UKH

 Sometime in the 1970's I was soloing up The Runnel (II) on Coire an t'Sneachda in winter conditions. I was with a mixed group of friends,and friends of friends,so some of the group were strangers to me. I was fit then and near the top I overtook an older climber who was soloing ahead of me. Then the strangest thing happened!  ......he caught back up with me and started pushing me with his shoulder towards the huge drop off to my left. I didnt understand what was happening! All I knew was that he seemed to be intent upon sending me to my doom over the edge. Luckily I was able to switch into another gear and get away from him. 

I caught up with my friends who had climbed ahead of us and told them what had just occurred. They said he was ex SAS. He had been blown up in an explosion of some sort and had a plate in his head where he had sustained a brain injury. They said he didnt like being overtaken! That he was a bit strange and it would be best to keep out of his way. Needless to say I did!  Forty odd years later it seems incredible but thats how I remember it. I still dont have a satisfactory explanation for what happened.......

Anyone else got other stories connected with climbing that seem fantastical but are true.?

I recall there was a rumour about a guy who broke both of his legs on a mountain in the Himalaya, and apparently he crawled all the way down again! 

Thats just too fantastical to be true...😉

I remember climbing in Wales once when I had just started multi pitch climbing .

I think it was on the East side of Tryfan .

I was leading a pitch and whilst fumbling around with my harness dropped a large nut ,  I clearly saw it bounce down a gully and land in  some heather not to far from where he was .

I shouted down to my partner about it and I said "I'll look for it when before I set off" .

Anyway when he got to the belay he informed me that he couldn't find it and so we assumed it was lost. 

Low and behold upon re-racking for the lead swap we found it still attached to my harness. 

I was very confused to say the least , I clearly saw it bounce down and land in a gully. 

Still to this day I have no idea what I'd seen ,  a glitch in the matrix perhaps .

Really weird .

I'd guess that you're collecting dislikes for "Himalaya", in case you're wondering ...

I think our minds play tricks sometimes. Theres definitely a PhD in it for someone.

I remember climbing in Portishead Quarry with three friends in 1994. Shortly after two of us started leading our routes some youngsters, who'd been playing in the quarry buildings, approached and started shooting at us.  quite scary as the pellets / bullets pinged off the rock close by.

Something similar happened to Tommy Caldwell in Kyrgyzstan. Maybe threy only shoot at good climbers.

I've only visited Portishead Quarry once as a quick stop-off on the way home after being rained off the south coast. Shotguns were being fired very near to us in the woods, motorbikes were being thrashed around and a bunch of yoofs were trundling rocks down the buttress next to us. We left with the impression that we'd visited a war zone. This was 4 or 5 years ago. 

Weird

I definitely dropped my car keys from the2nd  pitch of the Plum I think at Tremadog. They vanished into that dense under-storey and i presumed that was that. Got to the bottom and asked a climber who was belaying there if he's seen anything fall and he said "yes - just over there somewhere' indicating a larg area of dense undergrowth. I wandered over.  'About here?' 'Yeah'. Put my hand into the undergrowth and pulled out the keys. 

Any chance your partner liked messing with you?

I don't think so .  Re reading my post and I made some mistakes in my write up. 

I dropped the gear.  Saw it bounce down into a gully off to his right and land in Heather . 

I shouted him about it and he said he'd look. 

He looked before setting off and couldn't find anything.  It was still on my harness when he arrived at the belay.  

I don't know what I saw bounce down and disappear.  Stones aren't blue and shiney and anodised. 

He definitely isn't one for messing with me like that.  

I think I just imagined the whole thing, for some reason.  

Dalkey Quarry in Dublin - early 2000s - quarry is adjacent to a very well to do part of Dublin. Bono and Enya live very close by.

Sat below and area called 'The Eliminates" with a group of inner city teenages who we were working with.

Yellow tennis ball flies over the top of the crag and lands about 3m away from the group. No one blinks.

Yellow golden retriever flies over the top of the crag and lands 3m from the group. _quite_ the reaction.

About a 10m fall. Dog with obviously broken rear legs tries to crawl back up slab to owner.

Owner leans over and shouts "what have you done to my dog!" oblivious to where his ball had been flung. Younger "verbal" student shouts back up "You've only threw your ball over a f****n' cliff you muppet. Your s****y dog's not a bird you plonker".

Ensue much abusive language between owner and child. Dog, still trying to crawl back to owner. Poor thing.

