yesterday, shelley and i went for a 13km run at Mt York in the Blue Mountains, from the lookout down Cox’s Road and up Lockyer’s Road. afterwards we decided to go for a quick climb at Mt York, specifically, the Crackle area, before going to meet our friends at the pub for Anzac Day drinks and frivolity. we probably should’ve just headed straight to the pub.

there are no bolts on the wall and i don’t own or pretend to know how to use trad gear properly, so we top-roped. the climbing route, specifically Snap, has a pretty long traverse left, so the rope is at a 45deg+ angle (from the anchors at the top) at the end of the traverse. falling would create some serious pendulum swings into a perpendicular part of the cliff. I lost purchase (grip) on the route called “Crackle” … and did just that.

my head hit the opposing wall first and i smacked myself in the back of the head. My shoulder and spine bounced off the wall, i heard some huge cracks in my body, and i swung back and forth again to hit the wall once more. Blood was really pouring out of me at this stage, and Shelley slowly lowered me to get ground where i proceeded to shout every foul word i could think of and make lots of grunting noises. I was in serious pain. i went into shock and wasn’t coping too well. Shelley found some help from 4 other climbers who rushed to help me out of the crag. i managed to walk the 300m out to the car with some help from Nice-Guy-Ed. shelley drove me down to Katoomba hospital where they stuffed me full of morphine, stabilized my neck, and took a bunch of x-rays. after a few hours in Katoomba, i was transfered via ambulance to the much larger, Nepean Hospital in Penrith, for CT scans. they let us leave at about 5am this morning when they determined there was no immediate danger to my spinal cord.

from the doctor’s report: scalp laceration, probable mid thoracic spine compression fractures (T7 & T8), no acute lumbar or sacral fracture, probably fractured fragment in the anterior aspect of the right SI joint. The Katoomba Hospital said i had a fractured scapula but Nepean Hospital did not confirm it.

in hindsight, my anchor was in the wrong spot. I should have set it up off the tree 2m left of the rappel bolts. Or i should have used a redirect. in any case, i shouldn’t have put Shelley and myself in that situation where we traversed so far left of the anchor, but i didn’t think we’d swing back that hard and fast in case of fall. lesson learned the hard way (again) i guess.

Before the Shit hit the fan.

The walk out from the Crag.

Morphine is good.

Head Laceration.