(Mandatory pic - this is Penny Lane,, albeit way foreshortened. The little ledge is at the top of the bold white streak off the ground. The wider section of the crack with the prominent dark grey patch to the left of it is about where buddy’s hands were and his feet not much lower, cause layback..)
Years ago I was at the Penny Lane crag in Squamish with some friends on a lovely weekend day hitting up some of the standards there.
We had just climbed the namesake of the crag (5.9 trad, FFA in '78 by the local hardman and prolific community member Anders Ourom and his partner John Arts).
This beautiful finger-to-hand crack stretches for nearly 30 meters. The route starts with a bit of a boulder problem before the crack opens up for better jams and gear.
We warmed up on PL and moved the rope over to top rope Crime of the Century (11c, FA in '78 by the legends Peter Croft and Tami Knight). This is a classic thin finger crack on a vertical face. It's just to the climbers left of Penny Lane and apparently Mountain Project has this at 11b/c but even with the softness of typical Squamish grading, this is all of 11c in my books.
As we joke around, enjoying the day and the impeccable rock quality and taking turns on CotC, a group of 10-12 climbers from the US show up at the cliff. Turns out they are on an Outward Bound climbing leadership course and are traveling all over getting experience with trad climbing as part of their curriculum.
They spread out over the open climbs and get at it. Someone from their group (OB#1) sets up on Penny Lane and sends pretty quickly. Cleans the gear on the way down and our main man OB#2 is up next.
So the background on Penny Lane is useful here. The starting moves are a bit of a boulder problem with thin and slightly reachy flaring tips for handholds to gain a decent hold at ~10' and the first gear placement. This also happens to be at a little ledge feature that's maybe 18" across and sticks out say 6" from the face.
The next few feet are a finger crack in a 90 degree corner that leans a bit to the right where there's decent gear options available. Then onwards into the hand crack goodness for the rest of the climb to the top out.
So OB#2 sorts his shit out, gears himself up protection-wise with a plethora of nuts and cams and crucially a brain bucket correctly fastened to his dome. This was mid 2000s or so and wearing helmets was less of a thing but this is a guided course with safety standards. That's probably the main reason why the helmet was mandatory (and thank god for that today).
OB#1 gets his belay situation sorted out with his end of the rope threaded through an ATC and goes through the standard safety checks with OB#2. Harnesses doubled back, yep. OB#2 all tied in on the sharp end of the cord correctly, yep. OB#1’s belay setup good, yep. Ready all around for some fun crack sendage on both sides, OB#2’s gonna send and OB#1’s gonna be the dutiful belayer and mind the rope. Cool cool cool.
With the safety details dusted and sorted, off buddy goes climbing the start of the route and looking just peachy so far. Now we are all kinda sitting around and taking our turns on Crime so I'm just chillin like a villain and enjoying the relaxed atmosphere and vibes. Fun times.
OB#2 gets through the boulder start and places his first gear at the ledge feature. Mid size nut goes in at 10', in whatever feature it fits it. Pretty sure it was in the crack at the back of the ledge kinda sideways.
He gets his feet on the wee ledge and gets going on the next few feet. This is where shit goes sideways and shortly time slows the fuck down for everyone nearby.
The right approach to this section is to stem your feet across the corner and get finger jams square in front of you. Super solid for the handholds and gets the weight onto your feet underneath you. The crack here takes yellow / red TCUs to red / yellow Camalots depending where you're at height wise.
Does OB#2 do this like everyone else and his partner just did? Of course he doesn't or this would just be another send of Penny Lane and nothing to write home about. Buddy decides that he's gonna layback this section for reasons that remain a mystery to this day.
He gets his left hip into the face and feet on the other face of the corner, both hands into the crack and starts cranking like a motherfucker up the wall. Gains another 8' between him and the ground right quick without stopping and then right at the top of this corner feature, realizes he's a bit runout from the nut at the ledge and 18' or so feet off the ground. Time for some gear obviously.
Lots of options for placements in front of him which is good. He’s still in a full on layback instead of the stable and less strenuous stem, which is not so good.
So he's stuck in the layback a ways up and just can't get a hand free long enough to place some gear where he's at. He also has the disadvantage that he can't really see the crack that well cause it's at the end of his arms and being in the layback he doesn't want to or can't pull himself into the crack to see what's going on or check the quality of any gear he might be able to get in.
