|
|
|
|
bbirtle
Jul 20, 2007, 5:23 PM
Post #1 of 1
(723 views)
Shortcut
Registered: Jan 28, 2007
Posts: 102
|
More at http://birtle.com/.../TheEndlessArete.htm
...at this point a few conflicting things started going through my head. First of all, I noticed that my nut placement was somewhat questionable. Definitely not bomber. Secondly, I started to think this "fairly comfortable wedged stance" of mine was getting pretty pumpy with my fingers wedged into crack. I tried to move up and found the going desperate. In panic I grabbed the rope from the nut. Silly mistake. The nut popped and half a second later I was laying on the ground next to my belayer. The cam had held but I was too high - it had only absorbed perhaps 25% of my momentum. The rest was thankfully absorbed by my burly backpack that had come in between my back and a rather unfriendly looking boulder. "Putain!" yelled Richard. "T'es bien?" Wait a sec, I replied, and slowly moved every muscle I could. I tentitively felt around and reported I seemed to be uninjured. "I'm fine," I said. And Richard swapped the gear to give it a try and give me a breather.
Richard led up to and past the cam and found the going just as gripping as when I tried it, minus the nut. He looked off left though, and made the critical observation that I'd missed: a delicate traverse led to a great hold on the slab next to the crack. "Yeah that's it!" I shouted up encouragingly. "I see a cam stuck in the other crack!" meaning another crack on the left past the slab.
So while yanking on a dirty old sling attached to who-knows-what with the only thing protecting us from careening down the mountain my little cam placement, Richard carefully traversed to the good hold on the slab. Shouts of "Putain!" and "Merde" - normal words for Richard, but in a tone I just didn't like - then proceeded to then erupt from the other end of my rope. He climbed higher - now at a point where decking out was an absolute certainty. The shouts grew desperate and his legs started visibly wobbling as he grabbed desperately for the thin secondary crack. I followed his theoretically fall line down the rock, bouncing off the boulder I'd fallen on, and continuing down the Couloir Copt 300m to the glaciar below, ripping me with him from my unachored belay stance...
More at http://birtle.com/.../TheEndlessArete.htm
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
