Climbing Extreme

Typically I’m fairly careful climber who tends to avoid unnecessary risks. Obviously there are times when everybody does something stupid, takes a risk he or she shouldn’t or makes a mistake. So far I have been pretty lucky. Apart from frequent burses due falling blocks of ice and one minor fall on ice protection (which took it just nicely) I haven’t had any serious accidents or been in a close to serious accident situation, except once.  This is a story about unnecessary stupid risk taken and a set of mistakes, which brought me close to a serious accident. Hopefully there’s a lessons to be learned, at least I think I learned something.

This particular occasion happened last year in Skibotn valley, northern Norway at ice fall called “Hourglass”. It’s very beautiful late season fall, with height about 250-350 meters. Since we already had two full days of climbing behind us at Tamok valley, we weren’t there for climbing. We were just probing for possible spots for the next season.

Under the fall, there’s quite long and steep approach on the snow. At the bottom snow wasn’t too hard, but once we got closer to the fall, it got harder. Eventually we almost had to put our crampons on to reach the fall. So we got there, had some tea and bread, put up the gear and my friend Jari did a short probing climb just to see what to expect later on. He came down successfully and we wrapped up our gear and started our descent.

At Korouoma, which is much smaller and never has such a hard snow, we have had habit to slide down the hill by our foot with a great speed and fun. Because it’s fast and because it’s fun we decided to slide there as well. I’ve done the fast sliding fun thing couple of times successfully in Sweden at Kebnekaise as well, again with a lot softer snow. Jari took the first ride and he went down really fast, but managed to slow down with his axe. So I jumped on. Unfortunately my speed got too fast and once I tried to slow down, I just couldn’t. The slide was out of control.

I tried to turn on so that I could hit my axe on the snow, and hit it couple of times, but without luck. This was mostly because the fact that at the point I started the slide, I had grasped my axe from the middle, not appropriately from the handle. In other words I wasn’t able to get enough strength to the swing and I wasn’t able to hold my axe tight enough to stop the speed either. At this point I did my fourth mistake; I tried to use my foot to slow down. This resulted an uncontroled rolling effect. So there I was rumbling down with astonishing speed. Fastest descent I’ve ever made, and roughest. Axes were flying, my backpack was flying, and equipment tied on the backpack was flying. I couldn’t do anything.

Fortunately once snow got softer and slope less steep, speed slowed down, just few meters away from large pile of stones. In case pile would have been located higher on the slope, it would have turned me in to a bag of broken bones. I was fortunate to have just a twisted arm and equally fortunate to have a friend with heavy duty pain killers. Later on in the evening I noticed that my chest was bleeding a bit as well. It was due the small puncture that my axe had done. Fortunately there was no any serious damage what so ever (though I guess I was lucky also with the axe).

Lessons learned:

• Ascents and descents can pose risks, so one has to pay attention. Don’t play if you’re not 100% sure about the conditions and the place. Since people tend to be more careful while climbing than while doing their ascents and descents, I could almost claim that those “easier” situations can pose greater risk due carelessness.
• Be prepared to use axes efficiently also during ascents and descents. Have a good tight grasp on the axe.
• Don’t use your crampons or foot to slow down, if the speed is too fast, you’ve probably already built enough momentum to throw you rolling if you do, use the axe instead. Try to use the axe as a rudder and keep them against the snow to gradually slow down your speed.
• Helmet is a good thing, also on ascents and descents. I had mine on. The only thing I did right there.

Location details:

View Larger Map

Few images from the spot below:

[Show as slideshow]

[View with PicLens]