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biner breaks on Forever Young 7-Dec-2011 At 9:32:04 PM ben wiessner

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My mate Rob was climbing Forever Young at Koalasquatsy Wall, Grampians, when he had a rather nasty experience. He found placing the 4th draw on lead to be rather taxing, so he took a jump a little way above the 3rd bolt. In the process of falling the top biner of the 3rd draw snapped. So he fell a fair way larger than expected, was flipped upside-down, ending up with his head a foot off the deck. He reports feeling shaken, but not stirred.

We thought that the primary reason for the biner snapping was that the ring bolts are too deeply recessed. The result of this is that a biner clipped into it is unable to rotate freely, and can end up getting loaded in nasty manner (there's a good chance this has been covered in another thread?). It seems the first bolt is the most deeply recessed of all the bolts, so I took a photo to show how tight it is.

I was thinking that this problem could be rectified by drilling out the rock behind the ring to create more space? It would be kinda ugly, but it's the best idea I could come up with.

As covered in another thread this route also needs the anchors fixed up (I think it's amongst KP's priority list). Once these issues have been sorted I recommend everyone jump on cos it's a marvellous route.