Scariest moments/mistakes when climbing not resulting in injury

First time rappelling was from the top of the verdon gorge. The plan was to rap about 600 feet to a giant ledge then climb a 5.10 out. My first multi pitch too. I don't know why I rapped first. Chivalry maybe. I was a boulderer and had no idea what I was doing. So I started rapping, desperately trying not to puke or faint, my partner shouting that I should be looking for some chains on this enormous bright white limestone cliff. I saw a ledge and thought "that's it". Beelined to the ledge, which was slightly off to the right. Touched down. It was a small triangular ledge, more of a niche to be honest, but it felt like terra firma so I unclipped from the ropes and dropped them. Then I turned around fully expecting to see chains. There were no chains. Oh folly, oh fuck. The ropes were way out of reach. The ledge/niche suddenly felt so small, and I realized the cliff I was trying to lean against was slightly overhanging, pushing me out over my feet. Nothing to hold onto. The blankest rock in the verdon. I explained my predicament to my partner some 50 feet above. "I think you have to move the anchor so it's above me and drop the ropes down to me," I further explained, which was the extent of my rope management knowledge. The ropes slowly moved up out of sight and I was left staring down the wall to the tree tops about 950 feet below. Then as vertigo kicked in and I began shaking, I craned my neck back and looked straight across the gorge. After what seemed a very long time the ropes were lowered. I clipped back in, and continued my raoel.to the chains I had finally noticed. Everything went mostly smoothly after that. 

Dave Orsmanwrote:

First time rappelling was from the top of the verdon gorge. The plan was to rap about 600 feet to a giant ledge then climb a 5.10 out. My first multi pitch too. I don't know why I rapped first. Chivalry maybe. I was a boulderer and had no idea what I was doing. So I started rapping, desperately trying not to puke or faint, my partner shouting that I should be looking for some chains on this enormous bright white limestone cliff. I saw a ledge and thought "that's it". Beelined to the ledge, which was slightly off to the right. Touched down. It was a small triangular ledge, more of a niche to be honest, but it felt like terra firma so I unclipped from the ropes and dropped them. Then I turned around fully expecting to see chains. There were no chains. Oh folly, oh fuck. The ropes were way out of reach. The ledge/niche suddenly felt so small, and I realized the cliff I was trying to lean against was slightly overhanging, pushing me out over my feet. Nothing to hold onto. The blankest rock in the verdon. I explained my predicament to my partner some 50 feet above. "I think you have to move the anchor so it's above me and drop the ropes down to me," I further explained, which was the extent of my rope management knowledge. The ropes slowly moved up out of sight and I was left staring down the wall to the tree tops about 950 feet below. Then as vertigo kicked in and I began shaking, I craned my neck back and looked straight across the gorge. After what seemed a very long time the ropes were lowered. I clipped back in, and continued my raoel.to the chains I had finally noticed. Everything went mostly smoothly after that. 

Wow, that is one of the scariest scenarios I can imagine.Glad that you were able to keep in control in that situation. Very impressed that you did your both your first rappels and multi pitch in the Verdon. That is one of the most intimidating places even for experienced climbers.

Same mistake - two perspectives:

I was doing a short rap on the traverse of the Grand Charmoz. I was a few metres down, feet braced firmly against the vertical rock, but my harness was twisting awkwardly. I looked down at my device to see what the problem was, just as the gear loop it was clipped to snapped. No prusik (just a short rap, but one bounce and the next stop would be the glacier). Strangely, it seemed to require no effort at all to hang on with my left hand while I reclipped with my right.

About a year later I had just rappelled to the base of a sea cliff in England and was preparing to climb when a shower of gear landed at my feet. Looking up, I saw a climber disappearing hand over hand back over the top of the cliff.

