Steve and I met on a Sunday. When he dropped me off at home that night, he asked me if I wanted to get together sometime to go climbing. I did, but I had triathlons the following two weekends, was leaving town for a conference a few hours after completing tri #2, and wasn't planning to climb much in the interim. However, I had pre-existing plans to climb with another friend that Wednesday afternoon, because I had to take off work anyway to let in some workmen. Steve was free that day and didn't mind joining us, so we made a plan.
The day didn't turn out quite as expected. Below is the e-mail I sent out to my circle the following day:
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From: Mad
To: Everyone I [email protected]
Date: Thursday, July 31, 2003
Re: Why we wear helmets
Forgive the mass e-mail, but I wanted to tell you guys what happened yesterday.
I had taken vacation time for the afternoon to handle some house stuff and go climbing. I got home around noon and got really lucky because both the contractor and the cable dude showed up right on time, so I was able to leave the house by two. Yay! D. picked me up, we headed west to get a new friend, Steve, then drove up to Highwire Crag in Clear Creek Canyon.
Steve led an easy 5.7 sport route, then I led the same route to get my sea legs back after a month off from climbing because of my sprained ankle. I had just touched back down to the ground and was about to untie from the rope when we saw a body come hurtling down from the top of the rock and land - THUD - on the ground about 5 feet away from us.
Steve and D. jumped into action and ran down the tricky approach climb to the road, while I tore the rope out of my harness, ran over to the fallen guy, and tried to get his girlfriend to stop screaming. He was blue in the face and foaming at the mouth, bleeding badly from a gash in the back of his head and lacerations all over his legs and arms. Quickly and carefully, we got his head supported, enabling him to breathe, got some clothes over him to warm him up, and within a few minutes he pinked up, moved his extremities a little, and regained a bit of lucidity. There were three other guys climbing a ways down the crag, and they also came over to help. I concentrated on keeping the guy stable and warm and trying to stop him from moving his head around. I also tried to get his girlfriend to calm down, since she was pretty hysterical.
Meanwhile, D. and Steve had just gotten to the car and were about to drive down the canyon (we were at least 20 minutes from cell service or a land line phone), when they saw a casino bus heading towards Black Hawk. Steve had the good sense to realize that the bus would have a CB radio, so he jumped out of the car and waved it down. The driver called emergency services, and a state trooper happened to be just down the canyon. The trooper radioed for a search/rescue team and then hiked up to where we were. He didn't really do anything for the hurt guy, but at least was able to maintain radio contact with the rescuers and let us know that help was on the way. Within a few minutes, the news helicopters were circling overhead, the troopers had closed off the canyon road (I'm sure pissing off legions of rush hour commuters), and by about 30 minutes after the accident, the EMTs were on-scene. They got the guy on an IV and in a better position, and determined that he was in surprisingly good shape (relatively speaking, that is). Meanwhile the girlfriend started panicking again because their puppy had taken off when the guy fell (we never did find the dog, unfortunately, but it has their phone # on its collar, and there should be climbers in the area today, so hopefully someone will find it soon).
In between the time that the guy fell and the time the EMTs arrived, it started to pour - one of those short, intense afternoon mountain storms, with lightning and even a bit of hail. We had a tarp under our rope, so I whipped it out and we set up a shelter over the hurt guy. I also took everyone's spare clothes and rain jackets and put them over the guy to keep him warm. When the EMTs reached the site, we all stood in the rain, holding the tarp over them while they worked. I managed to crouch under the tarp, holding it up above me, but Steve was holding the IV bag up high and stood patiently in the downpour.
Perhaps 45 minutes after the fall, the Golden Fire Department search/rescue folks arrived. D. and another friend of ours, G., who had arrived on his motorcycle while this was all happening, helped them rig up a pulley system with one of the climbing ropes so they could get their gear up the approach. The rescuers brought up a stretcher and a really cool device to help them lower it down on the rope system. Once they got the guy immobilized and warm, they very slowly lowered him down (partly being carried, partly on the rope system) to a waiting Flight for Life helicopter.
After the approach was clear again, I helped the girlfriend get their backpacks down to the road and went with her to the hospital, while Steve and D. cleaned the couple's climbing gear from the rock (and ours, too) and met me at St. Anthony's a little bit later. The guy was in CAT scan when we left; the ER folks had said he would basically be fine, but had a really close call.
Apparently, the two of them had miscommunicated somethin' awful. He was planning to lower down on the rope, whereas she thought he was going to rappel. I guess she thought he was clipped into the bolts at the top, ready to come off belay and set up his rappel. On the other hand, he thought he would just lean back on the rope and lower down. I'm not sure how they made such a huge mistake, since you ALWAYS decide with your belayer, BEFORE you leave the ground, whether you're lowering or rapping off, but in any event, she took him off belay. So when he leaned back, there was nothing holding him up, and he fell all the way from the top of the route to the ground! Truly horrifying.
What makes this sad story even worse is that (as I learned while riding to the hospital with the girlfriend) they have been climbing together for 3 1/2 years (so they should know their communication routine by now!), they're engaged and supposed to get married on September 6, and yesterday was her birthday. Ugh.
Oh -- and the three other guys up on the crag were DRUNK! When we were all standing together holding the tarp over the guy, I could smell them reeking of booze. They probably thought I was a huge b**ch, but I totally yelled at them and said something like "I hope this reminds you that climbing is dangerous enough, and you can't add to the risk by drinking!"
Anyway, by the time the guys met me at the hospital, it was almost 8 and none of us had eaten all day, so we got some food and tried to stop seeing the body falling from the sky over and over in our minds. It was a hell of a scare, and a big reminder of why you have to be absolutely certain about your protection system in climbing.
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We later learned that the guy had a serious head injury that took 16 staples to close, two broken legs, a broken shoulder, broken ribs, a punctured lung, countless bruises and lacerations, but no paralysis. He was home from the hospital in less than a week. They finally found the dog that Saturday, four days after the fall. And according to friends of Steve's who (coincidentally) know the couple, they got married last September as planned.
Despite all my whining about hum-drum first dates, I could have done with a little less drama on this one. But I've never before come away from a first date with such a good sense of a guy's strength of character, calm under pressure, and lightning-quick problem-solving ability.