UKH

In the Lower Wye Valley guidebook on page 71 there is an account of a climber falling 60m into a tree and getting away with it (in 1991). This sounds improbable.  Can anyone verify this incident, maybe it was you? 

The story of Nicholas Alkemade suggests that trees are good for cushioning your fall from anything up to 18,000 feet, provided there is a bit of snow on the ground. 

What a fluke that was though.... ---falling 60 metres into a tree and surviving sounds very unlikely to me

I'm reminded of Cliff Phillips and his narrow escape in the soloing frenzy of the early seventies, falling from high up on Black Foot on the Mot  until, as they say, the ground broke his fall. He then crawled to his car and drove to Nant Peris before he passed out at the wheel and was discovered some hours later. I did Black Spring a few months later and couldn't help but keep looking across to where it had all taken place.

I remember this being reported in The Forester, or whatever the local newspaper was called, sometime in the 90's probably.

Like most newspaper reports on climbing accidents I assumed it was based on truth but with all the details wrong.

..experience mountaineer fell off mount wintours leap at survived......

Monster Fall at Wintours

Was it King Kong?

Two of my Uni club members were there at the time and witnessed this happen. Unfortunately, the other climber in the team was killed, if I remember correctly.

Lynn Hill fell about 25m into a tree at Buoux and survived.

Ah yes, he would have probably survived!

There was someone who fell the full length of Valerie's Rib and off into the trees and survived

If you search the splat calculator then it shows you would be like being hit by a tree going 70kph. Which i dont think sounds unbelievable. 

It sounds highly improbable, but perfectly possible to me.  If you hit the right part of the tree, all th little branches and medium branches would slow your fall so when you hit the bigger branches less damage is done. (Like a car crumple zone)

After all there are cases of sky divers "Bouncing" on bushes and marshy ground and getting away with it when chutes fail

Having hit a fallen tree at 40+mph when separated from my mountain bike and getting away with just a broken collar bone I can believe that the branches would slow a falling climber sufficiently. The major difference with the falling climber compared to superman style mountain biker is that the climber would probably fall out the bottom of the tree canopy on to the ground. I also had body armour and a full face helmet which didn't look good afterwards.

There are many different forms of surviving!!! 

A guy had his ropes cut a couple of years ago when near the top of Avon Gorge. That's a minimum of ~50m fall with (I'd estimate, given where I heard it happened) a 40m free-fall to nothing but the solid deck. 

He was left with some severe life-changing injuries but survived and I think was conscious at the time. Search for the Crowdfunding page for William Bennett if you'd like to donate towards an adapted vehicle (We've all gone off-route and played with dodgy blocks. We don't all get away with it).

It's amazing what the body can take sometimes. Alternatively, you could die falling a couple of meters. 

Nicely put

Yes, I can can confirm this account. Not only did I write this passage in the guide (the route was Original Route VDiff), but I was also secretary of SARA (Severn Area Rescue Association) at the time and was in fact first on the scene of the accident. A few months later I wrote a fuller account as part of an article for High Magazine, which I entitled A Day in the Life of SARA, though I think my title was edited out. I had chosen it as it was the third incident of the day attended by SARA (the first being a climber fall on Zelda, and the second a jumper from the Severn Bridge). I also gave evidence at the subsequent inquest on the death of the second climber, who was less fortunate than his leader.

Thanks for this, in the guidebook it comes across as a lucky escape with a happy ending, clearly that was not the full picture unfortunately.

In the late sixties a climbing acquaintance fell off topping-out at the Avon Gorge (stuck a bramble in his eye) and fell landing beside me belaying at the bottom. He cursed then soloed back up to "retrain" his luckless and burnt belayer.

Gary Gibson’s autobiographical account is in  his book. Blood, Sweat and Smears. 

Are you sure it wasn't Bear Grills doing one of his;  "Needs must" escapes?

Maybe you should listen to the Jam Crack Podcast with john arran

Theres an improbable earlier account of an anonymous hero riding a horse off the cliff into the trees and getting away with it.  He should have something named after him.

Summer’s Jump?

I guess it is easy to assume that this means a free-fall from 60m into a tree, but there are many variants of a 60m fall. In this particular case it sounds like he was roped to another climber, so the rope may have helped slow him down. I've seen a couple of nasty falls at Wintour's Leap, and in both cases the climbers bounced on the way down, and both survived, although one of them was a very close call - he bounced his way (unroped) a considerable way down a less steep part of the crag and ended up landing close to the edge of a ledge with a big vertical drop below. Not pleasant to hear the noise he made afterwards. He had one of those big ear piercings and his helmet strap had cut through the remaining bit of his ear so he was left with a dangling strip of ear rather that a piercing (sorry if that is too much information)!

I once saw a leader fall 20 metres into a bush at Narrowneck in the Blue Mountains, Australia. He got up  immediately and declared he was OK. 

Aged 17, I once took out 12 foot of hedge on a motorbike (would of been around 70mph), no injuries, but kept pulling thorns out of my legs for a few days.

Certain amount of luck involved, but I'd choose hitting foliage rather than rock.

A few years back we rescued a crazy Polish bloke that tried and failed to do the jump across Huntsman Leap and survived the 50m fall. He hit the boulder choke on the way down breaking a few limbs on the way.

We eventually got him onto dry land at the back of the zone where we swapped his wet clothing for some of our dry clothes whilst waiting for the rescue chopper.

Amazingly he didn't want the chopper rescue said he had no money and wanted us to lift him out of the zone by ourselves.

Once we assured him that the rescue was free he calmed down, and off he flew wearing one of my mates very expensive new fleece never to be seen again.

F*cking Hell!

Stayed tuned to Radio 4’s “Thank you” slot.

Sorry Danm 79, but could you expand on that, thanks.

Ha! Yes, I thought that comment might be a little too niche.

Radio 4 have a section for people to call in to say thank you to strangers for historical acts of kindness when they missed their chance at the time. Yours is just the type of story they tell, usually with some self reproach for not expressing their gratitude earlier. 

So as you can all now see - my post was very funny 🙂

Cheers mate

We just did something that all climbers do when you see a fellow climber in distress, never gave it a thought about any thanks for the effort.

Just thankful he was ok and hopefully got a full recovery.

Indeed my friend. Very creditable performance from you all the same.