The Fall

I slid on a 5.9 route while rock climbing in an area called Exit 38, about, oh, say, 38 miles east of Seattle (right off I-90). [If you know your way around Exit-38, I was in the Deception area on Write Off Rock, climbing Knife in the Toaster.]

The face on this part of Write Off Rock is shaped not unlike some sort of exponential growth curve. Starts out at a nice even angle and but just keeps getting a little bit steeper. Well, when I got to the pretty darn steep part, and was something like 7 or 8 feet above my last bolt (and not far from clipping in to the next one right at the top of this steep section), I slipped. Because Write Off Rock is so accessible, much of the face has been polished smooth by countless shoes and chalky hands. One moment I was looking at my next move, then something slipped and, bang, off I went.

Because of the angle of the face I didn't tumble, and I didn't fall away from the rock, and I couldn't push myself away from the rock. I just slid down it.

And I slid and slid.

As I recall, I was more or less spread eagled and constantly trying to latch onto a passing nub. This didn't help.

So my belay partner caught me (thank you!) just like she was supposed to, and after swinging around to face out, I came to a stop maybe 20 feet off the ground (and who knows, it might have only been 8 feet, my perspective was a bit screwy).

My body had that kind of shocky feeling you get when something is really wrong, and I had a kind of dull distant pain in my right ankle. I looked down to see white bone sticking out to the left and my foot hanging limply off to the right. Blood was dripping slowly from somewhere. Ouch.

When I looked down past my ankle, I could see that my belay partner's eyes were as big as saucers. This confirmed for my rattled brain that things really were as bad as they looked.

Some other folks immediately began scurrying around my belay partner. Two other couples (one with kids) had been climbing the wall when we got there and they sprang into action in what seemed to me to be a well oiled machine. The two women were the most medically qualified, one was a nurse practitioner who works as an ER nurse in Portland and the other was a radiologist that practiced at Overlake hospital (where I would end up going later). The dad took the kids on a little hike - I'm afraid that the kids were a little freaked by the whole thing - and the other guy was immediately on the phone calling 911.

If you are ever going to be in a climbing accident, these are the sort of people you want to fall among!

So my belay partner lowered me to these two women who laid me out in the gravel along the trail and positioned my foot in a way that limited the bleeding.

One advantage of climbing in the Deception area at Exit 38, at least if you get injured, is that the Iron Horse trail (a wide gravel trail that used to be a railbed) can be accessed by ambulance.

Since we didn't need to reduce the fracture, and since I wasn't bleeding profusely, we just played a waiting game. I'm sure the ambulance was there relatively quickly. For me, it felt like they took ages.

But finally the paramedics arrived and started packaging me up. My ankle was just now really starting to hurt, but the paramedics had brought along some nice happy pain medications which took care of that pretty quickly. Once my ankle was stabilized in a temporary splint, they I was loaded onto a backboard and then into an ambulance. Riding the bumpy trail in the back of an ambulance was painful enough (even with the nice happy pain meds) so I'm really glad I didn't have to get hiked out in a litter.

I was actually doing remarkably well, between my shock system and the pain meds. Talked and joked with paramedics a fair amount, and even got them to take a photo of me laid out in the ambulance. Isn't the thumbs up cheesy?



(In case you're wondering, yes I've intentionally left names out to protect privacy.)