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Biggest/Nastiest whipper with no sad ending 24-Sep-2010 At 12:03:30 PM gordoste

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Some great stories! Mine is not as hectic as some but I'll share anyway...

Last feb i went to thailand with a couple of mates. We found a yank to climb with us and make up a group of four. One morning we were climbing a couple of grade 18-19 routes right next to each other. The yank had a grigri which he seemed to be competent in using and I was belaying a few metres from him when a girl passing by greeted the yank. He turned around to see who it was and at that exact moment my mate fell off without any warning. He went for about a 10m ride and his bum actually brushed the ground when the slack took up and he swung back in towards the cliff (it's undercut so he didn't hit it). The yank got rope burn on his hand somehow but I have no idea what he did... he swore that he didn't have his hand anywhere near the release lever of the grigri. Didn't really do much for my confidence in grigri's (or yanks).

Anyway about 30 minutes later I took a nasty whip after skipping a bolt (for some reason the next one was about 6 inches out of reach from an obvious jug, so I blame the bolter) and didn't quite fall straight. My head whipped around just missing a bulge. Nowadays I wear my helmet unless falling into clear space (I spend more time on safety precautions now that I'm a parent).