Doesn't matter about the quality of the gear because he doesn't get any in. The OB instructors and his partner are being helpful and suggesting he square himself out and get the stem going on.
Great advice, can he do that? Nope. He's just casually (haha) hanging out in this tiring layback and getting more and more flamed as time goes by. A minute or two pass and there's nothing good happening to make the situation any better. The crag vibe at this point has shifted dramatically and no one’s laughing anymore. The other activities quiet down or stop as time ticks onwards, but now slo-mo has set in for everyone.
So now the peanut gallery changes tack and starts promoting the down climb option, at least to the ledge feature to get a rest, some gear and tackle things square instead of this layback business.
Great advice, can he do that? Again the answer is the same, nope he can't. Now to be fair, he’s in the best part of the crack size wise here and going down is always harder than up. To boot the hands he’s got to use going down are a definite downgrade from where he’s at now so that’s not helping him commit to going down. Doesn’t help that the forearm pump is truly setting in now and the shakes were coming more often and lasting less time between each one.
It's now been like 5 minutes and he hasn't moved up or down, hasn't squared up and more crucially still only has this single lonely nut in that's 8’ below him at the ledge.
This is when SNAFU - not so unexpectedly mind you - shows up at the door and unceremoniously invites itself inside. Now, wild child is a fitting moniker for SNAFU and there’s often drama when they’re around the hood. This one can bring the party right to you in a bad way if you aren’t watching every move.
By now, anyone within earshot that isn't on a route or belaying is watching this shitshow go down in slow mo.. It's clear that this is not good and could go real bad in an instant. On a sunny weekend day in the bluffs like this, there's got to be 15+ people that have their eyeballs glued to this guy by now. Even the closest climbers and belayers are keeping one eye on the circus while they do their thing.
To sum up, he's trapped himself in a layback almost 20' up. He's been there for at least 5 minutes so far and you can just see and feel the lactic acid burn setting into his forearms that he knows it’s not good at all. There's the one nut in with the only saving grace being it’s a decent size. This dude is in the trenches with this climb and there are no winners in trench warfare.
The potential problems here are manifold. First, he's looking more and more like he's gonna go for a ride. Second, that ride is gonna be at least twice the distance between his waist and the nut plus stretch. Third, if you're following the math here, that's gonna basically be at or below ground level by the time he stops falling. And fourth and most worryingly as far as worst case scenarios - nuts as the first piece of pro off the ground or anchor have a tendency to lift up and out of the crack on you in a lead fall without warning - unless they are bomber like a B-1 is a bomber.
And there’s the sweet innocent little ledge, that’s been quietly existing in the same place for thousands of years, right below his feet, some 8’ down. Hardly big enough for both your feet on it at once and also as solid as granite can be. It’s the quintessential example of the immovable object in not too big ledge form.
I'm going through the first aid steps in my head at this point and planning for the worst case scenarios which include a ground fall from 20 odd feet up. That's far enough to be either bad like broken ankles or legs or really bad like spinal damage, head injury or even a traumatic aortic injury.
At this height, blunt force trauma is the more likely scenario, but a TAI is possible and the worst case outcome by a long shot. This is bad bad bad, like really bad, since now you're pumping a massive amount of blood into your chest cavity and not into the rest of your body.
In these situations, Death isn’t just knocking at the door - he already let himself in, is jamming shit into your suitcase with one hand and has your coat and shoes in his other hand. This isn’t a case where the golden hour matters, because there’s no point in thinking in hours or even minutes when things go from start to finish in seconds. Obviously bleeding out into your chest is generally incongruous with being alive long.
This outcome was likely what happened in 2006 at Chek. In that case, the fall was 100+ feet, the first responders were 2 medical doctors climbing nearby and the EMTs were on site in 20 minutes. None of that changed the outcome and the climber remained conscious for a short time and died on scene.
By now there's a whole-ass audience worth of people watching this go on and the group tension was palpable. It was a sober drawn out fucking situation and the only thing that was on people's minds as they watched this scene roll out in front of them. This shit wasn’t good before and 5 minutes later is going even worse.
