I had a bit of a epic sport climbing on Saturday and I spent the time (24h) in Hospital thinking about what went wrong. First of all it was a normal day. Good warm up and I was feeling super psyched after doing a 60 meter 7b+ On sight. The route I wanted to try next had a line of people waiting so I went for a 7b to the right. A steep looking corner. The bolt line was on the left wall of the corner and looked quite straight forward. As lots of stuff in Ceuse this route was bolted with some distance but not looking unsafe. I got to the last bolt under the belay and it was far to the belay so I tried to rest a bit. Going for the last meters I had to cross the corner to the right and now at the same level as the belay I had to do a few traverse moves to clip the bely. But then shit happen.
The biner in the belay was blocked and i down climbed to rest and go up and put a draw in the belay. How ever the holds at the belay was not that good so I started to pump out as I was climbing above the belay on the left to see if I could clip from left above. This did not work so I decide to try and dyno to some thing that looked like a good hold way above the belay to the right. Not a great call... I fell and got my left foot behind the rope and fell head first.
How did I manage to screw up like that? Well part of the answer is found in the way the route is bolted. Having a 30 meter bolt line on the left hand wall and the belay far from the last bolt and on the right hand wall its kind of a no brainer that a foot can get stuck if one is falling off.
I ended up slamming in to the left hand wall and got pretty badly beaten up. On the ground I had BAD neck and back pain. But I walked down under my own power. I decide that it was a smart thing to go and have an x-ray as I was getting more and more stiff. Nothing was broken just badly beaten up and stiff.
For safety when belaying I think http://www.powernplay.de/ can be of great help. This accident would not have been prevented if the belayer would have done any thing different but quite a few accidents could be avoided with good communication and constant observation.
