UKH

The recent thread on "100 things I’ve learned about walking + climbing" made me reflect on this.  Particularly the OP's thing #94: "Don’t be afraid to go that little bit higher above your gear. Often there is a jug waiting for you.".  There's a bit of discussion about that on the thread and I don't want go into that here but it made me remember a time climbing that makes me shudder. 

I'd driven down to the Dewerstone.  Our third route of the day was Fly On The Wall (HS 4b) and we'd done the unexpectedly tough first pitch (it looks barely worth putting the rope on from below).  I led off up the second pitch which starts on an enormous flake.  The route description says "Climb the flake above the tree to reach the diagonal break", and my partner swore he's seen a previous party go straight up from the flake, rather than to the obvious gully/corner on the left hand side.  I stepped up off the flake and made my way a move or two up the wall in front of me, neither the route nor the holds were clear.  I ummed and ahhed.  It might be possible to make a move or two up onto tiny pockets but it felt very, very marginal.  I may have gone back to the flake and tried again, I can't remember.  What I do remember is a very clear point in my head when I considered just going for it in the hope that a jug would come and decided against, instead I came down and passed the lead over.  My partner, who was climbing at least a couple of grades above me at the time, went direct fussing, fighting and sweating.  Seconding the line I managed just about without coming on to the rope.

I know without a doubt that had I decided to press on I would have snatched a hold or two more then come off, breaking my legs in the gaping maw between the flake and the cliff.

Brrrrrr, still makes me shudder to think about.  I made the right decision but I can still remember how close I was to going for it and splintery, cracky doom.

From the leisure of my study I can pick up the older guidebook which gives the clear description "From the flake step up leftwards to the ramp leading to the overhang"

So come on folks we've all got them, tell us about the times you look back on and shudder?

This thread is dedicated to the memory of a thread on UKB waaaay back when called (I think) "Times you've almost karked it climbing"

Way back in the mists of time (1986), a few of us were climbing Kaleidascope on Gowder in Borrowdale.  I was belayed about 40 feet up and my mate Dave was directly above me, nervously picking his way past some delicate flakes.  When suddenly a flake came off, about three foot by two foot by six inches thick (we found bits of it later).  I couldn't move, so i just hugged the belay and waited.

It went passed me and crashed down through a tree where the next team had been waiting not ten minutes before.  Would have killed all four if they'd still been there.  I was a bit shaken up but we ended up alternate leading to the top.

One of the other lads came up to me afterwoods.  He watched the rock slide towards me.  Said it hit a projection just above me and cleared me by three inches.  Then I kacked myself...

I told my Dad about twenty years later.  "Were you wearing a hat ?"

And no, I've never been back.  I'd done Fools Paradise and didn't rate the rock on that either.

Many years ago, c. 1982, when I was young and foolish, I soloed some routes at Craig y Forwen.  One of them, around the VS-HVS mark, featured a rightwards-facing thin flake - a nice handful in thickness.  I must have been about halfway up, above blackthorn bushes and a slope.  I had my left hand on the flake and put my right hand into a slot in the flake that made a perfect jug.  As I closed my grip on the jug, the piece I was holding in my left hand broke off.  The timing was perfect - a faultless transfer of load from left hand to right, without a trace of a wobble.  I looked at the lump of rock held in my left hand, dropped it over my shoulder, climbed to the top and went for a little sit down and a cup of tea.

marriage

I think I may have had one of the longest survived falls in UK climbing history but I'm talking about time rather than distance so you can probably guess it was at Etive. So probably it doesn't count as a moment either.

Basically i got lost quite high leading The Long Reach (E2 5b) and had only managed to clip an old peg way over to my right. I soldiered on for ages then decided i was lost and  tried to retrace my "steps". It was all going well until I stepped on to the rope. I slipped and started to slither down the slab, found myself facing out wards. It wasn't "like "slow motion: it actually was slow motion. I became aware of a small footledge maybe 3" wide rising to greet me and actually thought that at my rate of descent that I might be able to stop on it (and take a bow) but when it arrived I caught it with my left foot only and my leg just buckled. I then began a series of somersaults down the slab , heading for the big overlap and realised that this wasn't a jape any more. Then the rope tightened as the old peg caught me and I came to a stop about ten feet above the lip.

I was knocked about a bit and my car keys had punched a hole through my wallet which was in my chest pocket, leaving a fair old bruise on my sternum, but I was well enough to second my mate up a different line to finish the day.

I don't know how long I was "falling"  - I estimate about seven or eight seconds -but thinking later  of the consequences if  that sole seemingly out of date peg hadn't held , it made me feel sick.  

I still use the wallet (Lowe Pro) and now and again I look at the hole and remind myself how lucky I am.

( I may have told this tale before but I don't think Bobling was around then)

Marriage is about the three rings. First comes the engagement ring. Next comes the wedding ring. Then all that's left is the suffering.

Not long after I’d started climbing outdoors I had a crack at my first VS, undoubtedly long before I should have been attempting the grade. Easyish moves to get off the ground and onto a big slab where the moves were all on what my inner Edwardian wants to call rugosities. The bottom of the slab being just where some gear starts to feel like a good idea I put in a small nut before tackling the slab. Up I went, heart in mouth, with the top of the slab seemingly getting further away with every upward move and every move being on successively smaller holds. I got to within a couple of moves of the top of the slab, gear, and safety when my partner shouts up that my gear has come out. Instant sewing-machine leg and brown trousers. I shuffled off to the left and an easier route, tail between my legs, and didn’t touch another VS for a very long time.

Another day, another near-disaster: plodding up an easy-angled snowfield in Switzerland, thinking more about keeping the rope taut than anything else when I heard shouts ahead and looked up to see a boulder about the size of a beach ball making a very rapid downward traverse of the slope just ahead. The damned thing went whizzing across our track looking for all the world like it was off to blow a hole in the Möhne dam. Nice bright morning, almost comically easy terrain and there we were just a few metres from a very bad outcome.

The one that really does make me shudder, though, was on a relatively easy snow slope underneath Buachaille Etive Beag. My (much more experienced) climbing partner and I were zig-zagging up the slope on perfect step-kicking snow when he missed his footing (talk about happening to the best of us) while changing direction.  I suspect he was changing hands on the axe at the time; at any rate he and it parted company and all I could do was start heading down towards where he looked to be heading. He picked up a sickening amount of speed before getting briefly aborne as a resullt of glancing off a rock and then came to rest in deep snow right next to a boulder. He was fine and we carried on up; I thought I was fine too until later on we made a rising traverse up an open slope  to gain the saddle at the southern end of Buachaille Etive Mor. Easy though the ground was I took a dose of the frights and couldn’t carry on. What really makes me shudder in retrospect is the tearing paper screesh of someone accelerating down the fall-line on hard snow.   