When I was 16 and getting into climbing my friends and I were struggling at the end of the day to get up a climb at a short (15m) crag. Expierienced climbers next to us and said they’d grab our draws. I belayed one of them up on one end of their rope while another member of their party was climbing another route on the other end. Crag was short and I was inexpierienced and a little confused. Didn’t tie knots in the rope and while the climber was lowering, the end went through my ATC when climber was maybe 10 feet up. Somehow I caught the end and was able to scramble up a talus field to get climber on the ground. Would have been a bad butt first fall into bouldery scree. Got incredibly lucky. 

edit: To this day I still don’t really understand how they had the rope rigged so that there was two people climbing and I was able to lower them off the end. Any ideas? I’m assuming he tied a 8 on a bite for some reason and led the middle of the rope up… logistically this make no sense to me though. 

Wow. Good save.

Seems like as good a thread as any for me to write up my Verdon rappelling story from last year. Posting to remind myself to take the time. 

A couple years ago I led Scottish Guily at Lincoln.  Led the first pitch to the bolts on the left at the base of the final headwall. Pulled up slack and had my second start up.  He stopped because he was having issues with his ankle and untied,  which I realized as I pulled more and more rope. Pulled remainder up and decided to set a rappel and was coiling the rope after threading through the anchor when I looked down and realized that when I had untiled to ready the rappel, I hadn't clipped back into the anchor with a sling and was standing on the ice not connected to anything. Quickly paused and clipped the anchor then finished setting the rappel

Double rope rap.  EDK with long tails.  Loaded one of the tails into the ATC instead of the long rope.  Weighted system all good, started to rap, then noticed just before it was too latef.  Don't do this. 

OK, I'll bite.

The ONLY time I have ever thought about giving up our beloved sport was when a friend and I were brushing up on some Aid skills for a try at the Lost Arrow. My friend fixed the anchor above out bolt ladder and I worked my way up. He used a long tail on his fix and did not secure the tail out of the way. Me being the moron that I am, set up my rap on the long tail. On the way down something did not "feel" right and I looked down with about 10 inches of rope before it was about to slide through my rap device!

The panic was the hardest thing to get control of. Once that was sorted out, I took action to 'not die' and was eventually successful. When I returned to terra firma, I was so jacked up on adrenaline I had to pace for about 15 min just to shake it all off. In those 15 minutes, I deeply considered throwing in the towel and giving up climbing. In time, I understood all the mistakes I made and I would like to believe became a better climber because of it. 

The best thing about surviving those kind of incidents is you will NEVER make that mistake again.
Great thread all. Thank you. Climb on!  :- ) 

Friend was leading a grassy ramp about fifteen feet above me. He stepped in the grass and a hidden bowling ball cut loose. It came sliding down the ramp and bounced right at my belly. I let go of the gri gri belay and two hand caught and heaved the ball across my waist and over the side. Looked down and it is now heading for my other friend jumaring up from below. the ball hits the cliff and splits in two, one half missed my friend on his left, the other half missed him on his right.

Bivied at the base of Half Dome NW face. Several rocks landed five feet away at terminal velocity. Smash, smash, smash! Cable hikers threw them off the summit. We moved our bivi.

Standing on the ground deep in the San Diego bushes looking at an unclimbed boulder problem. I grabbed an undercling flake just to test it and see if it was sound. It came right off with the slightest touch. Pretty big flake, a couple hundred pounds at least. My four fingers were under it still holding it as I cat-leaped away into the bushes. I saw my fingers just clear it as it guillotined onto a flat mini ledge at knee high and stopped there. Real close to losing all four fingers. Big adrenalin rush after that. Had shakey knees and almost barfed.

Short multipitch, partner was leading. We send the first pitch, no problem. I belay him from the ledge up to pitch 2, he pulls up rope and says "okay" - I thought he said "on belay." I took myself off anchor, walked 10 feet to the start of pitch 2 and started climbing. I was, in fact, not on belay, as he just had a pile of rope at the top and was setting up the belay device (I believe the exact words were "what the f$% are you doing!?"). Thankfully an easy route and a big ledge, but I kicked myself for weeks about being so careless with communication.

chris hubbardwrote:

Standing on the ground deep in the San Diego bushes looking at an unclimbed boulder problem. I grabbed an undercling flake just to test it and see if it was sound. It came right off with the slightest touch. Pretty big flake, a couple hundred pounds at least. My four fingers were under it still holding it as I cat-leaped away into the bushes. I saw my fingers just clear it as it guillotined onto a flat mini ledge at knee high and stopped there. Real close to losing all four fingers. Big adrenalin rush after that. Had shakey knees and almost barfed.

