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incident on Angels (Mt Buffalo) - beware of gear 29-Mar-2016 At 4:38:25 PM bigchris

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Well! What a weekend!

This may now sound like the culmination of stupidity but at the time I didn't think that there was anything wrong. Please follow along if you will...

We went up to Buffalo with the bikes and the climbing gear, hoping for a cruisy and fun weekend. We rode up Mt Buffalo from where we were staying to the chalet. Super hard work but the descent made it all worth it. Did I refuel with salt and/or electrolytes properly when we'd returned? Im not sure.

My right leg (just below my arse had a red mark on it which I had bandaged over) was a little sore due to a pimple being popped a week earlier. Im sure you can already see where this is going, but I didn't think anything of it as it didn't really hurt to walk or anything.

Climbing Angels was a huge climbing goal for me so Philly and I drove up there the next day with the climbing gear to go a slay it like any self-respecting crack climber should! I looked at many internet articles (the crag, chocky etc) about how long it should take. Some people say it took 4 hours, some (who couldn't crack climb well) said it took 8 or more. I figured if we cruised it we should be done in about 6. Just a nice chilled day on a grade 17......

We got lost on the way down. Some had kicked a cairn over (maybe the weather - which I saw on the way back up) which made us go down further into the gully rather than turn left and walk down the cliff face. It looked like a path to me so we just went with it. One hour into the descent we both looked at each other knowing we'd clearly made a wrong turned then called Mike (Miguel75) and told him we were lost. He laughed and told us to walk up the hill. We found the cairns again and continued to walk down. At this stage I was sweating profusely and had drunk all the water in my bottle but we still had a full camelback.

We both saw the buttress and descended the fixed ropes to where were there is the little running spring. I rang mike to see if I could fill my water there and he said that he'd never been sick from it so all good. I filled up the water, drank a shitload, filled up the water, drank more, and filled up again and off we went.

Finally at the base of Angels. What a stellar looking line. I was actually about to jizz in my pants from excitement of having so much crack in front of me. I stood back and looked at the size of the crack and the gear that I had. Basically a 5 down to 001 with a few extras in the 2 and 3 range. I chucked my gloves on and started to burn up the crack. It was totally awesome. I hadn't climbed for about a month (I was hit by a car on my way home from work on my bike) and was impressed that I was climbing so well. My leg didn't hurt and I was jamming like a mad dog. I remember looking down and saying I'm am running this out like a champion, but all good! I will not fall off!!

I got to what looked liked a belay - a tree with some slings on it. I made a hanging belay and Philly got her gear ready to go. "I better put her on auto block" (which I usually always do). She started climbing. She was loving it! She was about ten meters up and I started to feel sick, but not seriously sick, sick like when you eat too many lollies and you get a headache from all of the sugar.

A couple of minutes later, I felt this pressure building up behind my eyes and forehead.
"Philly, I feel really shit." She was still 15 metres away from me.
"Are you ok?"
"I think i'm gonna pass out"
"Oh shit - am I on auto block?"
"Yep"
And that was that. I wrapped the brake rope around my arm and passed out.
I came to, and promptly asked how long i'd been out for.
"About 10 seconds"

Ok. Not ideal for you belayer to be unconscious. I yelled out to philly to start climbing again as I couldn't get my head together to let her down on an auto block I felt dizzy and was having trouble concentrating and all I could apparently manage was pulling the rope through the belay. she got over the bulge and I passed out again, this time a little longer, maybe 15 seconds. Philly was peaking balls (understandably) and I was at the point of hallucinating and was apparently saying some really weird stuff.

At this point I grabbed a sling and wrapped it around my back and tied it to my Pas so that if I passed out again I wouldn't fall backward like a had been. I also locked off the belay with a sliding munter so that if I let go of the brake rope (even though on auto block) the rope couldn't slide through the belay somehow. I passed out again and Philly saw me go limp - not the first time ;)

Apparently I passed out a few time more but I don't remember. Philly finally got up to the belay (with water) and I drank a fair bit of it instantly making me feel better. I had a cluster-f**k of a belay (I wasn't really paying attention to keeping it neat) and then had to figure out how to untie everything just to get us down. I ended up just leaving some nuts and bail biners and rapping off a single strand as a couldn't calculate in my head how far I was up.
Philly came down after me and I just sat there on a rock for ages trying to regain composure. We walked out. It was far. The half hour walk took me about 3 hours.

We got back to the car and rolled down the hill and got burgers....and heaps of gatorade.

Now, I went to the doctor last night when I got home. Severe dehydration? Maybe. Probably. Staph infection in my leg? Definitely. I know can not walk and I'll be down for the count for the next couple of days.

Many thanks to Mike, Rod, Tim, the rangers from Buffalo and Araps?? and the other people who helped us out with info and or carrying me up the board walk at the top :D

Extra special thanks to Philly. I would have been totally f**ked without her at the belay and would have had to have been rescued by the SES etc. She basically dragged my arse back up out of the gorge with all of the gear as well and didn't complain about it.

POST EDIT:
I just had surgery on my leg. The reason I passed out was due to sepsis/septic shock. I have some burly pics if anyone wants to see. There are obviously things that we can both learn from this, but I must admit, I feel like a total Ammon McNeely badass for us both getting each other out of trouble :D