My mate, Jock, when he was 17 in 1973 had a 300 footer on the slabs. Got lost on the Pause and ended up on the thin red line And had absolutely no gear. Slipped As he reached the belay on the stretch of the 150 ft ropes And went for the 300 foot ride. Ended up suspended over the overlap with one rope frayed 2/3 through. He had extensive abrasions but apart from that was ok.

Wow! 

It's a very special place!  Never went back after that, though!

Me and 3 mates were climbing in Tintern Quarry.

I was just about to start leading on a second pitch of a route and heard a commotion with the other 2 guys on a different route.

Me and my belayer shouted to them and they said they were ok.

After coming down we realised what had happened. They guy leading had pulled off the main hold of the route he was trying. This hold weighing in at about 5kg, hit his belayer directly on his (brand new) helmet, punching a hole in it. The belayer quickly lowered the climber thinking he'd kicked him during the fall and not really knowing what had happened.

We decided to end the day there. The belayer taking the rock as a reminder.

Putting it in his backpack. Halfway up the walk out he regretted that extra weight.

It's now a door stop at his house.

'twas late 80s. Buddy and I climbing a VS in Llanberis pass. Start off up short corner then branch out right and up a smooth-ish face. No cracks, just small ledges and small jugs. Not really hard, just vertical and protection is only slings on spikes...

Reach the top, a simple two hands on the top at about chin height, pull up and over. Easy-peasy.

Except just as I start to pull, I look over my shoulder and down and see that all my slings have come off the spikes and there's nothing between me and ground but one hex in the corner 20m below. The ground is 30m...

I made it up and over and plunged my fingers to the second knuckle into the turf and crawled on all fours a massive boulder to make the biggest, strongest belay ever.

It took an equally massive chilli and rice, chocolate cake and a pint of tea at Pete's to settle my jangling nerves.

Nothing like a close shave to heighten one's appetite.

😀

I once met a guy who said he had led every pitch on the Dewerstone given 5b or less but refused to lead that one. He put me off enough that I opted for the first pitch and passed the top one on to my mate Rob. He cruised it of course.

Three near misses that spring to mind are: 

Bouldering at Diabaig, pulled a 2 foot high flake off the last move, fell maybe 10 feet to land in a me-shaped gap in a load of boulders (pre mats). The flake landed right next to my head.

On a peak in New Zealand with two guys I'd just met on the campsite, one of whom failed to mention that he was just recovering from a virus. We turned back halfway up because he was very slow and to avoid descending a 500 foot section that he had found hard I looked at a gully avoiding it. The snow in it was still hard so I asked "are you ok just going down here?". As I finished speaking a snowfield well off right avalanched into a transverse slot we couldn't see and diverted into the gully. We all jumped back under a convenient overhang while the avalanche poured past us. When it stopped Phil said "In answer to your question, No". We had to descend the face after all, it took ages and we didn't get to our bivvy until about 9pm, having left at 3am, but if we had been a couple of minutes quicker we would have been in the avalanche.

On a long Diff in Skye with my mate Rob and an American climber we'd picked up hitching, she had trouble at an overhang Rob had led. I undid my belay and soloed up to help (not usually recommended) and with someone to point out holds she did it easily. I couldn't be bothered to go back down 30 feet to the belay, so just stayed where I was. A bit higher up she pulled off a person-sized flake and I was able to duck under the overhang and it missed me by inches. The flake hit the pinnacle I had been belayed to and smashed it to pieces. If I had been where I should have been I would have been killed. 

Haha, stop right there!  Time to drag out that old guidebook description *riffles pages*

"It is definitely NOT the crag for the inexperienced.  In fact this is not the crag for people of a nervous disposition, the accident prone, the unlucky, the uninsured, those who are easily disheartened, or anyone with loved ones"

Right, back to your story.

Nice to hear, it gave me the screaming heabie-jeebies (and still does when I care to think about it).  I don't see any other comments in the log book about it though, which baffles me.  For a starred low grade route at a popular crag surely it should have a fair share of other punters in the same spot as I was?

Edited to add: I had previously misdirected my partner that day the wrong way round the overhang on Climbers' Club Ordinary, so he'd taken in the crux of Climber's Club Direct.  So perhaps he was just having his revenge.  Amazing move though that...enormous bridging legs and a view through them down to the ground, and a nice rope above me : )

Final day of a uni climbing trip to the peaks and we were at Froggatt having spent the night under one of the overhangs. I was exhausted after a week of climbing and set off up Hawks nest crack. I'm terrible at jamming at the best of times. I'd reckoned that climbing it in my b2 boots would be easier as they protected my aching feet and were super rigid to cam in the crack. Turns out they were too good for the job as about 6m off the ground i got my foot wedged right in and couldn't shift it. In blind panic I scrabbled my hands in the crack trying to haul myself up getting more and more pumped.

Eventually I peeled off backwards in slow mo. I remember expecting my leg to snap as my boot was so stuck. I ended up looking up at my belayer upside down on the rope with my helmet gently scraping the floor as the I slightly swung side to side. He looked pretty shocked. I was wearing a bandolier back then and the weight of the gear meant I couldn't re-right myself so I had an even more undignified lowering onto my head. That was the last route of the trip, we packed up and went home. Tired, bruised and realising that we'd used up a fair amount of luck already.

The one that makes me shudder is kinkyboots at baggy point. As my mate racked up to lead the first pitch, I decided as a bit of an afterthought to build a primitive belay for myself, just in case. The really crucial thing is the mindset I was in when I did this - I didn't really think it was necessary and I almost didn't bother. Anyway my mate wasn't tall enough to do the fall-across and she fell into the zawn with no gear in. She was totally fine apart from some amusing bruising, but if not for the belay she would have fallen all the way to the rocks at the bottom and pulled me down on top of her. My criteria for 'is a belay necessary here?' were adjusted accordingly 

Something makes me think she must have been a stunner

There are Diff overhangs?! 

Another one from me.  Many years ago, when I was even younger and even more foolish, c.1979 or maybe 1980, I went on my first ice climbing trip to Ben Nevis.  It was Easter, freezing, with wall to wall blue sky.  Equipment consisted of solid walking boots, B2-ish in today's money, Salewa crampons, wooden shafted Chouinard/Interalp Zero and one, shared Terrodactyl for the leader.  A warthog, two Salewa screws, two pegs, assorted hexes and a MOAC, some shite Clog wires and two deadmen.  I don't recall the route - a gully up in Coire na Ciste.  Someone was above us and had soloed an easier second pitch to a steepening.  I had climbed the first pitch and was standing in balance on the top of an ice bulge.  No gear.  The belay was a deadman 100 feet below.  A bit of snow came down and I looked up to see the person above booting himself a ledge.  He was wearing orange over-trousers.  A lot more snow came down.  I looked up to see him trying to self arrest and rattling down the slope towards me.  "Stupid place to practice self-arrest" I thought (I know....). I hung onto my axes, tucked myself in as much as I could and waited.  Masses more snow came past, then a big 'whump' and I was airborne, arching out backwards.  I fell 100 feet to the bottom of the pitch, with all of the slope of Coire na Ciste below me, and landed in all the snow that had come past me before, along with the muppet who had sat down on his ledge in over-trousers and had tobogganed off as a result. What stopped us shooting off down the slope was that my axe had caught in a loop of the rope that was attached to the deadman.  It nearly wrenched my arm out of its socket, and I was winded completely, but finally managed a breath, as did my new companion. We both stood up, dusted ourselves off, and declared that we would walk to the summit, but that others in the party were welcome to continue their ascent if they wished.