Beware those underclings! On a sit-start boulder problem I put up I had previously used a sidepull on what appeared to be just any other aspect of the boulder. I did the problem a few times that way, the sidepull didn't sound hollow or sketchy and didn't even appear to be a block. Next spring I noticed a right hand undercling feature, decided to see if that would be easier than the sidepull. As I lifted my butt of the ground, I found myself lifting an entire tombstone sized flake off the boulder! It was surreal and horrifying at once. How can this be happening?

Obviously I started falling backwards onto my pad, bear hugging the block. I managed to twist so I hit the pad with the flake mainly on my right torso, not my neck and face. My very small partner's face appeared above it, freaking out. I was freaked, but calm. It was hard to breathe, and the rock edge on my neck felt razor sharp. I figured I had one chance to flip it off me all at once while I could still breathe. I was afraid that to move it in stages would be like drawing a knife along my body repeatedly.   I told her to stand back, then managed to further twist right and flip the flake off me all in one huge motion without severing my carotid artery on the sharp edge pressed against my neck. Looking back I don't even recall a seam or an outline of what pulled out, so my only lesson was to beware those underclings. I had minor cuts on my neck and a massive bruise on my right bicep, which took the weight, for a long time but no serious injuries.

Around 12 or 13 pitches up Lone Pine Peak last weekend I was standing on a pretty good sized ledge after bringing up my partner, we're around 14 hours into our day by now. It wasn't steep but it certainly wasn't a flat ledge. I cloved her to a bomber #1 cam while I broke down the anchor as we were going to simul the last couple pitches to the summit. She is now safe and goes to grab some water.

I remove my clove hitch from the anchor and break it down, casually racking gear, chatting, and looking up at the next section I'm about to lead. At this point I'm still tied in to the other end of the rope, standing on a slanting ledge with 400-500' of drop-off about 6 feet behind me, and basically 70 full meters of rope between me and my partner with her being the only one attached to anything.

It suddenly dawned on me that I was effectively not attached to anything, that I don't have wings and can't fly, and would certainly be f--ked if I slipped/tripped/etc. and went over the edge. Quickly got myself back onto some gear and realized just how easily you can make a very stupid mistake like that when you're hitting the wall of exhaustion. Not a near miss or anything, but a very sobering reminder of how easy it is to lose focus and become complacent when you're exhausted and dehydrated. 

I went to ascend the rope, when the rope didn’t pull. We were 800’ off the ground and on a tiny tiny ledge. After ‘jumaring’ five feet, my partner said he’d do it faster. I was thankful after leading the 1000’ route. i stepped on  the tiny ledge and we were transferring the task of jumar’ing to him. Absent mindedly, I did not clip into the anchor somehow. I noticed at some point,  and I clipped into the anchor well aware of the consequences I’d avoided. He ascended the rope quickly, came down, and then repeated my same error of unclipping from the ascending system before clipping into the anchor. I noticed he wasn’t clipped in… And he quickly clipped into the anchor when I pushed him into the wall so that he accidentally didn’t lean back untethered. What awful mistakes we made… I think we made the mistake because we were changing systems (rappelling to ascending). We need to pay extra special attention when changing systems. We’d been rocked by winds and were tired from the alpine start. This was the worst mistake I’d made in 19 years of climbing!!! I’m thankful for no consequences but rocked with awareness.

