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Near miss 24-Mar-2014 At 5:01:39 PM latch

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Had a bit of a wakeup call today.

I am living in Southern BC, Canada at the moment and the climbing session is finally starting to kick off again, so I headed out with one of the local developers to scope out some crags around the area. After we looked at a couple of crags we ended up climbing at a relatively new area he and a few others had been developing -- the rock was bomber vertical granite with nice seams and crack features. We jumped on a mixed route he had developed last season. I decided to jump on first. After a long winter with no outdoor climbing for 6 months, I was lacing the thing up even though it was an easy route.

About three quarters up the route it eased right off, so I was considering running it out to the top. But with the last bolt well below me, and after not having climbed for a while, I figured that it would be good practise to plug in some more gear. After placing a good red camalot and an average medium wire, I continued up pulling over a small bulge on a huge muggy flak. I was rather surprised when I found myself and a large section of rock flying backwards off the cliff. As I watched it tumble pass me I tried to yell 'rock' to the people below but I think I only managed to get the 'ro' out as I watched about 1m x 0.7 granite fall past me. Surprisingly the crap wire wasn't that back and pulled me up. As my eyes followed the chuck of rock I was relived to see both my girlfriend and the belayer get out of the way. The piece of rock had thumped it self into the ground pretty deep and managed to miss almost all of our packs and gear at the base of the route. It landed on one of my draws which was pretty mangled even though it had been on soft ground.

We all collected ourselves feeling very lucky that we were still alive and on a lesser not, we were surprised the rock managed to miss just about everything. I think the chunk of rock weighed at least 250KG probably a lot more.

So lessons learned…
1) Even on bomber granite, stuff falls off! The thing I pulled off had chalk from last season and the developer said he spent days cleaning the thing with a crowbar.
2) Place gear ample gear. even on easy bits. I thought there was no way I was falling off the route until I realised it was part of the cliff that falling off! I may have found myself on the deck if I had run it out.
3) Take care at the base of the cliff. This thing would have killed any person, child or dog in its path.

All in all, it was nice to be back on rock, but it was a slightly hectic reintroduction!