Did a nondescript new route on a seacliff here. Looked up and decided to scramble out rather than abbing off.  Found ourselves on very steep dirt and weak tussocks 100ft up unroped and unable to reverse. Managed to top out by kicking and punching holes in the dirt. I still look at it everytime I climb at the crag and wonder what the hell I was I was thinking.

I've had a fair few.

I was repeating PylonKing's Retardis (HVS 4c) right after he did the first ascent. Went up a corner with no gear for about 8m and was moving to the arete to switch over to the face of the climb. Arms spanned out with left hand on the arete and right hand gastoning something in the corner. At that point, Mark shouts "be careful with those foo-" *snap*. Both feet blew and I had no gear in. Somehow, self preservation resulted in my body holding an iron crucifix position, something I am generally very much *not* capable of doing, for long enough to get feet on and not fall off. 

Wombat (E2 5b) on a cocky day where everything was going super well. Got to the bottom of it and it looked dry apart from a wet streak on the left wall ending on the first headwall jug. Since we've established it was a cocky day, I thought, wet or not, it's a jug, it'll be fine. I was partly right. Holding the jug was fine. Holding anything else after with wet hands was very not fine. After much slipping around, I thought it would be a good idea to abort and downclimb. Got back down the lip, jammed my foot in the flake but as soon as the wet hand touched the lip it just slipped straight off. Hang upside down off my foot for a couple of seconds before it ripped. Got slammed knee first into the wall and ended up with my head about centimetres from a rock at the bottom.

I remember one of my first days out with a friend...we'd not been climbing long and this was our first attempt at leading. The first couple of diffs went fine and we moved to Milestone Buttress for the afternoon. Our target was Milestone Buttress....the first polished pitch proved tough and being a novice my placement of gear and route finding was a bit shit. I ended up off route (I think I slipped on to the direct variant) so much harder climbing and suffering horrendous rope drag due to not extending any of the gear. It was a serious struggle but finally made it to a belay and brought my mate up to find out that pretty much all the gear had pulled out due to no extensions. That was a very fast lesson in why you need to extend gear and it could easily have led to a very short climbing career......

Fool's Gold - due to many slate routes having a lower off at the top, my partner and I were both leading routes, we'd just leave the gear in after one of us had gone first.  I got to the top of the route, clipped a couple of QDs to lower offs and then in typical sport manner said something to my partner and leaned back.  He on the other hand had assumed I was now safe and taken me off belay.  I went at least half the length of the route before he got me into a body belay - was incredibly lucky that they had enough experience to do that...still occasionally makes me shudder! 

One day on Cloggy with my mate Rich. Packing up at the end of the day, walked out under Llithrig. Helmets in sacks - not that they would have made any difference.

From up above us comes a bang. Rich tells me I shouted "run", I have no memory of this. We both ran. Fortunately in the correct direction, by sheer chance. 

A tombstone sized flake slams into the ground a few feet from us and sprays us with gravel....dislodged from 160 ft above by a climber who'd fallen off after placing a cam behind it. 

Paul

That had nothing to do with it, of course! 😁

There are on Skye! Nearly a metre out too, although the handholds were huge.

F**********************ck!!!!

Descending snowy, crevassed (strange!) crest off Cevedale 3769m with my now wife. Me in front. Roped together. Steep drops either side. I jumped across a small crevasse & walked on, keeping rope taught. She got to edge. It collapsed! She fell sideways onto her back and started plummeting to certain death. I plunged my axe but knew there was really no hope. Waited for inevitable...but nothing. Looked down, she'd arced as the rope came under tension and got dragged into the narrowing crevasse that had caused her to fall. She was wedged! It saved us both. I set up belay and she climbed back to crest, sat down and started sobbing!

When I was a complete crampon and ice axe novice. Totally alone ascending Cima d'Asta 2847m in Italy. Found this inviting ice runnel, probably a good 100m high. Decided to solo it. Got to a steep bit. Water was running underneath the ice. Was by then freaked, well in over my head, with about 80m death slide below me. Hit the ice with the axe at head height...watched in horror as the whole section of ice in front of me started to craze and crack kind of in slow motion, like a pane of glass. Time slowed down. The water beneath started pouring out and over me. Had to descend about 20m of ice to an escape line that I was utterly convinced that I could not descend. 

Mid August. 1am. Ascending Couturier Couloir on Aiguille Verte as a rope of 3. Black ice almost all the way around 50°. Purgatory! 1000m of burning calf muscles! Mark at the top, Hank in the middle, then me. All 3 of us climbing in our little 'bubbles' of head torch light with almost full rope lengths between us, simul-climbing. Suddenly, I heard thuds and weird, violent scraping noises. looked up, saw Hank's head torch doing cartwheeling motions in the pitch dark. He'd fallen! Then he stopped. It was all over in a flash. Mark had both his axes planted at the moment of impact and just took the fall. Said afterwards that the impact wasn't even that bad. We just...climbed on. Never told our wives. "What happens on tour stays on tour" right?

Man, how many lives do you have left?

CB

Years ago I worked as an instructor teaching abseiling for a well known holiday company. Each morning I would set off early to set up the ropes.

I walked up to the top of the 70ft abseil to set up. I threw the rope over the edge and checked that the end reached the ground. Put on the Whillans harness and checked that the buckle was doubled back. Put the figure of eight descender on to the rope. Connected descender to the karabiner and double checked it was screwed up. Moved back to the cliff and put my heels over the edge ready to lean back. Ready to go. I looked up to see the rope still lying on the ground but not connected to the anchors.

Check, check and check again!

And she still married you!

This is one for 2 people who dont know how lucky they are. I think it was Cataclysm on Wildcat. I led the first pitch and noted that there was a loose block which seemed to be supporting an even larger block about the size of a large fridge freezer , I warned my partner and he avoided pulling on it and led through on the second pitch. Two girls appeared at the bottom gearing up and started climbing, the leader pulled on the smaller block which came out depositing her back on the ground luckily both girls were uninjured but decided to go elsewhere. 2 minutes after they were gone there was a rumble and the larger block disappeared to the ground. When we got to our gear it was half buried and some had been knocked down the slope the large block had been stopped by a tree. If the two girls had been underneath they would have been crushed. Lucky and oblivious!

Indeed.

