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Date of Incident
24/07/2024
Country
Spain
Area
Route
Activity
Summer walking
When
Descending
Injury
Minor injury
Incident
We were walking a 14 day section of the HRP in the Pyrenees. We were carrying camping gear for the trip etc and keeping our packs as light as possible was key. We took lightweight ice axes and chose to take microspikes for the sections crossing snowfields/glaciers. It became apparent that great care was needed using microspikes as the snowfields had some 10cm of soft/melted snow on a hard neve/ice base. This made it difficult to get the microspikes to grip into the ice and we needed to kick quite hard to get a reasonable grip. This worked reasonably well until we came to the final day where we had to step over the bergshrund onto a small glacier with a grade 1 slope. We both stepped onto the glacier and soon after took quite a long (50m) slide which fortunately came to a stop avoiding boulders below. Despite having an axe and walking poles plus the microspikes, we were unable to stop ourselves from the fall.
Lessons
1. Microspikes (Kahtoolas) were unsuitable for this sort of terrain. The spikes simply weeent long enough to get through the soft snow and we should have taken lightweight crampons instead.
2. We were using lightweight ice axes which we normally carry for ski touring rather than our usual ice axes for hillwalking. Our lightweight axes didn’t have a leash fitted and were smooth handled without a rubber grit (we were both wearing light gloves with a suede grip). I managed to arrest my fall and then the axe flew out of my hands as it was too slippy. A leash would have stopped this happening.
3. We should have been better organised for the descent on the glacier. We descended using a walking pole in one hand and an ice axe in the other. Generally when crossing less steep snowfields, using walking poles and microspikes seemed to work best. However the terrain here was much steeper and we should have out our walking poles away and just used our ice axe. Having the walking pole attached to my wrist was dangerous once I started sliding.
Causes
Slip, trip or fall
Anonymous?
No
Reported By
Partner
Wearing Helmets?
Rescue Services Involved?
My wife damaged her rotator cuff and unknown to us suffeeed a hairline fracture in her shoulder. I lost some skin in my legs while sliding. No rescue services were involved and we were able to walk off ourselves.
Author
Paul Leitch
24 September 2024 at 05:35:55
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