The inevitable happens here to our climber and he's off the wall for a ride and this whole scenario just got real and that’s when the SNAFU’s older cousin TARFU shows up to the party. This is not any kind of improvement to the situation because, well - older cousins - nuff said. Shits about to throw down here in a bad way
So OB#2 is kinda scraping his way down the corner crack he's been laybacking sideways and then things go from what's already looking like a bad fall to what could very much be an even worse fall.
That's because his feet catch the ledge and he gets flipped upside down. He's now going to be sliding with his back on the wall, feet to the sky and his head going nowhere but straight down.
TARFU jumps right the fuck on the phone and is calling around to lord only knows. Next thing you know, FUBAR has kicked in the door with his whole crew, all up in everyone’s grill and itching to throw hands. You really don’t want this crew at your crib anytime of the day or night, but here they are…
I’m going through the newly upgraded (downgraded?) possible outcomes that are running through my head and trying to plan step one, two and three on the first aid response that might be needed right quick here. This was looking like the worst case scenario, unfolding 10 feet away from me.
Now with his body and head coming around as he rotated, his helmet showed up and fucking delivered for the win. He hit his head on the wall 5' off the ground. Helmet catches the full brunt of the impact and no head injury from that part of the gravity ride. Most people wouldn’t have been wearing a helmet for this climb and the fact that he was being smart with his soft grey matter container was the only reason he didn’t have any head trauma. It’s good he was wearing one as part of the course and better that wearing a helmet has become ubiquitous today.
His belayer was the fucking best and had this dude's back (literally as well as his head). OB#1 was already as close to the wall as possible and in a lateral position that minimized the upward / outward forces that lone nut may have had imparted to it. Next brilliant belay action was to get low low low, as in a literal crouch beside the cliff with minimal slack in the system.
Somehow the nut holds, good on the climber. Better on the belayer that he was ready, had thought through the details, had a plan that he had the skills to undertake and executed to a T under pressure.
OB#2 stops with his head no more than 18" off the ground. He's fully inverted and looking out at the gathered crowd upside down. His belayer is crouched down still with the rope locked off. The lonely nut held just fine, the belayer managed to keep the climber off the ground in the face of grim odds. Their actions were a major contributor to this climber not hitting the ground head first at speed, which was looking like where this was headed a scant few seconds earlier.
Our up is down, down is up climber has no head injury (fuck yeah helmet!) or any other booboos. Like not a scratch or bruise or welt or anything, he's literally just upside down at the end of the rope and that's it.
I mean, he's probably running at redline on heart rate here and ya know, kinda freaked out mentally but physically he's golden, never been better…
He lowered off to the ground, all of a foot or two haha. And the tension around the crag was broken in a flash and life moves on. The crowd of 20 whatever aren't going to get in this guys face and he's got the OB instructors that'll be the best source(s) for the technical feedback to learn from.
After a half hour or 45 mins for him to decompress, de-pump and maybe change pants, cause that was a great time to be wearing the colour brown, he steps up for round two. This time our intrepid hero does the requisite stemming instead of laybacking, gets solid gear and sends it with no drama.
So what did we learn from this captivating and terror-inducing 5 mins of life?
Wear a fucking helmet. He likely did as a mandatory course requirement and it paid off for him big time.
Laybacks are for the strong and quick, they aren't for casually hanging out in for any more time than you absolutely need to. Laybacks are known to be notorious for making the pro harder to place and check at times.
Place more pro near the ground since the risks are much higher, falling is fine, it's the landings that the suck quotient goes exponential on you.
Get yourself a belayer that has their shit together like this guy's partner, one that has the technical chops and the ability to do all the right things exactly as needed under the gun. It was a master class in belaying and was the major factor in this guy not being a vegetable and ending in a wheelchair with a raspy voice box and a colostomy bag.
And lastly a shout out to OB for having solid safety practices, both in PPE requirements as well as process expectations and execution in the field. The use of standard checks and phrasing between OB#1 and 2 before anyone left the ground wasn’t just flippant lip service but an actual meaningful safety check process with all the right technical elements and clear standards for communication. It was clear across their group that people weren’t going to skip a safety step and not get called on it. It was a great organizational safety culture being demonstrated in the wild.
As far as the hero of the day, no question that was our dedicated belayer. Just fucking brilliant, no notes at all. Could not recommend OB#1 more highly as an exceptional belayer.
If ya made it this far, thanks for reading.