I did a similar thing at the top of DDT (HVS 5a).  My mate had just abseiled back down and I threw a sling round the tree, clipped into it and put my weight onto it.   As I was putting the rope through the belay plate, I noticed what I had clipped into.

Not the belay loop.  A gear loop.....!  Gulp.  I grabbed the sling quicker than I could say F**K !

Check, check and check again ..

I remember being at Wildcat, I think we were about to do Golden Yardstick, and there was this cry above and the sound of breaking rock. I remember flattening myself against the rock face, keeping my head level (helmet on), and this bloody great flake of rock slammed into the ground about 3 feet from me. The really good news was that all our double rope was already neatly splayed out in two separate swathes on the ground, and this huge sharp-edged flake, about the size of a big atlas, embedded itself deeply in the ground, but just missed all the coils. If my memory is correct, that particular rope was extremely new, and it so nearly got wrecked.

My scary abseil story. King Kong at Wintours Leap, done the two big pitches, in the days when you didn't do the easy short pitch and walk off, two long abseils from pairs of epoxied bolts.

First long abseil, part way down the ropes are all tangled. So I'm maybe 250' above the ground, bouncing around, flicking the ropes. Get it sorted, carry on, get to the halfway ledge, clip into the bolts.

"Did I just undo my fig 8 screwgate before clipping in or have I just been bouncing around up there without it done up"

To this day I still have no idea but it gives me the willies just thinking about it.

Since then I always abseil on two screwgates, back to back.

A friend of mine was killed precisely that way. RIP Dave. If you're putting your weight onto a rope with someone on the other end always make sure they know you're doing it.

My worse moment was also on absail after a long day in Norway. It was midnight but under the summer Arctic sun you can fail to feel tiredness set in. I think it was a 5 pitch abseil, and from the second station I did some the usual, thread the rope through rings, coil and chuck it down nicely, prussuk on, belay devise on, lean back, unclip my dog tail holding me to the rings, one look at my partner, now wife, before I start to lower when she shrikes. I have threaded the blue rope on one side of my devise and the knot tail of the pink rope through the other, with only another a few inches below my fist. Luckily she could reach my dog tail to clip it back in pronto! 

Had I let the tail slip through my hands I would have ended up on only one side of the rope and down I would have gone. Can you grab the other end of the rope while dropping? I doubt it and don't want to find out.

Always double check every time, and if you find a diligent partner marry them! 

My closest call was also on abseil , many years ago finishing in the dark and pouring rain with Jock on Kneewrecker Chimney and went to ab off the small tree at the top. Starting to ab and realised I was on the rope tails not the rope! Always tied shorter tails since!

Yes - it was incredibly stupid but the opportunity for the mistake was caused by the 'mixed' nature of the route with trad gear and bolted lower offs.  Lesson is to be even more careful when doing something out of the ordinary.

Once's got to the top of KinkyBoots as another party were leaving.  The leader had fallen down the gap and his belayer's thumb had been pulled into the belay plate with the rope.  It had taken him a while to unweight the rope with her thumb stuck the whole time.  Picturing her thumb still makes me shudder.

Doing those moves on the long reach, made me shudder without the fall! In now have new shudders, just trying to imagine!!

Indeed.  I suppose that lesson was applicable to Dave's accident too, as he hardly ever sport climbed.

As for "stupid", we've all done things that could be described as that. Most of us seem to survive by pure luck (see several examples above, including mine), That's even more marked if you spend time in alpine environments, where you're so much more vulnerable to the random event outside your control.

I like to think I'm pretty cautious/paranoid, but I've had one or two:

1)  Abbing on Cosmiques Arete.  I was wearing an Alpine Bod harness which doesn't have a belay loop so I threaded a sling through the waist belt to take the ab device.  Only when I got to the bottom did I realise I'd threaded the rucksack belt rather than the harness, which was  held together only by a sidelock buckle.  I'd threaded the leg loops as well, but they are held by even smaller buckles

2) Winter climbing in Glencoe. The guidebook said the route would go in most conditions. The snow wasn't great but we thought it would be frozen higher up (it wasn't).  I got to a belay on a sloping ledge and couldn't find any placements, so I belayed off an axe buried in wet Tate & Lyle.  When my partner arrived to lead through I warned him not to fall, as the belay was crap.  "OK", he said, and promptly fell off.  Somehow he stopped on the edge of the ramp.  My stance had collapsed.  He looked at me, and I can still see the expression in his eyes more than 30 years later. 

3) Climbing Fools Paradise in Borrowdale.  On the top pitch my partner shifted a block the size of a small fridge.  Fortunately it stayed in place, and I was belayed out the fall line.  When it was my turn I somehow managed to avoid touching it.  I posted a warning, but a week later it came out and killed someone.

4) Despite being paranoid about abseiling, and being aware this was a possibility, I still managed to set up on the rope tails rather than the main ab ropes. I even put on the autoblock before noticing.  Thank God for check, check and check again.

How are we all still alive?

Climbing Golden Fleece (HS 4b) at Symonds Yat. The descent is to ab out of a tree so I tied on by a sling and sorted out the abseil (single half rope doubled over). Somehow made an absolute mess of everything, took ages faffing with the rope. Finally I was ready to go and about to untie myself from the tree when I thought I'd double check. Turned out I'd put an isolated loop through my belay device and was about to jump out of a tree from 20 m up.

What are these "rope tails" that are "not the rope"? This is jargon I have not heard before.

It's the leftover redundant rope after you've tied the ends of two ropes together for an abseil.

The tails of the knot used to tie the ropes together. You know, the bits potentially long enough to confuse for the bits of rope you do want to abseil off of (especially if you've tied the overhand with the recommended metre-odd amount of tail), but almost certainly not long enough to go anywhere useful. Those tails.

OK. Thought it might be. That raises two issues. (1) Whether to tie the two ends together or have separate stopper knots in each rope - the latter is more common in my experience, and what I have done for several decades. (2) When to attach the descendeur to the ropes. Most climbers, myself included, do this after throwing the ropes down and attach the device to the ropes a short distance below the abseil/rap anchor - then there is no possibility of attaching the device to the "tails". The second person down does it in this sequence regardless.

I can't see how it makes a difference whether you attach your belay device before or after you throw the ropes? The main thing I think when tying overhands to abseil is not to make the tails stupidly long - there's definitely a happy medium. And as others have said, always do a final check!  

The danger is that you can do all the checks - everything done up, everything in place, weight the rope while still on a backup anchor - but you'll then go straight off the ends. Its once of those things that you wonder how it could be possible, until you do it yourself. It's essential stay aware that it is possible and keep the tails out of the way.

I see now that I had completely misinterpreted the ends of the rope you were talking about. I thought you were talking about the free ends and not the joining knot. For the joining knot I usually use a double fisherman's rather than an overhand, with "tails" about six inches long. It would be very difficult to mistake those short tails, which point in opposite directions, to the abseil ropes themselves.

