Accident Story

Tuesday morning, June 15, Eric and I got up bright and early psyched to start getting serious about climbing. After a few weeks of visitors and 4 days of pouring rain, we were looking at a weather forecast of 10 straight days of mid-80s and sunny. Eric had picked out a few awesome climbs that we would be able to swing leads on, so we packed up our gear and started a long, steep hike up to the Redgarden Wall in Eldorado Canyon. I led the first pitch of Green Spur, which was about 50 feet of 5.5 (very easy, even for me). I built a gear anchor at a small ledge, tied in, and belayed Eric as he climbed up to join me.

The next pitch was 5.9, and started with a tricky section in a sorta flaring dihedral. Eric got a piece of gear in above the anchor and spent some time trying to figure out the moves - climbing up to try something and climbing back down to a stance several times. It actually occurred to me during this time that if he fell in this tricky section, he would probably land right on top of me. With this in mind, I asked him to wait at his stance while I shortened my tie-in to the anchor. I was standing comfortably on a ledge with a long tie-in and was visualizing being knocked off the ledge if he fell, and didn't want to risk losing control of the brake strand. So I shortened my tie-in so that it was almost taut as I stood belaying. At some point, Eric was able to get a second piece of gear about six feet above my head, and I stopped worrying about him falling on me.

On his last attempt at the starting moves, he tried something a bit different off to the side a bit, so that even though he was no higher than previous attempts, there was more rope out. Without any warning, Eric slipped off the rock and crashed full force into my head. My perception is that he hit me with full force and immediately after, the rope came taut and caught him. It all happened kinda immediately and all at once - I felt sharp pain in my back, neck, and head and the first words out of my mouth were "Eric you broke my back!". For a second, I wasn't sure I'd be able to breathe properly or keep standing. Then I noticed extreme dizziness and confusion and my next thought was fear that I would lose consciousness and drop his belay rope. I said something like "Eric you have to take your rope I might drop you!" (I did not ask if he was ok until several minutes later, luckily he was unhurt and was able to think much more clearly than I). Despite my request, apparently I refused to let go of his belay rope, even after he was safely on the ledge and he eventually had to peel my fingers off the rope.

At this point, blood was gushing from a nice deep gash across my eyebrow, courtesy of one of the cams hanging on Eric's harness. I was aware enough to know that I wasn't in any condition to be thinking or deciding anything, and told Eric this. He was extremely calm and reassuring and told me I would be fine and he would take care of everything. Which he did. He lowered me to the ground, only 50 feet below, and then my mind went completely blank and I said "I don't know what to do now". Not getting any helpful response, I said louder "I don't know what to do now!" and burst into tears. This got the attention of two climbers who had been waiting to climb the route after us, then my gushing head wound probably convinced them I needed assistance, and they helped me untie and sit down. These nice gentleman later collected all our gear and left it at the bottom of the route for Eric to retrieve later. (We didn't lose a single sling or biner! Pretty impressive. Though some are slightly bloodier now.)

For the next hour or so, I remained extremely disoriented and confused. I repeatedly instructed Eric to call John, my boyfriend and fellow climber who had left 4 days before and was now in California. I was convinced that he was climbing nearby, and if Eric would just call him, he would be there in about 5 minutes and take me home. Also, the act of "taking me home" would magically make me uninjured. Eric, living in the real world, chose instead to focus his efforts on getting me to the hospital. What a jerk. I got increasingly agitated about this until Eric finally said "I just talked to John, he'll be here in 5 minutes." After which, I promptly forgot all about it.

I next decided that Eric should just "go get the car". Now, in my mind, this seemed perfectly logical. I mean, how lazy was Eric? Couldn't he see that I was hurt? I can't walk like this! Just go get the car. To understand this request from Eric's perspective, you have to visualize the trail we were on. Picture a staircase. Now, make it twice as steep. And 5 miles long. Now, instead of being made out of stairs, imagine that it is made out of a giant pile of rubble, loosely held together by the tenuous bonds of friction. Seriously. This is a no joke hike. It's not even a hike. Noone would hike there if they weren't trying to get to a climb. If you have great shoes and two free hands it's doable, but not fun. If you are a Hyundai Elantra, it is not happening. I believe Eric tried to explain to me that the only vehicle that could possibly get to us was perhaps a helicopter. I think it dawned on me slowly that this was not happening as I half-heartedly responded "so.... go get the helicopter?"

Instead of calling John in California or jogging down the trail to bring back "the helicopter", Eric chose instead to try to help me walk safely down the trail. Here's where my head wound really paid off. The laceration near my eye turned out to be the most superficial of my injuries, but stumbling around holding a blood-soaked t-shirt to my face (Eric just loves any excuse to show off his pecs) and, in general, being blood-soaked is WAY more flashy. Bystanders usually don't have X-ray vision, so they can't be like "Hey, I see you crushed some vertebrae! Need a hand?" But blood is like body-language for "HELP ME NOW!" and soon enough, a friendly fellow climber offered to help me down the trail. With friendly bystander in front and Eric behind, I now made safe and timely progress down the trail. And they only forgot that I couldn't see out of my right eye once.

After we'd gotten almost halfway down, my blood distress signal flagged down two more fellow climbers, one of whom volunteers with the Rocky Mountain Rescue Group. He made us stop and called them in, and they all responded to some magical bat-signal and swooped in to save the day. Some of them took my vital signs and poked things into me, some of them strapped me into a giant litter, some of them bandaged my face, and all of them were super happy and friendly and nice. This is really impressive, considering they managed to stay happy and friendly and nice even while carrying me, in a giant litter, down the trail. That trail that I described earlier. While I was all cozily packed away, with no other task than to lie there and look pretty, I heard things like "Loose rock on your side there, Allison"; "Watch out for that tree branch, Allison"; and "Yay, we get to walk straight through a giant patch of poison ivy. Shame you aren't wearing pants, Allison." Allison was super badass and chill about it all though. This was some seriously strenuous, uncomfortable, hot, dangerous, and itchy work and they still had energy to make bad jokes for me.

After I start a blog, maybe my next project will be to bake some cookies for them. I used to work as an EMT, and if there's one thing I learned, it's that you can never have too many baked goods at the squad house. Luckily for our patients, I learned WAY more than one thing. I'm just saying, nobody hates cookies.

UPDATE: I will always be sorry that we didn't get any pictures of the rescue operation or of my completely bloodied face immediately post-accident. This was the best we could do the next day - we are trying to show off my stitched up eye and Eric's blood tie-dyed T-shirt at the same time.

 Sigh... it looked so much cooler the day before.