Here's a strange, sudden and unexpected tale that happened to me many years ago at Mother Carey's Kitchen in Pembroke. At the time I was so amazed and confused that I thought I had entered an alternative universe or other dimension of space and time ....

It was a lovely afternoon and I was pulling up on the big jugs and pockets at the kitchen - can't recall the route but it was about VS so I wasn't spaced out (yet!) or hyperventilating. As I moved up and past a deep pocket I glanced inside and noticed there was a guidebook nestled in there. Oh, Goody - 'loot' I thought! I adjusted my position to reach in and scooped up my prize - a guide to Pembroke no less. I wasn't stretched and managed to flick it open. Imagine my surprise when I found my own name written inside. The shock of this apparent impossibility almost turfed me off the climb. Then common sense kicked in as I rationalised that my guidebook (tucked down the front of my vest) must have just tumbled out un-noticed at the exact moment I passed the pocket.

That's fantastic! I love these stories. How we tie ourselves in mental knots and the keep them secret. 😂

Did exactly the same with a nut key there!

Similarly, my watch fell out of my trouser pocket as I was wriggling up the top crack of Deidre Sud. I looked down to see it land in the open palm of a guy who had just turned up at the bottom.

Karakoram, possibly 

At Beeston Tor on Majolica, my mate dropped his car keys. We finished the route, abbed off and he started looking in the jungle for them. I went to phone the aa, days before mobile phones so I was jogging down the road looking for a phone box, 2 mins later he caught up with me waving his car keys. Anyone that knows Beeston can appreciate the extent of this miracle😀

A few years ago I was in the Verdon. I was waiting at a stance for my mate who was abseiling down to me, probably 40m above. I glanced up just in time to see our van keys fall out his pocket and start plummeting towards me. I leant back as far as I could and was certain i would catch them - but I fumbled it and they bounced out my hands. I watched them fall expecting them disappear hundreds of meters below, but by some miracle they were caught in a kind of vertical pocket about the size of a small bucket another 40m below. It even had some mud in the bottom to stop them bouncing out.

After that lucky escape we took several hours to find the correct abseils to the bottom of the gorge and then nearly got benighted on la demande. 

Climbing in ilkley quarry, my friend went to top out and shouted down that there was a problem and he couldn't finish the route. He had his hands over the top and was on good foot holds - I couldn't understand what the issue was. 

He was yelling something about sheep, then proceeded to down climb a few moves, remove his last piece of gear, then go off route to the left, finishing up a different route.

On seconding when within hearing range of him, he shouted at me to look at the top of the original route. Just over the top there were two sheep stuck in a gap between two boulders. The back sheep kept pushing the front sheep close to the edge, then with a lot of baaing and scrabbling the front sheep would push the back sheep backwards again. There was no room for them to turn around or get out, and it was no surprise that my friend didn't fancy attempting to top out and joining them in there!

We managed to rescue the sheep with a fair bit of swearing and heaving

I had a weird one on Fools Gold in Bus Stop Quarry. I had a finger jam in and it suddenly popped out, I managed to stay on but was a bit shaken and everything had gone all blurred wherever I looked. It took me couple of very confusing seconds to realise I'd knocked my glasses off as my hand recoiled from the hold but I hadn't felt them come off.

Luckily the specs were undamaged by their ground fall.

Never climb with children and animals.😊

Same happened to me. We need to use sports bands!

Kids with air rifles were a regular occurrence at Rosyth quarry.  Sometime they'd throw rocks over the edge too. A bit worrying.

First day in Tsaranoro (Madagascar), we climbed Out of Africa, a 14-pitch classic. My shoes were painful by the end, so I flipped off the heels for the long ab down. After only one or two abs, one of my shoes fell off and disappeared into the gathering gloom some 500m below, presumed never to be seen again.

Reaching the ground after the last ab, I landed on my missing shoe, which was nestled in the grass at the precise spot we touched down!

I climbed the ten pitch A Bigger Bang (7a) on the Perrons de Vallorcine one day with a mate, Fred Ancey. It was a hot day and we sat on the summit and took our shoes off and Fred promptly dropped his right Testarossa into the yawning couloir on the west side of the crag. Clearly it was lost for ever so, ever impulsive, Fred hurled the left one into the couloir, to join its friend, along with a stream of Gallic invectives. We rapped to the ground, Fred barefoot... and found the right one not far from our gear... but of course no sign of the left!