I am in utter agreement that one has to double-check the simplest of things, when rappelling, because one stupid mistake can easily mean death. Whenever possible the buddy system is invaluable. Once, when tired, I clipped the rappel device into only one rope and was only saved by my buddy in the nick of time.

A double fisherman's definitely avoids the possibility of making that mistake. I think I was a told that an overhand was less likely to get stuck on edges etc when pulling the ropes, so have always used that. 

Jesus, that doesn't bear thinking about.

Not at Buoux by any chance?

My closest call was on Oberaargletscher. We all decided that it would be nicer to tie in on that group of flat boulders near the middle moraine, rather than on the steep and muddy sides of the glacier where the path ended. There was no risk of missing a crevasse as the glacier was completely dry, but halfway there the crevasse lip broke when I was trying to jump from the same spot as the guy before had used. Fell in up to my chest before stopping myself with my ice axe and by scrabbling with my crampons.

Also, some pretty heavy rockfall dislodged by a group of climbers who thought it would be a good idea to leave the Zugspitze ferrata half way through a rubble filled colouir to reach the ridge a bit higher.

I was far enough back so I could retreat behind a rock step, pushing my daughter to the rock and pulling my rucksack on top of my helmet, but the party just ahead had to dodge microwave sized blocks left and right while clipped to the steel cable.

Afterwards my daughter had a lemonade on the summit while the rest of us were scanning the crowds to see whether we could still catch the wankers.

CB

There is one incident that makes me shudder even now, 15 years on. It isn't due to what could have happened to me but to others. It was a pleasant Bank Holiday weekend in North Wales and we decided to climb on the upper cliff of Glyder Fawr and to get there with an early start up Idwal Slabs to beat the crowds. The plan worked well and by mid-morning I was leading up the continuation wall, the queues you'd expect on such a day well below us. I was underclinging a short, fat flake and working my feet up so as to reach the next hold. The next moment I was falling with the microwave sized block shooting back over my head and down the Holly Tree Wall. I still don't know how it missed everyone, but I'm shaking typing this, at the time I thought I'd killed someone.

I'd given the flake a good slap before committing to it and it had sounded fine, I guess because quite a lot of it was attached and it was short and wide. There was even wear behind it from gear placements. But on getting back to where it had been the rock scar looked like rotten wood.

Went scrambling with a mate in the Lakes about 10-15 years ago. We had a guide book and found a nice route which in big red font said 'DO NOT CLIMB IN WET CONDITIONS'. We decided it would be fine and headed up in the heavy rain.

I remember climbing up a steep section and then padding up a U-Shaped cut-out with a small river of rain water flowing down it. All the holds were sloppy and like glass. My mate was above me and he slipped and started tumbling towards me he managed to jam himself against both sides of the cutout about a foot away from my face.

If he had hit me we would both have fallen 50-80 feet and be very dead.

Dave Chester. Lovely bloke, did you know him?

Yes.  We did a few climbing trips together.  Friend of a friend really (Tony Williams).  He was a great guy and it was real shock when he was killed.  Pretty much the same place as Lynn Hill’s accident I think.

'Dogsbodying' (hiding from Search and Rescue Dogs) in the Brecon Beacons and spending the day dozing on a wide ledge with a rocky overhang at the top of a steep grassy slope. After being found by the last dog I packed up my stuff to walk off with the dog and handler. It had been raining all day, it was chilly and I was a bit stiff after lying in my bivvy bag all day. I stepped off the ledge onto rain-soaked grass and slipped, then started tumbling towards the rocky scree 30m below. I'd learned on a winter skills course about doing a starfish with arms and legs to stop yourself tumbling before digging in with hands and feet to stop a tumble and arrest without an axe, though never tried it. Without really thinking I gave it a go, and astonishingly it worked a treat. I ended up with a massive haematoma on my thigh where I'd hit a rock in my tumbling, but stopped just above the blocky scree.

Yes, it was a shock to me too, he was such a safe climber. I remember him being really chuffed when a pic of him at Tuolomne was used as an illustration of "perfect  slab climbing technique" in one of the mags. He was part of a loosely BP-connected group that I climbed with a fair bit in the 90's, although he was usually on harder routes than me so I only did a few routes actually roped to him. One of those people you never heard anyone say a bad word about. RIP Dave.

 I once took a short cut across an innocuous looking grass slope in New Zealand. At the time I didn't know about Snow Grass (named because it's as slippery as.....) and duly went skiting off and picking up speed disturbingly rapidly. I went over the top of a 2000 foot broken cliff but by pure luck landed in a deep pool on a ledge about 20 feet down and got away with bruises and a wetting. It was fairly remote and even a broken leg would have been fatal so I was ridiculously lucky.

Well, for one thing the ropes are then hanging straight down from the anchor under their own weight. Then one lifts the ropes up against their own weight to thread through the descendeur. And one gets used to doing this whether one is the first person to go down or not. So, in the context of the current discussion, I think it is very unlikely one could mistake unloaded "tails" for the lightly-tensioned abseil ropes. Still, judging by the "likes" you are collecting, some climbers on this forum see it your way rather than mine.

Well in a dark windy night when you ab with the ropes coiled over your shoulder to feed them as you go to avoid a tangled mass wrapped round obstacles if you just chuck em into the gathering wet gloom , it’s not quite so straightforward as you make out

Yes, often the weight of the ropes (or absence of it) will be a clue.  Nevertheless, it can happen, as I'm not the only person on this thread to testify.  It's particularly a danger where you use an overhand to join the ropes, as long tails are advised.  It shouldn't happen, it probably doesn't happen very often, but it can happen, and being aware of that possibility might just keep you from doing it yourself one day.

I've had a few near misses, but this one still troubles me the most. I took my youngest son when he was MUCH too young up Rib and Slab on Craig Ddu in the Pass. He was fine, and at the top I was within an ace of untying but left the rope on as I crossed the grassy amphitheatre at the top to get to the final scramble off. I took an Alpine belay round a handy spike; Sam started to follow me; lost it on the wet grass and  just arced round at the end of the rope, just above the crag edge. If I hadn't taken the belay - which I wouldn't have 99% of the time - he would have been gone.

Abseiling off the tails rather than the ends of the rope you want to use is a shockingly common cause given in German accident reports since many years. You would think that this would at some point become so well known that all climbers are aware of the risk and avoid it by double checking or compromising on tail length, but no. It is also surprising to me, as I could not imagine making that mistake, which is certainly a mistake in itself!

CB

That helps, yes, but often they conspire to land on the first wee ledge or bit of heather. 

Abseiling eh! Early 90's descending from the Eisnaze on Piz Scercen in the Bernina as a 3. Gloomy weather and tired at the very end of a busy 2 weeks. At the top of the mixed ridge which leads to the aforementioned Eisnaze, on the way up, we had noticed an abseil station leading down the side of the ridge leading directly to the glacier.

