Climbers that are still alive will usually
have taken at least one large
screamer while
climbing. They will usually have seen some pretty
scary shit and will definitely have heard about some
pretty scary shit.
This node is to collect all of those tales where
the true insanity of the sport can be examined
in detail by the non climber, and where the climber can chuckle
as they read of situations they too may have faced.
Please indicate if said story happened to you,
was seen by you or you just heard about it.
I will start the bidding with a story that I heard about.
Some climbers were doing an
ice route up Crowberry
Gully which is on the side of the Buchaile Etive Mor
in Scotland. The leader fell and whipped the second off with
him. They both came down into a big snow drift.
The second seemed to be ok but the leader was lying in the
snow moaning in a fetal position. The people attending to him
started to examine under his clothing looking for
compound fractures or other obvious injuries.
Nothing, they kept looking until eventually
they were examining the groin area. The scrotum was empty,
but over the pubic bone there were two small lumps.
The climber's harness had pushed against his groin
with such force during the fall that it had pushed
his testicles out of his scrotum !!!
One of the people taking care of the chap placed a finger over each lump and pushed gently. The two lumps "popped"
back into the scrotum and the climber apparently
broke out in a smile similar to that of the Mona Lisa.
This story was told to me by the person who had done the
testicle popping, he was a member of Glen Coe
Mountain rescue team at the time.
The next story comes from the same person as the
previous story.
Somebody had been ice climbing. They fell off
and when the body was recovered it was missing it's head.
The mountain rescue team likes to hand in a full body
and they were searching for the head when a call
came from the morgue. The head had been found. It was
telescoped into the chest cavity, the climber had landed
head first.