long drop for sure and seemed to go on forever. I was just happy to see my leader swing around and give me some healthy eye contact when she stopped falling.

We did alot of pfaffing after that to get down and recover some of the gear but ended up coming back the next day to recover the rest. I led the offending pitch in the end, and crapped myself the whole way remembering the events of the day before.

bl@ke

23-Sep-2010
3:11:48 PM

Well, it was a December morning at the pines and I was lying in the dirt chilling when this American shoeless bum comes over and asks if I wanted a partner, I had just found myself one not so long ago so I decline. We get chatting anyway and Neils (the hippy dude) starts yaking about some bold routes he has been doing so I ask if he had done Loise Lane 24, he hasnt so we decide he shal onsight it later in the day. We both go our seperate ways for the day.
Later that afternoon Matt and I are sitting around camp waiting for Neils to show up. We wait for a while before deciding that he has chickened out. But then we spot him, Shirtless with a rattler tat on his rippling shoulders, We can imagine Black Sabbath playing as he walks in slow mo towards us. He then borrows some RP's off us and we make our way up to the climb.
Matt is on belay (better him than me I think to myself). Neils starts up well cruising it. He makes it look like a 12. Im sitting near Tarzan enjoying the show. He stops to place a number 2 offset brassy. He moves carefully up until he is about half hight at a flat top jug. He shakes out and get in 2 crappy wires.
The wires are worthless, he pumps out and quietly says "take take" as he drops off the wall. The 2 wires pull out like teeth out of a dead horses head. Matt jumps off the belay ledge to take up slack. The number 2 offset holds just as Neils smacks into the ledge. Woh! I say.
Neils only got a little bit of a grazing. He then climbs up, looks at the distorted nut that held him and then decides its time for quits.
But then a while later I read The Whipper section in Rock about his 50m whip in Tas. That would be right I said.


Chuck Norris

23-Sep-2010
8:45:58 PM

I think I've posted this before but anyway...

One sunny afternoon while I was cruising an easy well protected corner route at squamish. Setting the scene... I was a pitch or two up and was soaking up the afternoon sun and dreamily belaying my partner up the pitch. Adding to my pleasure was watching a dude next to me cruising a long runout slab just next to where I was belaying. Can't exactly remember the grade but for some reason 10d sticks in my head. But it was one of those old school slabs 40m pitch bolt at 20m and that's it....

Like I said he was cruising...padding/frictioning confidently on slick granite for ages (a pleasure to watch).... but then for some reason when he got within one last move to the belay (at this stage he was 5 m to my left and 1m below me) and he just lost his bottle. The final move didn't look harder than the 100 he'd done before but nup he wasn't going nowhere. After about a minute of fumbling and wobbling (a good 15m out from the bolt) he yelled and started running backwards down the slab this worked for few metres but then he fell and tumbled sideways, somehow wrapping himself in his rope like a cocoon.

He did a fair bit of bouncing but walked away, shaken and stirred but in one piece. I guess that despite a 40m tumbling whipper the cocoon (and skid lid) protected him somewhat. With hindsight I also think that by getting wrapped up in the rope he probably took a good 10m off his potential fall.


Chuck Norris

23-Sep-2010
8:58:23 PM

Eduardo

Can you please change your profile picture. I really can't take you seriously as sparticus.

Da stoobombalishous


IdratherbeclimbingM9

23-Sep-2010
9:56:23 PM

On 23/09/2010 stugang wrote:
>Eduardo
>
>Can you please change your profile picture. I really can't take you seriously
>as sparticus.
>
>Da stoobombalishous

About as seriously as other long termers like me are having trouble getting used to your new profile pic?
☺

Where is all this going? Is this in keeping with your new mod status? How long will it be before simey gets one, as I hear he doesn't like being left out? _{Heh, heh, heh.}

Back on topic.
I was recently impressed by trogsters ground (ledge) fall...


evanbb

24-Sep-2010
8:21:29 AM

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.


pmonks

24-Sep-2010
8:51:19 AM

On 24/09/2010 evanbb wrote:
>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.

That second pitch is deceptively hard I reckon. The first pitch is nice and positive and while there's a roof it's on massive jugs. The second pitch is less steep but also a lot more tenuous...