Later, In descent I constructed an ice bollard to reverse the 50m 70 degree crux ice pitch back to the top of the mixed ridge. 2 or 3 abseils down the side of the ridge one of my less experienced companions went first. When I came down last the other 2 were on a 12 inch by 4 foot ledge. I clipped into a sling provided by the first man down.

it was only after pulling down the ropes and preparing for the next lower, that I noticed that the anchor consisted of a single peg in a vertical crack. We were still about 400 feet above the glacier. 

As one of my companions prepared for the next abseil I felt extremely uncomfortable. Though above a still huge drop, I un clipped from the anchor. As the carefree youth weighed the rope and began to lower my eyes were glued to the single peg. Slowly but unmistakably the eye of the peg began to move downwards. I immediately screamed at the man whose chest was now level with the ledge which he immediately grabbed. My 2 companions were split seconds from certain death. And me from being marooned on a ledge with no way up or down.

Jonny was dragged back up. I think he may have experienced code brown. Taking stock of our position in fading light I then saw that in spotting the first bit of iron mongery on his descent, he had missed the real anchor diagonally 15 feet down and across with a veritable cornucopia of pegs and slings. 

We very fortunately managed to excavate a bomber rock 2 slot in the crack above, re sited the peg, and with the two points equalised made our way safely back to the true way. A chastening experience. Just avoided a lifetime of regret from a moments inattention.

Yes, that often happens. Then one makes the judgment as to whether to pull the ropes up again. Usually, though, I just go down and sort out the ropes as I go; from above, never below; always being careful to prevent the ropes going into those cracks and flakes that love to swallow the knots in the ends of the ropes. Then, when down, the first thing to check is whether the ropes and the connecting knot run OK, before the next person comes down. I usually give the next person(s) a (very loose) fireman's belay. Once all the rapellers are down, on multiple sequential rappels, one then takes the knots out of the ends of the ropes and threads the rope on the connecting knot side straight through the next rap anchor. And then the heart-stopping bit of pulling the ropes down smoothly, via the new anchor. Then one centralises the rope in the new anchor, checks that very carefully, and only then with the ropes hanging down from the new anchor does one attach the descendeur, etc, etc. This is generally the way I and my partners have always done it. Of course, there are many variations depending on unusual circumstances and conditions.

I understand all that. I'm just noting why the ropes won't necessarily be hanging down, 'tensioned' under their own weight. But as I accepted up thread, using double fishermans is one way to avoid the whole abbing off the tails issue (I just make sure the tails aren't too long and double check).  

That walk off, wet or dry, is so dangerous considering the ease of the climb that gets you into that position. I’m surprised that there aren’t more accidents in that area.

Some folks must leave very long tails. I have always gone for the short and long cows tails a la caving. Set it all up, clipped in with both. Give the whole system a bang. Unclip short tail, abseil a short distance, still OK? Unclip long. 

Two - and pictures speak a thousand words:

https://www.instagram.com/p/-J-jGXL4ud/

https://www.instagram.com/p/BD5fW9Ar4uY/

10 or so years ago, Switzerland, crossing a small dry un-crevassed glacier on the descent.  My brother and I were a bit further behind Mum, Dad & our guide.  We weren't roped up (fortunately).  A great load of rock came crashing crashing off the mountain and bouncing down the glacier.  Pete & I managed to skitter off to the side, out of the way of the rock.  The others also managed to get out of harm's way.  A pair further ahead were right in the route of the bouncing rocks - I've never seen anyone move so fast to get themselves tucked behind a large boulder.

Although (thankfully) not my own experience, the ‘Worst Accident?’ described in this article would fit your ‘retrospective shudder’ criteria: https://www.climbing.com/news/alan-carne-british-expat-king-of-the-verdon/

At the very same crag, on my first foray down there in the late 70s, guided only by an article in a Crags magazine, a female acquaintance who was also on her first visit went off to do Luna Bong. She was a bit ‘old school’ and hadn’t, unlike most by then, embraced the use of belay plates, generally preferring a waist belay.  

This disposition also extended to abbing using the classic style of rope through a harness krab, over the shoulder and a twist around the forearm.

Apparently blissfully unaware that after the first 6m or so, the Luna Bong ab went free - leaving your feet about a metre from the rockface and around 200m above the mid-height terrace - until you could pull yourself in by your toes using a small corkscrew pine that sprouted near the next belay down.

That evening, the main feature recounted in the La Palud bar from the day’s events was a very long period of screaming. Also mentioned was the fact that there were no knots in the ends of her ropes…

I think you mean the abseil down to the mid terrace of Eperon Sublime. You start Luna Bong from the bottom of the gorge

Not when I did it in 78. You abbed down it as Ian describes.

Apologies I was confusing Luna Bong with Demande. Long time ago.

Going over that lip should have made me realise I was really only cut out for bouldering.

Some do, yes. I've seen people tying overhands with a metre of tail. It's just silly - a perfect example of how in trying to make things extra safe it introduces more opportunity for fatal error. And I'm sure there must be more chance of them catching in cracks etc.

I always leave a metre of tail. I was under the impression that a good length of tail was necessary for safety. Part of my abseil checks is to find the tail end of the ropes  and trace them back to the knot so that I can be certain I'm not about to abseil down them.

Probably the time that I crossed a gully of hard ice in the Alps. My hands were on the sharp ice edge where the melt had seperated it from the cliff by an inch and my feet, without crampons on chipped holds.

A guide shouted from above. Luckily I was  naturally looking at my feet when the stone his client had knocked off as they short cutted above us hit me. It landed flat across the top of my pack and back of my helmet, denting the helmet quite well.

Apparently dinner plate size. If it had hit me differently I doubt I could have held on and my partner's braced stance and poor sling belay were dubious. 

Or alternatively. When I identified that Funky Gibbon had a loose block, probably weighing about 2 tonnes. I pulled up to the sentry box and realised the nut I used for protection a few years earlier didn't fit. Upon checking I found out that the rock was detached on almost all sides and appeared to be balancing on a pebble.

I was slightly worried as there was a group of kids bell ringing belays with 3 belaying (one lying down, two pulling) nextdoor and downhill....

Read that as 'Monuments that make you shudder in rrttospect'   I wonder why......

Kicking my one good nut clean out when avoiding the off width about 2/3rd of the way up The Plum (E1 5b), looking down and thinking "if I fall from here I at best break both legs, at worst I die". Blurgh.

Almost at the first belay of Invernookie, but not there yet and and 20m or so above my last runner on a straightforward turf/snow slope. A climber on the seam on the right was just heading up the short wall on the second pitch. I heard a shout and looked up to see climber and a chest sized boulder hurtling down the slope. The climber stopped unharmed on the belay ledge but the boulder rolled down the slope, bounced 3 inches over my rope, and over the edge below. Thankfully it missed the queue of climbers in the gully below and served to wake me up nicely for rest of the day.

