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M
Trad climber
Boulder, Colorado
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Aug 17, 2011 - 01:06am PT
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Charlie Fowler and I took a voluntary 120 ft fall from the top of the Diving Board in Edlorado Springs during the summer of 1977
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Jim Pettigrew
Social climber
Crowley Lake, CA
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Aug 17, 2011 - 01:07am PT
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I'm in! 450 footer on ice across valley from the Petite Grepon in Rocky Nat'l Park. Early free solo escapade! Walked to base camp with some assistance from two of the gals that were with. Medivac for check up. Serious road rash and stitches from ice hammer punctures!
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Jim Pettigrew
Social climber
Crowley Lake, CA
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Aug 17, 2011 - 01:10am PT
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Hey Bruce! I remember Mark's Meat Grinder fall. He burned his hands pretty bad too!
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Jaybro
Social climber
Wolf City, Wyoming
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Aug 17, 2011 - 01:36am PT
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M bitd that diving board plunge ws the stuff of legends. There was all kinds of lore about it. I talked to Charlie about it briefly once. You should write it up (right here would be fine) and set the story straight!
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Mighty Hiker
climber
Vancouver, B.C.
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Aug 17, 2011 - 01:38am PT
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Locker, did your shoe fetish begin with the Meat Grinder pair?
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Fogarty
climber
BITD
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Aug 17, 2011 - 10:08am PT
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300+ el cap 1985 all alr, thats why I can post this.
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Clint Cummins
Trad climber
SF Bay area, CA
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Aug 17, 2011 - 05:00pm PT
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I might be in the club, but I haven't been back to the scene to measure....
Ice climbing fall, Whitehorse Ledge, 1978. I think I went about 40' in the air, bounced off the icy slab, then slid down it until the rope caught. My pro was even with the belay. Spinal cord injury and broken leg - I don't recommend hitting objects like the ground in a big fall....
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Rusty Reno
climber
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Aug 17, 2011 - 05:58pm PT
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It's good to hear (read?) the voice of Russ Walling, who mentioned my misadventure on the Jolly Roger on El Cap back in 1984 or so. It was a long fall. 200 ft or so. Not recommended.
I was doing the route with Alex Lowe, and idiot that I was, I angled for him to lead an offwidth pitch that down lower, leaving me with an admittedly scary pitch. It involved penduluming over to a steep wall of chicken heads and then climbing up them for a long time to a "5.8" mantle that would put me in position to clip a bolt and launch out on hooks or copperheads or something of that sort. But I thought to myself, "Hey, it's only 5.8." My mistake was to fail to make the Steve Grossman adjustment. He had lead this pitch when doing the first ascent with Charles Cole.
In any event, I got to the "5.8" mantle with about 100 feet of rope out and Alex Lowe on a spacious belay ledge shouting words of encourage. Up I go to press out the mantle. Down I go back onto the final chickenheads. Up I go. Down I go. And so on for about five minutes. Jeez, I say to myself, this feels kinda hard and very scary.
Then I reassured myself: I can't afford to take this huge fall; therefore, I won't. This is what is known as an invalid inference. As I pressed out the mantle and put my foot way, way high next to my hand, I peeled off and plummeted down, down, down. Then the rope went tight, knocking the wind out of me, as I swung and banged into some corners (remember the pendulum to start?)
I was pretty beat up, but after five minutes or so I was able to jumar up to Alex. Ready to vomit from the adrenaline overload, I said to him, "I'll be OK." He had taken a 200 foot fall the year before in Alaska, so he knew that when the adrenaline wore off I would be pretty much catatonic, and he made the only reasonable decision: down immediately.
Took me a week before I could sit without aching. Charles Cole was sheepish about the "5.8" mantle, admitting that Grossman has a perverse streak. Soon thereafter I did the Zodiac with Charles. I wanted a route that I knew I wouldn't fall on!
Lessons? You would think that this huge fall would have made me more cautious, but it didn't. Perhaps I'm as perverse as Grossman. But the pyschological consequences of the fall were to reinforce my confidence in the rope, and I continued to savor long run outs, most of which worked out. But not all. I later fell about 100 feet on the last move of a climb at Cathedral Ledges in New Hampshire (California Girls) on a hot, humid day.
I wonder if others had the same reaction.
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hobo_dan
Social climber
Minnesota
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Aug 17, 2011 - 08:34pm PT
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M I want to hear the diving board story- I was in the Teton Climbers ranch-1977? and the story was told that " a couple of 14 year old kids bought a new 9 mm and jumped off thediving board so they could get psyched for A5 "
painters pants, rugby shirts, A5, Eb's and that cool set of pictures of Roger Briggs on Death and Transfiguration- total Colorado cool!
Oh yeah and piss on this club- I hold it as a point of pride for NOT falling 100 feet!
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couchmaster
climber
pdx
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Aug 17, 2011 - 10:02pm PT
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I fell short of your mark. 80' for me. But hit a lot of ledges. I'd been climbing 2 months at that time. It's been almost 40 years since then and nothing remotely like it.
BTW, wasn't your fall unroped James? The rest of us pussies had a rope I'd bet. I sure as hell did, thank the good lord or whatevar'.