Biggest whipper I've seen was at The Grotto on Table Mt. Friend of a friend is working a 5.12 and whips off somewhere up high (the hard routes start about 15m up above lower grade first "pitches" - you have to see the place to really understand why it's been set up that way).

Anyway, he's somewhere up there in space pulling in slack when he whips off. Of course his belayer had the grigri open somehow (not entirely sure what happened - the belayer was very reticent) and he ended up taking a 20+m whipper straight into the biggest mutant poison oak bush in the place (and that's saying something!). I mean this stuff must have been 5m high and as dense as the worst blackberry bushes you've ever seen.

Thankfully the leader was basically unharmed, apart from cuts, scrapes and the worst case of poison oak rash you've ever seen. To add insult to injury, his brother (the belayer who dropped him) made him lie down in the back of the ute all the way home - he didn't want poison oak getting inside his truck!!

tastrad

24-Sep-2010
9:05:20 AM

I witnesed Neils take his 50m whipper at Africa on Ben Lomond. I was repeating a neighbouring route while Neils and Crazy John were attempting a new route ground up and onsight on a 200m face. I was above and to the right of Neils as he was on the second pitch on grade 22/23 territory about 25m above the belay. A hold broke and he ripped all the gear from the pitch (8 pieces) except the first wire above the belay. As he was cartwheeling head first past the belay I thought he was going to deck out from 65m and die. He pulled up 15m off the ground. Just after the first wire, the rope caught behind a flake and stripped a 2m section of the sheath with all the core exposed. My feeling is that the flake held him, not the wire, otherwise that might have ripped like all his other pieces, and he would have gone factor 2 onto John's marginal belay. If that had happened they'd both be dead.

bl@ke

24-Sep-2010
10:21:34 AM

Yeah pretty gnarley. I met you while hanging around at the pines with Neils and Matt I think. Oh and here is another one. I didnt see it but my mates did. Around the time Neils was at Ben Lomond I was at Frecynet having a blast at some sea cliffs. One day we tried to hitch to the Hazards unsuccesfully so we ended up walking 9ks or something like that. We got to the base of our climb and it started raining (as it did everyday when we were there) so we walked 9ks back to camp in the rain. The next day my Tasmanian climber pals wanted to go back. I was like "bugger that" so i stayed at camp while they got a lift with a nice Alaskan climber. There was also a guy from perth and his girlfriend that were going to be on the same route. Japhlion I think. So there were three groups on 2 climbs.
Mr Perth guy was ahead leading some nice orangy granite when he fell off the crack he was climbing, quite a way too and landed on the belay ledge mashing his ankle. The two people behind them (Sam and Alaskin guy) climb the rest of the climb and meet the other 2 guys (Rob and Jules) at the top and fix there two ropes so Mr Perth can prussic of the last 100 or so metres of the climb! All while I was waiting at camp for them to return so I could have tea! The next day Mr Perth and His Girlfriend went into town for an x ray of his ankle.


bluey

24-Sep-2010
10:59:12 AM

On 24/09/2010 tastrad wrote:
>I witnesed Neils take his 50m whipper at Africa on Ben Lomond. I was repeating
>a neighbouring route while Neils and Crazy John were attempting a new route
>ground up and onsight on a 200m face. I was above and to the right of Neils
>as he was on the second pitch on grade 22/23 territory about 25m above
>the belay. A hold broke and he ripped all the gear from the pitch (8 pieces)
>except the first wire above the belay. As he was cartwheeling head first
>past the belay I thought he was going to deck out from 65m and die. He
>pulled up 15m off the ground. Just after the first wire, the rope caught
>behind a flake and stripped a 2m section of the sheath with all the core
>exposed. My feeling is that the flake held him, not the wire, otherwise
>that might have ripped like all his other pieces, and he would have gone
>factor 2 onto John's marginal belay. If that had happened they'd both be
>dead.

I don't know this guy - so I ask this question just as a curious reader - is his gear placement really bad or does he just get on climbs with really marginal options??


Eduardo Slabofvic

24-Sep-2010
11:19:23 AM

On 23/09/2010 IdratherbeclimbingM9 wrote:
>On 23/09/2010 stugang wrote:
>>Da stoobombalishous
your new profile pic?
>☺
>

Yeah - stop channeling Bummer Ho or I'll come around a poke you with my long pointy thing

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