Silly, recommended, depends where you look! I personally leave about that much (maybe not quite a full metre...) if using a single overhand - I'm still going to check I'm not abbing on them regardless, and it makes me feel better about the probability of becoming a statistic due to a freak knot-rolling accident as I step over the yawning abyss.

There are more accidents/near accidents from people abbing off the tails than there are from rolling overhand knots.  If overhands rolled at all, we wouldn't use them.  A long tail is pointless - I leave about a foot, enough to tie the knot comfortably in gloves and to allow for a very easy visual check that all is in order.

I'm sure I read that in tests the overhand knot was likely to roll once but then locked, unlike the Figure 8 which kept rolling. This is why long-ish tails are necessary, at least 30 cm is advised. Of course its tempting to think that longer tails would be better, but this them gives rise to the risk of threading the wrong ropes. As with so much in climbing, you need to understand why you're doing something,  and all the risks and advantages associated with it.

It is, but that's excessive. 1 1/2 feet would do fine. 

Agreed, but...

Is simply (k)not true:

Anyway, back on planet Earth, whilst both the Figure of Eight and the Overhand slipped considerably under pressure, the Double Overhand did less so. Of course all the dry knots held - eventually, but the tests were made with new ropes and with a good tail. Also all the knots were very well tied. A poorly laid knot can considerably worsen the test results. This has been shown by American climber Tom Moyer who conducted numerous tests on various ab knots and published the results on the rec.climbing newsgroup (2). In these he showed that a well-tied overhand knot would eventually roll over itself at 486kg, but that a badly tied version would do the same at 91kg.

https://www.needlesports.com/Information/Need-Advice/Abseil-Knots

While it might happen rarely, clearly in less than ideal circumstances there is potential for the knot to slip or roll. It's getting dark, you're tired, you don't dress the knot neatly, you ab jerkily and then bounce around trying to find the next anchor...? A metre is a bit excessive, I agree, but I'd rather drill myself to check everything thoroughly before setting off and tie longer tails than spend any part of the descent being irrationally worried about my ropes untying themselves. And I do check things thoroughly, because stepping over the edge terrifies me every time I do it!

I also tie an actually useful (barrel) knot a metre or so from the end of the rope rather than a loose figure-of-eight right at the very end. So many of my climbing partners think that constitutes an acceptable stopper knot when sport climbing, when the reality is it'll quite possibly slip off the end of the rope if it ever meets the belay device..

So, in all the time you've spent idly watching the knot with your 100kg of partner and his gear attached to it, bouncing and swinging around, have you even seen it do anything more than tighten up?  Me - never.  Not once.  Not when they're soaked.  Not when they're icy.  Not when they're frying in the sun.  Not even with ropes of different thicknesses.  If they did - my response would be - "F*** that - Let's tie a double fisherman's next time".  Tying a long tail? - I can see a failure mode in that and my response is "F*** that, tie a sensible knot without a built-in exit ramp".

Isn't the stated benefit of overhand knots, that they are asymmetric and so less likely to jam than a fishermans, negated by having a meter long tail? I always have done a fisherman with two stopper knots.  

I haven't had that many lucky escapes but a long time ago I got sucked into soloing a E1 on the Culm coast just after leading my first one. I was just having a look to see If I wanted to lead it. It was easy to start and the crux move looked easy so I went for it only to find I was moving to a marginal sloper. The split second moment of realisation I had messed up and the seriousness of the situation with luckily a total focused calmness is probably the most memorable of my climbing. It still scares me thinking about it. It was idiotic. Especially as it was a knife edge pinnacle and I needed my mate to climb up and chuck a rope to me to climb down as my nerves were shot. The tide was coming in and we had to climb a 30m steep soil bank to get out. 

They are also easier to tie

Depends what you are used to.  Nothing worse than trying an apparently safer new knot in an emergency.

I had a ground fall at the weekend, falling about nine metres in total, wanging off a ledge and stopping about a metre off the ground thanks to two skyhooks and an excellent belayer. 
Walked out of there thanks to my friends battered, bruised and in shock.
So lucky, yeah makes me shudder! 

In a ground fall are you not supposed to hit the ground not stop a metre above it.

Come on, you will have tied overhands since age three.

CB

Bit harsh that I have to hit the ground twice to qualify!

Not that I felt particularly qualified at anything after that. 

But true and confusing description admittedly. Basically split level. Hit the 5m sq ledge (ground), bounced off and fell again. Deck out/ground fall - painful anyway.

Glad you are OK Tom!

Yes, but I don't trust anything that simple!

The Hornli Ridge on the Matterhorn about 20 years ago... It was our third attempt in three successive years, having been turned back by storm and unseasonally heavy snow on our two previous efforts. The mountain was only just coming into decent nick, so for such a trade route the ridge wasn't too busy. We soloed up to just below the Solvay, then put the rope on so we  could take a quick belay and continued. A little later, we were  simul-climbing above the hut, moving a bit off-line to overtake a slower pair ahead. My mate was in front and out of sight around a spur of rock. Suddenly, the large shield of gneiss on which I had both my hands simply lifted off in them and I was airborne. Didn't have time to think or shout. Just as suddenly I jerked to a halt and hung there suspended. I gradually became aware of Mike shouting from above. It was a few seconds before I could reply, the huge surge of adrenalin having stuck my tongue to the roof of my mouth. Mike had felt the movement through the rope, and although unable to see anything had immediately braced himself and in a very impressive display of strength, simply held me. Thank God he was a fit lad! In true Brit stiff-upper-lip style we said little about it until we'd made the summit and descended back to the hut. I bought him a whisky, muttered, "Thanks for saving my life, mate" and in Tillman's immortal words, "I believe we may have so far forgotten ourselves as to shake hands."

We got lost a couple of times on the descent and wasted so much time we had resigned ourselves to missing the last cable car down and dossing at the top station. However, when we arrived we realised it was the 1st August and the celebrations for Swiss National Day were in full swing, with a party, free food and drink, and cable cars running until late. We watched a firework display in Zermatt, the only time I've ever been able to look down on fireworks bursting high in the sky, far below. It all made for quite a memorable day!

Neither do the Americans, they call it Euro Death Knot...

CB

Thank you  

I am alive today thanks to one John Soady (I think that was his name, we were in the Gwydyr Mountain Club in Birkenhead). It was 1976, I was 18, and it was the hot dry summer and I was in N. wales to lead my first HVS, one Brandt Direct. After hesitating for way too long at the little crux at about 4/5 metres? I got past that and flew up the rest of the route. However, every runner I put in (and remember this was the 70's so it was probably Moacs and not much else), they all fell out. The only runner that stayed in was the one at the crux near the bottom. Stay with me here, this doesn't fizzle out. So in a state of high excitement I bring John up and then we rig the ab, I am just about to set off when my saviour says, don't you think we should check this......well he was right, I was seconds away from killing myself. Re-rig and down in one piece.

