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Climber injured in bluies after 30m fall 2/Jan/13 14-Jan-2013 At 4:39:42 PM Rock turtle

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Hi Guys,
I am one of the climbers that was involved in the fall. I am recovering well in Westmead Hospital. My partner is also recovering extremely well. I believe it's time to end all the speculation and let everyone know what happened so they may learn from our mistake.

We decided to climb at Mount Piddington on the 2nd as we were looking at doing a nice easy trad climb on our rest day. We walked out to Horners point and walked down the track, not looking for anything in particular just a line which interested us. From memory we stopped off at Slape Wall at and initialed climb marked "WYL" (pretty sure this is right). We checked the guidebook and it said that the climb was a 2 pitch grade 16. No topo map was shown just a brief description.

We set down our packs and scoped out what we though was the line, looking for possible pro and carrots through the blank sections. After we had an idea of where the line went, we racked up and set off. 1st bolt was a carrot which I clipped standing on a small rock and set off.

The first pitch was easy climbing up a vertical face with heaps of bomber placements, no fixed pro was necessary. Got to the ledge which was about 1-1.5m wide and set an anchor into a nice crack, 2 horizontally placed crack and 1 vertical crack on the right. 2nd came up with no issue. Smooth sailing.
Once we were both on the ledge, I walked a long ledge to the right to take a look at the line we scoped out.

After taking a look at the line which went over a small rooflet, I decided that the pro didn't look too good pulling over the rooflet and was a bit thin following the corner up. There was some carrot bolts further up but I could spot any good gear between us and carrots. I decided that the climbing looked a bit stiff for a 16 so we returned to the original anchor.

I placed a cam deep into the horizontal crack for my partner to clip into. While I looked around for other possible routes. I stopped up onto a shelf that was about hip height to take a look at the wall above the small rooflet, again looking for gear placement or carrots for our first bit of pro. At this point of time I still had no intention of climbing on, I was just looking for the possible route, but my second put me on belay out of habit.

Whilst standing on the ledge I spied a few carrots out wide to the left, about 2-3m away. I also looked up and saw a carrot about 2-3m away up and to the left. I was looking for gear placement and didn't seem to find any until I spotted a crack to my left and a foot up, which had a dried plant growing out of it. I removed out the plant and scraped out the dirt and got a shallow nut placed. It wasn't the greatest placement and I wasn't happy with it but I left it in. I matched my left hand to the bomber pocket my right was in and felt out with my right had to see if there was a carrot I just wasn't seeing. My right hand came across what felt like a bomber crimpy flake. I adjusted my weight to the right foot and loaded the right hand to feel the wall with left hand. That's when the right hand hold broke and I popped off backwards, as I fell I can only assume I pulled the nut placement out of the crack, pulled my belay off the ledge and popped the cam.

I landed at the bottom feet first, breaking my left femur, compound fracture to Right ankle, slight end plate fractures to L4 and T1. I never lost consciousness throughout the whole experience and spent my time waiting for the ambulance staring up the wall trying to retrace my steps and figure out what went wrong.

My belay landed behind me slightly up hill in a prone position, fracturing her left femur, right fibula, ribs 2-10 on the left, 2 ribs on the right, cracked left distal radius, lacerations to the face and arm.

We consider ourselves pretty experienced climbers with 8 years outdoor combined experience and normally very careful. We chose Piddington that day because it was a popular area, easy grades, well travelled, and from what we could tell in the guidebook, well marked.

We are both currently waiting for the green light to head back home to Melbourne.