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Your biggest falls 20-Oct-2003 At 4:35:06 PM oweng

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Ive been pretty lucky thus far (touch wood)

My biggest fall was from the bottom of the Bridge Rd bridge over the Yarra. We tied the rope tot he middle of the span, made sure the length was about right so we wouldnt hit the water, attached the end to our harnesses, then walked along the scalfoldign under the bridge until the rope was tight, then jumped off. Great fun, a big penduluming fall. Weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee. The crux was trying to keep my head above water when dropping into the yarra after the swing, and during the swim to shore. Needless to say I wasnt able to pull the crux, and literally ended up with a sour taste in my mouth. The rope was retired after this little midnight escapade.

My worst tumble on rock involved one of those typical You Yangs 19 slabs. After my climbing partner aborted at the first bolt I took over and whilst adjusting the carabiner on the first bolt, had the carabiner and bolt plate somehow lift of the bolt head (my partner had put the big part of the hole in the bolt plate over the bolt head, clipped the thin part of the hole, left the carabiner sticking out at 90 degrees, then not told me about it, so when I went to rotate the carabiner it was jammed in the thin section, and rotated the whole bolt plate up and off the bolt) . The unexpected movement came very close to throwing me of to what would have been a very nasty ground fall. Quite shaken I for some reason continued and when doing a dicky little traverse move with feet a metre above the bolt fell. I got a foot stuck behind the rope on the way down and fell spinning through a dead tree to come to rest with my bum a metre of the deck. To the shock of my climbing partner I came to rest with a decent sized branch sticking out from between my shoulder blades, luckily for me it had somehow managed to pierce my thermal top and lodge itself impresively without breaking the skin.