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Carrot failure @ Muline 12-Nov-2013 At 11:35:36 AM nmonteith

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On the weekend I experienced a little bit of horror.

The route was After Midnight, an overhung corner system up the middle of the crag. It starts with two bolts through a boulderly little grade 26 section before long a unprotected traverse right into the corner. Many years ago when I first led the route I got to the corner, found no gear down low, then committed to a few moves up the overhung arete on the right edge, when suddenly the jug I was holding fell off. I took a monster fall onto the 2nd bot of the route narrowly missing the ground. Here is a pic for an idea of the lower section of this route. I fell off where this climber is now.

Lucky for me, last weekend I was merely seconding the route. Kent did a fantastic job of an Alzheimer's onsight, I was instructed to clean it. Up I went to the first rusty looking carrot, unclipped the draw then tried the crux just after it. I fell off. With a heap of rope-strecth I dropped down and to the right quite a distance. The route is substantially overhung and I was now swinging in space with no contact with the rock about 6m below the 2nd bolt. Without prussics or jumars I decided to attempt to hand over hand up the rope (!!). To my amazement it worked! I got all the way up to the bolt above me, now with a huge loop of rope below, and grabbed the quickdraw. PING! The bolt fell out and I took the bungy jump drop onto my loop of rope. Yes - the bolt fell out in my hands.

The same bolt that held my massive fall 8 years previously, and that Kent has just relied on to protect him from the same potentially monster fall.

It is a bash-in carrot bolt. No glue, no expansion mechanism. It looked fine one minute and was in my hands the next.

I just lost all faith in bash-in carrots.

Unlike expansions or glue-in that visibly loosen well before failure, these bolts are time-bombs waiting to kill someone. They are on famous routes all over Australia, including Serpentine, Path of Yin, Pythagoras Theorum and Desert Rose in the Grampians.

These need to be replaced - now. I was lucky to be on second - if I was on lead I would be writing this from hospital or someone else would be writing this.