I used to get flashbacks at the weirdest times, sitting in work meetings (sales in London) or at dinners. Anyway I stopped climbing til about 12 years ago (cos we lived in London), when we moved to Cornwall, well one thing you learn is that there is a lot of abbing on sea cliffs. Do I check, you're damn right, everything every time twice. Weirdly repetition and experience means I don't get the flashbacks.

Thank you Mr Soady, and I hope I got your name right.

Abbing off the chamois with a mate in the 80s, we had a British length, 150' rope - I.e. short! Somehow I ended up free hanging off an ancient coin de bois (wooden wedge, with sash cord tat m- left over from 60s aid climbing), at the bitter end of the rope and about 10' above the detached pinnacle, which was the normal landing and way on. The exposure was immense; 500' drops all round. Andy came down and I took a friend off him to back up my amazingly precarious dangle.

You've reminded me of my own time on the Matterhorn.  We also soloed to the Solvay, not for speed but because we'd done very little Alpine climbing and didn't feel competent to move together roped up (Tom Patey's "two climbers falling together" comes to mind).  We shouldn't really have been there, in retrospect, but we were young and stupid.  On the way down I got off route several times, and on one occasion ended up in a loose gully which started to slide.  I was on my own with no one else in sight, and unroped.  Fortunately I managed to stop, got back on route and eventually arrived back at the hut.  I didn't think much of it at the time, other than relief, but whenever I look at the Matterhorn now I wonder "What were we thinking?"

My own ground fall story definitely involved plenty of ground and although I was carried out on a stretcher rather than walking away, I still feel incredibly lucky to have got away with it.

It happened on a misty December day at Rivelin. I had thoughts of going for The Brush Off, and was warming up on Fringe Benefit when it all went wrong. Conditions weren't great, so maybe I slipped - I've still no memory of what happened. Anyway, I hit the ground, knocked myself unconscious and a rock smashed my rib cage to bits: all twelve broken, several several times, and some puncturing my lung. There was a big turn out of emergency services: ambulance, police cars and fire trucks, plus the air ambulance which landed on top of the crag. I was drifting in and out of consciousness and not looking great. Unfortunately, they couldn't get me to the top of the crag and were debating how long they could wait for the big chopper - which was on another job - to winch me out. It was at this point that Edale MRT turned up. One of the team was Dr Steve Howe, who'd been spending his free day fund-raising in Sheffield city centre. He took charge, decided I was in too bad a way to wait any longer, and organised a human chain to pass me along and down to the ambulance on the road. My breathing was deteriorating badly and I was starting to fade - at which point he performed an emergency needle decompression to release the blood from my chest and get me going again. He came to see me in Northern General Hospital later and told me it was the first time MRT had done such a procedure in the field and he planned to give a presentation on it at their AGM! I assume I could have died at the crag if he hadn't been there.

I got equally lucky in NGH when my case was taken up by Mr John Edwards, an innovative young surgeon, who was pioneering an operation to rebuild badly damaged ribs with titanium. I was the first or second case in the UK. Without that op, I doubt I'd ever have breathed properly again. Thank you NHS.

That's two good reasons to shudder at how badly it could have gone if I hadn't been extremely lucky, but there's a third.  The first thing I remember when I first briefly came to was one of my mates asking if I could feel my legs. I could, thank God - but the reason he was asking was that the rock that smashed my rib cage to pieces had just missed my spine by an inch or two. Since then, I've never bought into the notion that you make your own luck.

That puts a chill up my spine..

Much less dramatic, but this does make me shudder after many long years...

I lived down by Avon for a while and one evening after work I set up quite a hard little route, Edgemaster. The conditions were not great, really warm and humid and I was not feeling it, but I kept on anyway. There is a bolt which is tricky to get to and I could see a hold next to it but I could not figure out if it was any good, so to my shame I called down to a lad who I didn't really know but who had top roped it and asked what it was like. 'Sinker' came the reply; now that was a lie. So I yarded upwards, realised it was a dodgy flat / slopey hold then fell off. My leg caught behind the rope and I ended upside down with my head about 6 inches off the ledge; no helmet.

I went back up and completed the route, which I am glad of as it took some the dread away.

I know that if I had hit that ledge it would have been curtains... So..

I learnt to listen to my inner voice better, and to wonder even more than usual about the honesty of my fellow man..

Back in the mid 80's in the grip of one of those epic cold winters I took upon myself to go and solo MamTor. Wandering up in my boots with crampons in my sac I saw dog footprints on the easiest line and decided that it would be far to boring to go that way so headed off up right to the bottom of a scoop feature and spent 20 minutes very precariously getting my crampons on and second axe out. The scoop got steeper, the hit and miss placements in the frozen shale between the rock bands got more difficult and I was eventually forced to traverse out left in some state of stress and kick a block the size of a beercrate out of the arete to get a standing position. Slightly calmer I managed the remaining 40 odd feet to the hard frozen grassy cornice, as I pulled over the  strap on my left crampon snapped and dangled from my ankle. Took five minutes of quiet reflection before wobbling back to the car.

About the same era on a solo of Millwheel Wall at Burbage as I briskly mantled onto the to top with my hands pointing inwards my right thumb twisted neatly into the empty belt loop of my "fashionable" painter's white trousers, so nearly went off backwards before I could slowly unmantle myself.

Sweaty palms typing this.

A fascinating thread - it seems that there could easily be many more dead climbers out there... a scary thought!

Puts me in mind of when I was walking out of the Cairngorm car park at a sensible time in the morning for a day's sport and saw a couple of climbers just returning to the car park after a day and a night's sport.  Quite made me shudder, that did   

My wife and I were winter walking in the Highlands somewhere, in difficult conditions. I thought I spotted something that had been dropped on the snow, a packet of fags maybe. I started walking towards it but my wife stopped me. After a couple of seconds the world suddenly shifted and made new sense. The fags were a farm building a couple of thousand feet below and I was standing on a cornice. In my head I could even identify the brand of cigarettes. 

Sadly unlike my other thread that I have not checked the last 100 or so responses on as it's probably just the same four people shouting at each other!

I'm still not sure where the 6-7 hours of my life went between getting to the belay below the top crux pitch at about 9pm and finishing the route at about 4am. Nothing as exciting as most of the stories on this thread though.

My own moment was relatively early in my climbing career where I got to the top of a route, put a sling and krab around a big tree and settled down to belay. When my partner was about half way up the pitch and a long way above the ground I realised that I had forgotten to tie in to the krab. 

I did something similar early on too. Walked around a big tree at the top of a route (having used all the rope so no slack around) but in a fit of absent mindedness put the rope straight into the sticht plate instead of attaching it to my belt loop, so that as my partner climbed the loop round the tree got bigger and bigger. Had to get him to stop on a ledge a few feet up so I could attach myself properly. Duh!

At least you were still attached to the tree, sort of...

Like the three stages of glissading ( standing; sitting; falling off), threads have a habit of going that way! Question; response; handbags at dawn. Hegel for the post-web world...