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'Pass the Pitons' Pete
Big Wall climber
like Ontario, Canada, eh?
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Aug 17, 2011 - 10:24pm PT
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Was it Aischann Rupp who also took a big whipper on that same pitch of Jolly Roger? I "made" my rope gun, Jon Fox, lead that pitch!
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'Pass the Pitons' Pete
Big Wall climber
like Ontario, Canada, eh?
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Aug 17, 2011 - 11:07pm PT
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Bwah-ha-ha-ha-ha!!! I was too afraid to watch him, too!
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allapah
climber
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Aug 17, 2011 - 11:32pm PT
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McGinnis Peak in February, tumbling, then starting to rocket towards the abyss, rope held
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Zappa
Big Wall climber
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Aug 18, 2011 - 01:26am PT
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Devil's Tower. 1990. Solo aid. Twisted top-stepping on a tipped-off knife blade. Stupid.
Pin shifts. Try to step back down. BING! Airborn.
The pins sounded like some crazy man blasting away at me with a couple of 357s. I couldn't count them all. Zipper nightmare. My first and only.
Some vicious sadist backed up my legs to an industrial belt sander. Had the ropes sliced? Was this it? Was I going to go over one of the blades and gett sliced open? Was I going to stop?
BAM, I stopped upside down with a huge pile of gear jammed up on the rope next to my harness.
A few routes over a guy asked me if I needed help. He looked sick, google-eyed. I said I was OK. He said, "Really? You don't look OK." I was mad at being so stupid, so I acted even more stupid. "Yeah, OK". He left. I started to shock-out, shaking uncontrollably. There was blood. Raw hamburger butt to heal on both legs. "OK &#$$# fool. Get yourself out of this one", I cursed at myself. So, I rapped got down, shaking, angry, scared, and the pain started to claw my mind.
I walked out, got to my van, drove down to my campsite, crawled into the back and passed out for hours. I woke up bathed in sweat and hurting all over. Dried blood pasted the back of my legs hard to the carpet. Ouch.
The next day, Sunday. I could see infection starting. Wyoming was closed for church. I had to drive 100 miles to a hospital. It was a slack day, just me limping into the ER.
"Motorcycle accident?", the ER doc asked. "No, climbing", I said, stupidly proud of being stupid. They set me up, telling me that either they would admit me and scrub my wounds daily for a week or they would teach me how to do it myself and get me the right stuff to do it with. I loved them for saving me the bucks. I did the scrubbing for a week (intense!), climbing by day swaddled in bandages, grateful to follow, too stiff to lead.
I went to clean the gear a couple days later. I had been lying to myself about the fall, "60, maybe 80. No more." Oh, it was more, easily 100. Going back over the whole thing, cleaning a few solid pins that had the tie-offs rip out, I felt just sick. There was one last one way up there that I just left.
The moral of this story may be, "Don't go on a solo aid trip out west when your wife leaves you".
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Mighty Hiker
climber
Vancouver, B.C.
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Aug 18, 2011 - 02:26am PT
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Zappa, did any of your tieoffs cut on the edge of knifeblades? No fun at all when that happens.
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karodrinker
Trad climber
San Jose, CA
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Aug 18, 2011 - 03:02am PT
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great story zappa!
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Zappa
Big Wall climber
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Aug 18, 2011 - 09:57am PT
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Good question about the tie-offs. Maybe. I can't remember. I bet some of them sliced.
As you know, knifeblades often have nasty hidden edges. On the Shield in 1977, despite fanatically deburring knifebaldes with my hammer, I missed a burr somewhere on a long line of short, tipped off blades. Just pulling the rope to clip, it sliced and stripped the sheath and sliced through three braids. Finishing the picth suddenly changed from an A3+ cruise to something a bit more sporty than I cared for. If I popped a pin then, it would have been officially bad.
Nice understatment, eh? At the time I swore savagely in raw terror, knowing only that there was "a hole in the rope". It felt more manly than shrieking. At least, I think my voice was somewhere well south of middle-C instead of high on the treble keys. Anyway, that is how lots of climbing stories go. "Bit of squeaker", he says telling the tale, beer in hand, but at the time he was so freaked that he would have gladly accepted a sex change and life in the convent as a fair deal to get out of there alive.
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YoungGun
Trad climber
Ottawa, ON
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Aug 18, 2011 - 10:15am PT
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This thread makes work so much more fun! Keep the stories coming. Awesome story Zappa!
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martygarrison
Trad climber
Washington DC
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Aug 18, 2011 - 10:35am PT
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I trad climbed for 25 years. I took two 10 footers, and three 30 to 35 footers. I thought I might fall a bunch more times and some of them would have been death but it is amazing what you can hang onto with adrenaline.
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Toker Villain
Big Wall climber
Toquerville, Utah
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Aug 19, 2011 - 08:55pm PT
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I've only done a bunch of 30 footers, but I caught a guy that weighed 75 pounds more than me on a 65 foot air bomb. Thought I was gonna get pulled through the carabiner.
But my pet centipede is a shoe in for the club.
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