02/07/2022

Maloja

Belayer had led this route before and the climber was onsighting, had done perhaps 5 other gritstone VS at most. Maloja has 3 distinct sections of climbing; up to the flutes, stepping across to the ledge and the top out chimney/hole. A gold dragon was placed about halfway up this first section, around 4m up. Then a red dmm dragon was placed in a pocket to the left of the climbing at 5.5m without good visibility of the placement. The climber then continued above the red cam to the flutes before the traverse. One/two more moves to the left would have allowed a no hands rest however this was not attempted due to fear of increasing the runout. Further gear placement was not possible as the top break is larger than the blue dragon and flash pump was setting in. Upon running out of finger strength and falling the red cam popped out the pocket causing the climber to flip upside-down. The gold cam then held but I bumped my head against a 60cm high rock on the ground after some rope stretch had reduced the fall speed. Carried on climbing that day like a nutter but gained minor whiplash in the neck and ear bruising from the incident.

26/04/2019

Lovers Leap Area

Had just finished leading a route at Brimham and found a couple of good belays. Put each of my ropes one to each belay and moved to the edge ready to tie the return rope from my belay back into my harness crab. As I got back to my final position a young non climbing couple appeared to my right jumping across rocks and generally messing about in a precarious position close to a drop. He was pretty competent moving around , she was very uncomfortable and looked nervous at what he was trying to get her to do. The consequences of a slip where they were would have resulted in serious injury. Within a few minutes they had got themselves back to safety and I continued to take the rope in and started belaying my partner up. I looked down when he had started climbing and suddenly thought my knots into the harness didn't look correct. I then realised I hadn't completed my tying off into the belay. I quickly did an overhand knot and tied in. Fortunat;ley he ascended without incident. Had he fallen off in the first few feet before I realised he would probably have been OK. I on the other hand could easily have been pulled over the edge to my death. First time in 50 years I've had an incident like this I'm normally maticulous at double treble checking.