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INTERNATIONAL MOUNTAIN CLIMBING SCHOOL
WELCOMES YOU TO THE 16th ANNUAL
MOUNT
WASHINGTON VALLEY
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I
C E F E S T I V A L 2009 |
| THURSDAY,
FRIDAY, SATURDAY & SUNDAY
FEBRUARY 5, 6, 7 & 9 |
| Bubba's
Screamer |
8
February, 2002 |
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After 25 years of ice climbing it finally happened ... today
I fell onto an ice screw. It happened in Johnston Canyon this
AM. Catherine and I had walked in with Finnigan - the Irish
sled dog - and my beautiful wife had warmed us up leading
a WI 4 pitch. My lead, I walked the half-height catwalk to
it's north end eyeing a stout pillar up the far corner, then
out a meter and a half roof to finish in the trees. I chimneyed
up between rock and the pillar placing six screws (three in
series at the top to safeguard the hard pull through the roof).
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| Must have been too hard because I went at it once
and decided that the better way to solve the problem was to
step across space to a "just" touched down pillar
to the south - another good screw. I turned onto that pillar's
front, tight under a one meter roof formed, like the other I'd
abandoned, buy the perfect horizontal shearing of bygone pillars
of substantial mass. I bridged my right foot wide to tag a 30
foot goatee that had formed over the old one meter truncation.
At least one other person had climbed here. A couple of hard
cranks with the left tool in the old ice top of the bygone pillar
and delicate tapping with my right tool in the goatee and I
got my left foot over the roof and I thought that it was over
and that it hadn't actually been that hard, many good rests. |
| I was getting stable in order to place
another screw. Tap, tap, tap with my right tool, thunck, and
then a lightning strike opening the ice and running up slope
from by my right tool! A hideous tearing sound like metal ripping
and me thinking: "OK, here we go". A flash of 30 ft,
and a number of thousands of pounds, of ice plunging away; a
violent tug then me sailing sideways and down. Absolute thunder,
my back arching as the rope caught me ... softly. "BARRY!
BARRY! ARE YOU OK BARRY!" "Ya, I'm ok" "YOU'RE
COMING DOWN RIGHT FUCKING NOW. I DON'T WANT TO CLIMB IN THIS
FUCKING PLACE! WE'RE GETTING OUT OF HERE!" |
| Catherine lowered me and I thought
that I had both tools, but when my feet hit the ground I saw
that my left tool was gone and that the wristband was still
closed tight around my wrist and that all eight bar-tacks that
attach it via two strands of 1/2 inch black webbing had blown! |
| I went back up with one of Catherine's
tools and cleaned the pitch lowering off of one screw and a
locking biner. Catherine found my left tool in the jumble of
debris at the base. A small silver metal ladder lock used to
hold the excess strapping against the micro biner of the "Liberty"
leash was gone and four inches of doubled webbing had run through
the 1cm slot at the base of the micro and stoppered. |
| My back, shoulders and abdominals took a tourquing.
The fracture ran up from me for six feet then across the very
top of the goatee for an arching 10 feet. The crown was 1&1/2
feet deep and the fracture stepped down into the old stub to
a depth of 1&1/2 meters. I think that my right tool snagged
in the parting ice and that pitched me into a horizontal crucifix
and the weight shot through my wingspan and exploded the small
ladder lock, the doubled webbing ran through the micro under
pressure and hit its end, then the bar tacks ripped in series
on both sides of my wrist and I was airborne. I think that the
recoil on my left tool popped it free to fall. |
Catherine was lifted about 4 feet until she snapped
tight to her ground anchor, slam-dancing her knee into the pillar,
great things those ground anchors when ice is filling the sky.
She allowed no rope to slip through her ATC.
I was caught largely by one of my 1/2 ropes (obvious from the
far superior tension in that knot at my harness), I'd alternated
the clipping on the way up. I was caught on Grivel's shortest
"360 Ultimate" ice screw (12
cm) and a 1/2 inch Wild Things sewn spectra single runner and
two Lucky carabiners. The screw was in good ice on top of the
first pillar and it hadn't moved at all, no powdering of the
ice below the screw at all. I estimate that the fall factor
at about .5 as I came to rest in space about 10 feet above Catherine.
I think that I took about a 25 foot fall on 55 feet of rope,
but it may have been 30 ft on 65 or 70 ft of rope. The 1/2 rope,
used properly, did a grand job. I was hoping to get through
having never fallen onto a screw, c'est la dic, I can now state
from experience that it all works! |
| Please share this with the greater
climbing world. |
| Respectfully
Yours, Barry (Bubba) Blanchard |
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