whats the worst thing you've done to your partner while climbing?

Other than farting in their face, I've never done anything too egregious to my partners, but there was this one time I REALLY had to pee at a belay, there was a big V slot below me with nowhere else to let it fly, and I knew there was another party waiting down at the bottom to get on the route, but I hosed that sucker anyways, sorry, whoever you were, I swear I peed more than a quart all over that damn thing, there would have been no avoiding it.

Evan Simons wrote:Other than farting in their face, I've never done anything too egregious to my partners, but there was this one time I REALLY had to pee at a belay, there was a big V slot below me with nowhere else to let it fly, and I knew there was another party waiting down at the bottom to get on the route, but I hosed that sucker anyways, sorry, whoever you were, I swear I peed more than a quart all over that damn thing, there would have been no avoiding it.

I've finally found you, you little pr*ck!

-i dragged a boulderer up the diamond in a day, he couldnt climb for a week after that, poor little guy.

-i told a friend that since i had been arrested in utah for various reasons, that i couldnt drive... we were on a 3 week trip around utah. It was mostly true about the not being able to drive thing but i forgot i had a 1 year restriction, not 2 years, so I actually could've drove, but that was not intential?

-put a boulderer on super crack.... he actual made it to the top liebacking the whole thing clean on TR.

all that was to the same friend... i'm an asshole

Two words..... short rope.

DOH!

Climbing with my buddies on the rock formation known as The Cross, on the Wisconsin side of the river, at Taylors Falls (Interstate Park), I lowered my friend Dave Halls directly into The Saint Croix River.
Admitedly, this was intentional, as he had it coming due to his history of inatentive belaying.
His shoes were wet and his chalk bag was now filled with slimey paste.
The look on his face was priceless.

Chopped off her pinky with a protraxion on the 16th pitch of Lurking Fear. Photo is from the summit of El Cap.

Wow. I feel better about my transgression. How did it happen?

Shawn Mitchell wrote:How did it happen?

It was a hauling accident. I was counter balance hauling the bags and they became stuck under a roof. My partner was above me at the anchor because she had already finished cleaning the last pitch. Hearing me grumbling about the stuck bags from below she, being a go getter, tried to free the bags by pulling on the loaded side of the haul setup. At the same time I had managed to swing the bags out from under the roof and with my weight on the other end it pulled her hand right through the protraxion. It was an unfortunate incident that could have been avoided with a little better communication, but rest assured she will never grab the ropes around the hauling device again.

While rappeling, I was hanging out a on a huge ledge while my partner started the next rap.
That's when I noticed the incredibly dried out light weight, yet bulky pine cone sitting next to me.
Clutching it in my hot little hand i could barely control my excitement at the deviace act I was about to commit.

After my partner got about 50 ft below me I dropped the Pine cone and yelled "ROCK!" Then watched with middleschool excitement.
The timing was perfect, he looked up with more than enough time to react. As he kicked hard against the wall to swing away from my feather lite missile I began to belly laugh like the fool I truly am.

As the cone floated harmlessly past he realised my joke and, fortunately, found the humor as well.

Maybe a "cry wolf" moment....but we both enjoyed it in the end.

It's much better than the "Eiger training" routine myself and certain partners do(with each other)....in which real rocks and ice are tossed at a follower... small ones obviously!.

josh

Craig that's the coolest photo I've seen all year!!!!

Thanks for sharing
.

I know, I know, this is a little off topic, but this thread reminded me of the worst thing I did when I was a bottle digger. I've found there's some similarities with digging, and climbing; the personalities, dangers, adventures, and the first ascents/descents, anyway.

This incident happened "once" when I was bottle digging with my boyfriend/bottle digging partner at the time;

After his many hours of digging, and extracting layers, upon layers of bottles, he was about 10 feet deep down in a privy. Early on, I was safely out of the hole, screening the dirt, as I usually did, and pulling up his buckets of dirt, and bottles on a rope that was tied to a tree. I stepped too close to the edge of the old outhouse he was crouched down in to see what he was doing, and the top soil of the hole quickly collapsed on him. It happened so fast, and because he was on his knees at the time, he was pretty much completely covered in the loose, soft dirt. I was in shock, just standing there frozen for a second, but luckily his head emerged, and as he was coughing, and hyperventilating, I remember feeling so relieved he was breathing. He was able to climb up the knotted up rope, out of the hole, and as I was ecstatic he was alive, he just glared at me, and had the nerve to actually accuse me of trying to kill him intentionally. We didn't speak the whole drive home, and he even brought it up again, and again during our relationship (I was a nieve teenager at the time, and put up with it for awhile), and I believe he still thinks till this day that I tried to bury him alive.

Not really while 'climbing', but while bivying on a climb.

Had two 'stacked' bivy ledges, each about the size of a bivy sack, chopped in an 30deg ice slope. Early in the evening, I had some stomach issues, and needed to do business quickly. My partner was actually the one to suggest placing the bag and doing the business where the stove was -- which happened to be positioned at both of our heads.

