UKH

Driving past Stoney last night there looked like quite a serious incident developing. Multiple Mountain Resuce, ambulance and a helicopter.

Does anyone know what happened?

I hope everyone involved is OK. Never nice to see.

https://edalemrt.co.uk/incidents/

https://facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=4751766058185437&id=114061288...

In reply to Tom Valentine:

Reckon you probably answered your own question there.

Two incidents at Stoney West and Horseshoe. Both climbers falling some way according to Edale MRT's reports. Best wishes to them and hope everyone makes a full and swift recovery.

We were climbing in Goddard's and the air ambulance came over us relatively low, then there were still blue lights going down the dale at about 10 pm as we left the crag and went to the Moon for a pint. The landlord said it had been busy all evening with emergency vehicles going through the village.

In reply to Tom Valentine:

Just to confirm the point of this post wasn't being nosey or rubber necking just genuinely concerned about other climbers welfare.

Sorry if some people think that deserves a dislike.

Maybe the dislike is because they themselves clicked on your post to rubberneck and were disappointed by the lack of juicy details  

Myself and 3 friends were climbing alongside a couple of gentlemen in the first sector you come to from the steep approach. After a few hours of climbing sport routes one of the guys got on a trad route on that first bit of rock as you arrive at the crag and encountered a lot of loose rock. Took a ground fall from about 10m after a couple of bits of gear ripped. We helped guide the ambulance paramedics up from the road and shuttled gear up for them, mountain rescue arrived soon after and set up a super efficient system for lowering the casualty straight down the cliff on a sliding stretcher and off to an air ambulance. Pretty harrowing experience but luckily he’d take most of the impact on his shoulder and hip so as far as I’m aware he had some fractures but nothing too serious. If he’s reading this, I hope you have a speedy recovery - couldn’t believe how well you handled the situation given the amount of pain you were in. Can’t say its made me particularly psyched for limestone trad though.

Was it one of the trad routes in the 'cave' feature almost at the right end of the crag? Cave Crack (HS 4b) maybe? There is one sport route to it's right, Little Moose (6a+) which seems to finish with a lower off round a tree rather than a bolted chain. This struck me as odd but maybe the rock at the top there is fractured, if that's the area where this happened.

Get well soon to the climber involved.

Just had a quick look on the rockfax app and I think it would have been one of the two VSs marked with “loose rock” to the right of Long Enough (6c). Running Over (VS 4c) or Pot Full (VS 4c) I think. Started at the base of the arête and worked it’s way up and right. 
 

*edit - just seen one log of “Running Over” from that day (only logged climb of that route ever) so I guess that’d be the one.

I've done one of the VS crack lines maybe 25 mtrs left of those ones and that was fine (it's surrounded by the decent squished together 6as which are all on quite good rock) but those VSs down by the cave didn't look that inviting when I looked at them. I think I will continue to give them a miss!

Well done on helping out! 

Thanks for sharing; it's really important that we are open about what happened with accidents. Too many times its deemed too soon or too insensitive to delve into how and why accidents happen. The more we know about them, the safer we will be.

Agreed. I think if someone’s died or very seriously injured a bit of radio silence on forums which attract a bit of random speculation is respectful but there’s always something to be learned to avoid a similar situation in future.
 

I think I’ve learnt that avoiding no-star, chossy routes that have very little traffic is probably worth it. Also was pretty blown away by the efficiency of the mountain rescue team given the awkwardness of the approach and escape which would definitely ease my mind and help me remain calm if something similar were to happen again.