The wayback machine: My First Epic

The wayback machine is a collection of stories that took place years ago, but demonstrate elements of, or turned into full blown epics. 

Background

so, I was about 12(maybe less) , my parents, my brother and I were skiing the 8 or so kilometers from where the road closed near Spencers Ck to Charlottes Pass.

The plan

We were leaving late in the afternoon, not a lot of time to get to Charlottes. Dad was going to rush back to Charlottes where he had access to a skidoo, Mum was to watch both of the kids, and bring us along as fast as she could, and we'd get a lift the rest of the way on the skidoo.

The decisions

I honestly can't recall whether I was told this plan or not. But I chased after Dad, with no hope of keeping up, and kept on going... no headlight, no supplies, and night setting in.

The Story 

So I chased Dad, and had well and truly lost him by the pass. But I knew the way to Charlottes (it's pretty easy even covered in snow. Follow the snow poles up the valley till you see the lights). At some point night fell, and I lost the track, ending up slightly lower in the valley.

At this point the stories differ, by mine, - which I take to be true - I left the track at times, but followed it most of the time, and at some point I saw a skidoo pass close beside me, but it didn't stop, so I kept on going, following my memory, and the knowledge that I knew where to go, at one point losing the track and ending up in the bottom of the valley and having to turn back up to the road when I found the creek.

Eventually I saw the sign, and road into Charlottes, unfortunately my memory failed me, and I thought the road was after the sign, so I kept heading up the main road... Eventually I decided I must have made a mistake, and I decided to head straight at the township.

I made it maybe 10 meters off the road before I crashed... I couldn't figure out how to get up, so released my bindings... shortly followed by a short sound of a ski heading down the hill... I looked around, but couldn't find it, so I walked down the hill in the snow with one ski, through Charlottes and into the foyer of the lodge, glad to be finally able to stop and hungry as hell. I racked my one remaining ski, my poles, and lost my boots, knowing I couldn't take them upstairs.

I headed for the stairs, looking for food. Pushing through a crowd in the foyer area, not giving it a second thought. I was stopped by someone in the crowd, for of course it was a search party being prepared for me... but still. I knew where I was.



Dad's story is that he never passed that close to me, went and got mum and my brother, found that I wasn't there. He then took them to the lodge and started the process of starting a search...which I interrupted...

The next day I took him to where I crashed, literally straight to the point. and found the ski about 5 meters away.

Since then I've forbidden rescues until daylight the day after I'm meant to be somewhere...

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Hypotheticals from a hypocrite

There's a lot of blame at a time like this, there are the classic armchair critics saying that what happened was stupid, like they've never cut a corner or taken a risk. (Quite possible for the TR tough guys out there). We all say 'check your knot', wear a helmet, and all of the rest, and in most cases I'm an advocate of this. I'm also likely to solo across a ledge, unclip my safety to deal with a tangle on my anchor, and not use an autoblock to save a few minutes, and in summer I regularly choose to mitigate the certainty of sunburn rather than the possibility of rockfall.    In this case, the more details that came out, the more I went from "FFS, A simul-rapping accident on a big wall with no knots?" to "I can see a way for this to happen" using a logical train of occurrences and decisions that most pragmatic, and not risk-averse climbers could understand if not agree with.  I've done all of these things, I've seen this behavior
Read more

Butterfly Wall Direct

Image
For the first time in my life I've actually been applying myself to training for something, it's been about 10 weeks since I started an aperiodized climbing training plan, based loosely on Steve Bechtel's Logical Progression .  The basic premise is that you rotate between the three types of sessions, progressing them all simultaneously, rather than peaking and letting each of them fall in turn.  The results seem to be pretty good, I'm climbing harder than I ever have before, and am seeing benefits in all three areas.  Finger strength and general strength is improving (so surprising given that I've never done any lifts before)  My on route endurance is improving, and my ability to apply power is increasing as well.  I still struggle with setting goals, but one route that I've been keen on doing for years is Butterfly Wall Direct (24) at Nowra. I first had a look at it in January this year, and the moves felt surprisingly doable. I spent another
Read more

Trango Vergo, Review and Recalls

March  I've finally bitten the bullet and purchased an autoblock belay device, Actually, thats not quite true. I've had a Gri Gri for years, but it's used solely for tensioning slacklines. I've never liked the way they operate, I can't feed slack well enough with them, and with the exception of the times when someone is dogging a route, I've rarely found that the ATC guide isn't sufficient. You never short rope anyone, and give a better belay in general. However getting a rock dropped on me a few months ago has got me looking at alternatives, I've now got a MegaJul for cases where the rock is concerning. But it too struggles to pay out rope as nicely as I'd like if someone is going for a hard send on good rock. We'll see how the Vergo goes, everything I've heard about it suggests that it's a gri gri, but a little better. If it addresses a few of the gri gri issues I may use it a fair bit, if not, it will still be useful when someone
Read more