MISTAKES and STUPIDITY

ABSEILING, Biviiiiiiing, CAMS, GUIDE BOOKS, SIGNS, SOLOING, GROUP PICTURES

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ABSEILING 

Abseiling is a very dangerous part of climbing. Primarily due to the climber having to put their entire trust in the gear. So the gear has to all be bomb proof, and secure enough to stop the climber having to worry about it if something else goes wrong.

At Guillemot ledge, Swanage, the descent to the base of the cliff is via an abseil. The guide says that there is a cemented pipe at the back of the abseil ledge to go off. On our first visit to Swanage we had read the guide, and thus new of the pipe. But as we walked down to the ledge, we walked straight past the pipe, expecting it to be close to the edge. The only man made object on the ledge was a rusty piton, behind a rather dodgy looking flake. It is on the left of the picture, under the tuft of grass.

The piton was not even over the ledge, it was just off the side, which meant leaning out while standing on loose grit. Not wanting to waste time, we simply threaded a sling through the piton, and attached the rope. Threading the sling was bad as the rusty edge could have quite easily cut the sling. The piton was backed up by a tiny cam, behind the same flake, and was not even tight on the sling. So the cam would have been shock loaded, and would have ripped as it was nearly fully expanded and did not have cam stops. The rope was clipped in the middle and both ends of the rope were used to abseil on. This was good as it allowed more effective braking, but would have made a forced escape, back up the rope, quite difficult. Luckily nothing actually went wrong, although it could have quite easily.

GUIDE BOOKS

Guide books are trusted and used by almost all climbers. It is this that can get quite a few into trouble. Often it is best to just leave the guide book and pick a line purely on its appearance, and not its grade or whatever. But this is usually only for those who have the confidence and ability to cope with whatever the rock can throw at them.

Buchille Etive Mor is a massive mountain at the southern entrance to Glencoe. As you drive across Ranoch Mor it appears out of the flat moor land as a huge rock face. This is the north face, and is literally a 3000ft face scattered with buttresses. On one of my first acquaintances with the mountain, we had no climbing guide, just a copy of Ken Wilson's classic rock. In it it had an outing that went straight up the main face, on two classic routes. The North Face, VD, and Agag's Groove, VD. As the book is so big we decided to leave it in the car. This meant we had to memorise the map. Adding to this lack of knowledge, there were winds gusting to 60 mph, and heavy fog. We set off over the hill side towards the face, not knowing where to start. After a couple of abortive attempts on various lines, we found one that we thought was VD. Somehow we did end up on the third pitch, but then it all went pear shaped. After traversing round the corner to a small overhung bay, we kept going round the corner, until reaching a gully. The move into the gully had been extremely hard, possibly 5b. Considering are limit was 5b at that time, we did not feel confident on retracing our footsteps. The actual route had veered straight up before the hard move. So we were stuck in this gully surrounded by steep walls. The option of abseiling off down the gully was never going to be used. Climbing gear is expensive, and we could not spare any. So we led up and out on this 20m blank wall. There was no gear on it, but there were quite good holds, and it was not quite vertical. So we eventually came out and found the other route, that was a lot more straight forward. The rest of the outing went without incident.

SIGNS They are there to help you, even if you do not take any notice. This sign is above the waterfall down at the bouldering area in Hastings. This sign can be ignored if you know the condition of the cliff, as it is unstable, especially after wet weather.

CAMS

These brilliant devices hold in places that were never meant to take gear, and so frequently get placed incorrectly. If the crack is quite shallow the cam can twist out, after pivoting against the back of the crack. This makes a good placement turn into a potential disaster. We were at Hounds Tor on Dartmoor, Al had led Suspension Flake VS 4c, apparently the best VS in the country according to OTE, and was going for the VS 4c to the left. There are two good but shallow horizontal breaks in the middle of the wall,  for a 0.5 cam, and a 1 cam. Al was on the crux, near the top, when he slipped. The top cam (1 quadcam) held momentarily, but as he swung it popped. The second (0.5 vector) held the massive shock loading, which pulled me off my feet and towards the face. Al bounced off the ledge and down a gap between the boulders. Luckily he only scraped his ankle, while I lost most of the skin on my forearms. He had pulled on the cam before he moved into the crux, it seemed fine. After the fall I went and tested it myself, and it seemed fine. The only reason for it to have popped was a small crystal near the back, which had the effect of a pivot. When half the cam was exposed from the crack, the other half didn't have a chance of holding.

GROUP PICTURES

Timers on cameras are often quite long. So running back, after setting the camera, is not necessary.

This picture came from such a situation. Al rushed back towards the boulder to sit down, when he tripped on a boulder. I lurched forward to attempt to stop him but luckily he regained his balance. If he had not, there is a 1000ft drop on all sides, and we would both have probably bounced all the way. This is on a flattish section, about 2/3 of the way up observatory ridge on Ben Nevis.

Biviiiiiiing

If you are not properly prepared biviing is a very painful experience.

It was our first time biviing on snow, this was near the col de geant, mont blanc massif, at around 3500m. It was summer, so it should not have been that cold. After walking in circles for a while, visibility was close to nil, we decided to bivi where we were. I first thought about using this crevase near us, but it was a bit difficult to get into and looked very deep. In the end we elected to dig out a small hollow just to get a little shelter. After 1.5 hours of digging we had a 2 foot deep shallow grave. Tom was getting cold so he got into his bag as I stayed out to boil some soup. The stove took forever to light. I had a little soup but then had to get into my bag as I was starting to get cold. This is when I realised that the grave was about a foot too short. But that was only part of the problem. -Spindrift was pouring down on top of us, filling in the grave. -The bivi bags were air tight so you either suffocated inside it or ended up swallowing a lot of spindrift. -Oh and the main problem was that my eurohike 1 season sleeping bag was not really up to the job. I had decided that with my down vest, the combination would be uncomfortable but bareable. After 1.5 hours of this torture we decided to leg it to the torino hut. Luckily the cloud had cleared and we could see a little. After 15 minutes of rushed packing, including having to hack the rucsacks out of the slope, and trying desperately to find our only head torch, we left.

When we got to the torino hut it was 0130-ish in the morning and surprisingly there was no-one around. Not knowing what to do we ended up kipping on the reception area floor. This is when I discovered that my sleeping bag had a thick layer of ice on the inside and out. thus it was still quite cold. Anyway we were kicked out at 0430 when the hut was waking up. It turned out that it had dropped to around -20C.