Just over a week ago Jon and I went up to Pavey Ark mid-week for some quiet rock climbing on its sunny, south facing, lovely rough and bubbly Lakeland rock…
We started off on The Bracken Clock (E2) and then moved on to Cruel Sister (E3). However, Cruel Sister was indeed a little “cruel” to me… I snatched for a poor hand-hold, which I couldn’t keep hold of! The resulting fall – from some three or so metres above the belay to about three metres below the belay – was quite a shocker! Not quite a bone breaking fall-factor 2 as the start of the pitch was a traverse a couple metres right, so I did have a little extra rope out between Jon’s belay and my single piece of protection, a bomb-proof thread under roof. Unfortunately I got a leg behind one of the ropes as I fell and got swung in to the rock sideways, breaking a rib! Ouch! 😯 :angry:
Ah well, I’m nearly fixed enough to head out again soon…
I just hope I can keep up with Jon in my post-injury state; he went back up to Pavey at the weekend and ticked an E3 and an E4! 😛 Good effort Jon! Fancy North Wales next?
Just tried to calculate (using the formulas on the linked Wikipedia page) the force on the thread-protection under the roof… I reckon it was about 2.7 tonnes! 😮 Jon, you’re the engineer, does that sound right-ish?
Not quite.
I get a similar figure (though a little higher, cos I reckon there was less frictional resistance from the anchor because it was level with me rather than above me), but the result is a force, measured in Newtons. To convert to tonnes, you’d need to divide by gravity, so only 0.3tonnes, or 300kg. :geek:
Either way, that yellow rope was due for retirement anyway, so thanks for encouraging the decision – got a nice new blue one now…
… ready for N Wales! Hosing down as I type this, but Thurs/Fri still looking good – fingers crossed, speak later!
Ouch! So does that mean you’re retiring the harness and rope?
OUCH! Glad it wasn’t worse.
Would you say it was worse than when you stripped off the end of your finger on Prana??
Nah, the finger-stripping was perhaps less painful, but it took so long to heal, whereas this time I should be back climbing this week (given a better weather forecast than we have at present)…
They say Racing car drivers are always pleased to have a crash & survive as it means another one won’t be along for quite some time – let’s hope in your case it’s a very long time!
Which just goes to show that racing drivers know nothing about statistics!