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Lunar Crag - Apollo Pillar 25-Feb-2004 At 1:02:18 PM AndyCJ

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Was climbing at the Apollo Pillar on the weekend (Satruday) and a friend of ours Dave took a nasty fall. Dave was on the "scramble" at the back of the pillar heading up to clean the abseil, when a fair sized hold broke off and he fell onto a ledge below him, slid towards the edge (probably a death fall) but managed to grab a hold and arrest his fall before going over. His feet were at the edge thou, so it was pretty damn close. (a death fall we reaconed)

It had been raining on and off during the day and it had set in a bit so we were packing up to get going. That's why Dave slid towards the edge, because the rock there becomes pretty slippery as soon as it get's a little wet.

I thought I'd mention this for a couple of reasons:

The first is a question about the pillar, probably to be answered by you Neil, (I'm assuming you bolted Lost in Space?, my appologies if you did not) is that there is a single bolt with a fixed hangar at the top of the pillar - is there any reason this wasn't made into a safe abseil point? You have to leave gear if you need to abseil and don't trust the downclimb, which after that, we certinly did not! - And there's only one bolt, so if it fails it's not good at all. It seemed odd that there is the one bolt here which you can't rap off directly, where in other places the rap ancors you have placed have been exceptional, including many I have used myself - most recently Camels Hump (Poxbow) which is a superb job.

What's are the ethics of rap ancors? Are there any??

The other thing I wanted to mention was the ethics involved in grabbing gear left in climbs/belay points that climbers have (coz Marion had to leave a screwgate behind so she coule abseil off after Daves fall). Climbers love going on about bolting ethics, man, they can crap on about it till the cows come home! But when it comes to gear left in climbs or at ancor points - it seems to me to be a bit of a free for all - "it's mine!" - this does not sit well with me? This should probably go in general I know, but there are too many idiots there so I'll leave it here for now.

Lastly I wanted to say how nice a crag Lunar Crag is - the routes done there myself were superb (lost in space and Zero Gravity) and the others who did a few more also agreed that the climbs were great. Just watch the downclimb!

Finally - just be carefull when you're going up the gully marked by rock cairns - there is one gully you hit first (with a cairn) and it's got a massive loose flake at the top which I nearly pulled onto myself! Also, if you go round to the left further there is a much nicer gully to attain Apollo Pillar. (will put this in general too - so others can read it)

Cheers,
Andy