I frequently think back to this time relatively early in my climbing. I was sport climbing at a local crag that's entirely perma-drawed early in the season. The wall had quite a few wet spots but I was on a route that I had climbed (probably) 30+ times and I wasn't really paying attention to what was wet and what wasn't - I was definitely being a bit arrogant (or at least ignorant). This route is quite run-out and it starts on a big flat ledge; maybe 10-12 feet deep. At the time of this incident I normally used a left hand sidepull (about 1 pad for 3 fingers with very good feet) to reach a bit above my head and clip the last bolt. As I almost had the last bolt clipped, my left hand slipped and I fell. I didn't yell falling and my partner didn't realize I was falling until the rope went tense, so he didn't take in slack. When I looked down after the fall I was way, way too close to the starting ledge for comfort (it's been a few years but I recall it _feeling_ like I was only 10 or so feet above it). It could have easily gone a lot worse. I'm definitely more intentional now about alerting my partner when I'm falling and being aware of how big a fall might be.

All climbing results in injury

you weasel

Josiah Wugwrote:

All climbing results in injury

Not what I experience, but I can report that 99.8% of climbing is fun as hell! There is a reason why we do this so much.  : - ) 

Climbing Brown Derby in Paradise Forks. My partner opened up for her first trad lead in a long time and gave her some options for how to anchor at the top. She decided to rope around the tree, rap down and clean, and pull the rope for me to lead. When we went to pull the rope, it wouldn’t budge. So, I secured one end and began the process of ascending the rope.

about half way up the route, I pull rope through my grigri and as I sit back into the harness I feel the rope shift down about a foot followed quickly by a deep noise. My head darted up, fearing I’d see a few feet of desheathed rope running over the edge of the basalt at the top of the cliff. Instead, I heard more deep noises and a rock between the size of a softball and basketball launched over the cliff. I immediately shouted “ROCK ROCK ROCK” and ducked into the alcove I was semi-hanging in, and watched helplessly as it hurtled straight for my partner who was sitting at the base up against the wall.

my view of the base was somewhat occluded so I couldn’t tell what all had happened at the base, but my partner said she was okay, I told her I was okay, and I continued ascending the route,  now mostly TRS style.

After fixing the rope at the top of the route and tossing the remaining deathblocks away from ropes, I rapped down to check on my partner.

so what happened? When my partner heard my warnings she dove right up against the wall where there was some shelter. The rock grazed her helmet and thigh, creating a small puncture on the helmet, breaking off a headlamp clip, and bruising her thigh. But even better, it landed on her phone dead on. Unfortunately, my phone happened to be stacked under hers, and it suffered a similar but slightly less gruesome fate. And under our phone, an alpine draw was torn by the impact. Both our phones and an Alpine draw obliterated. Touché rock, you created a very expensive outing.

Had my partner been slower to react/not paying attention, or had not shouted as quick as I did, it’s likely that rock would have smashed directly onto or into her head.

we hadn’t planned to be climbing brown derby and thus didn’t know much about it or how the cliff top looked. I had (and shared with her) some options for tree anchors up top. However, I lacked information about what the top looked like, and trusting in her abilties I neglected to review what options would be appropriate based on what the conditions/geometry was at the top. On the other hand, she (upon finishing the route) knew what the cliff top looked like but didn’t have the adequate experience/breadth of knowledge to account for the loose rock at the top of the cliff. So, we were both working with opposite halves of the information we would have needed to avoid this incident.

With hindsight, this could have been avoided a few ways:

- having the more experienced trad leader (myself) open the route. This would have been the best way tavoid this, and we should have done this considering the lack of bolted anchors at the top. But my partner was stoked and I wanted to encourage that.

- examining the cliff top from above before hopping on (this is less realistic as we didn’t decide upon this route until we were in the canyon)

- me recognizing that columnar basalt such as this tends to be loose at the top, and giving her advice how to deal with this. This was a lapse in my foresight.

- me TRSing the route from the get-go instead of ascending the rope. However, seeing as I didn’t have my ascender or Virgo, only the grigri (and wanted to flash the route — ego!), I decided against this.

In the end, all was well, and we got lots more pitches in that day.