After a long day of scrambling I met an old mate to squeeze in a climb before dark. It was the first time we’d trad climbed together and we probably exaggerated our abilities somewhat. To make it “worthwhile” we picked a climb at our limit without a warmup as time was short.

The first 5 metres or so of the route consist of an underclinging layback on a crack with a constant width. With only one cam that would fit in this crack, I waited until a height I thought was a good compromise to minimise the risk of an injury from decking.

As I was unracking the cam to place, my remaining hand slipped off the layback and I fell about 3 metres onto an outstretched palm which took the brunt of the fall before I bounced down the remaining ledges until the rope became taught.

I suffered a broken wrist which required a lengthy surgery to fix.