I don't think he realized what the mistake in his suggestion, until I told him at the point-of-no-return, "better zip up".

While practicing 40ft whippers only 45ft off the ground I convinced my partner to jump from a few feet higher than before, resulting in a shattered ankle. Of course it didn't help that it was dark.

Bad Sock Puppet wrote:While practicing 40ft whippers only 45ft off the ground I convinced my partner to jump from a few feet higher than before, resulting in a shattered ankle. Of course it didn't help that it was dark.

Doesn't shine glory on you, bro, but your partner is a regular Darwin award candidate.

i was belaying my friend on an onsight attempt of a classic 12c up at rumney (technosurfing) and was using a cinch. something that i wasnt too familiar with and right at the crux i short roped him. but not the clip oh no im too smooth for that... i short roped him so bad that he physicaly couldnt make any progress upword. sufice to say he fell and i felt bad :( i dont use cinches anymore.... but in my defence i gave him a stellar belay on his .13 project right before this :)

Kind of a mutual thing between my partners and I. We were in the middle of an epic on Sliding Board on Whitehorse. It turns out my partner wasn't fit to lead (mentally or physically) but I made him anyway because I was shitting my brains out at the time from an undercooked burger I had the night before. So, despite the fact the anchor was a solid tree, second to last pitch, and it was only 5.4 at most my partner, whose nerves were beyond totally shot, preceded to take 2 hours on that one friggin pitch and believe me I was laughing hysterically the whole time. I find its better to laugh because there is not much else you can do in that situation. My partner, the good sport that he was, lent me his boxers for the walk off and I havent climbed a multipitch with him since. My dad also happened to be with us and was relieving himself at the belay just as a female climber was arriving at the belay. Good times.

So I had just recently met a guy, who was a freind of my wifes back in high school. When he told me he wanted to try rock climbing, I took him on a pretty casual outing where we could sit at the top, and then lower off. As he had little/no experience, I lowered him, instead of having him rap. Just as he'd put all of his weight on the rope, and was hanging over a roof, I stopped him, looked him in the eye and said,"so..uh..neither of you ever mentioned whether or not you and my wife ever slept together!" I pretty sure he almost crapped himself.

My climbing partner would always clip her helmet to the back of her backpack while hiking up to the wall and one day she was hiking in front of me and there was snow on the ground. So I quietly snuck a big handful of snow and put it in her helmet. When it came time to put on the helmet she didn't notice the snow and dumped it all on top of her when she put on her helmet making a cold day that much colder.

Are we just admitting our own weaknesses, our laying out those of our partners too?

My buddy Robert and I aimed to do Mt Slesse in a day. We were loosely prepared for a night out, if it came to that. It did. We reached the summit early on day 2, and I blasted down the descent, determined not to spend yet another night out. It’s a pretty long descent. I ended up waiting for a couple of hours at the side of a small lake, partway down the descent. Where was Robert? When he got there, he told me that he had been filling his water bottle from a snow drip back near the summit for those 2 hours. Plenty of water here at this lake, I told him. That’s when he told me he’d also eaten the rest of our food. Because we’d be back at our base camp in a matter of minutes, he said. Another 10 hours of descent later we were rapping down a series of small cliffs in the darkness with no idea where we were headed. We decided to hunker down for the second night. Turns out if we had 15 more minutes of light we would have made it back to camp.

Me and a buddy wanted to get up top of a large rock to rap down a particular line for reconnaissance. My bud took the opportunity to get in a FA on a line he'd been spying a while. So I belayed him for what seemed almost 2 hours, I had a good case of nap-jerk going on (thats where you slowly doze off but snap your head back into consciousness).
Dude sewed up the dihedral with just about every piece he had, maybe an 80' pitch. Finally I was able to follow/clean it. As I approached his belay, he was grinning ear to ear with self pride at his accomplishment; until he noticed that aside from bringing up the heavy drill/bolt laden pack, I also had not bothered to put on my shoes and followed his route in my Tevas.

Another time another buddy was struggling with a crux and asked me if I had any ideas. I told him to relax, and visualize himself in a nice steaming hot bubble bath...........with his father. He broke up so hard and long after that I had to lower him off.

One time at Sand Gulch I ripped one so vile and foul it caused Tod Anderson to hang on a bolt about 60' up (it was in a dihedral).

At the end of a night of drinking by the fire at Penetente, my mentor (40 lb.s smaller than me) suddenly decided he wanted wrestle. So he locked arms around my waist without warning. Without spilling my beer, I lifted him up with one arm and pile-drove him head-first into the sand.

I did the second rap down to the anchors of a route at Fremont. At the bottom, my partner tried to pull the rope, and we both realized I left it tied-off as a fixed line. We didn't have enogh rope left to make it to the river, so I learned how to jumar with prussicks that day.