02/07/2022

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.