Scary bolting incident.

Posted by climbingtrash on 1/14/2007 on climbingtrash's blog

I've been meaning to tell this story for awhile now, but haven't had time until today and since it's too damn cold to do anything, here goes, but I'm not a very good writer so bear with me.

A few years ago I was putting up a new route in Maple Canyon on a new wall that didn't have any routes on it yet. I couldn't get on-top of the wall and place the bolts on rappel so I was using the Willy-stick to place the bolts on lead. I was with a friend that day but I decided to give her a break and instead of having her belay me I self belayed with a gri-gri and all was going well until I reached the spot where I wanted to place the anchor. I wanted the anchor to be just a little higher than I could reach so I placed a removable bolt to hang from and left the Willy-stick still hanging on the wall. I then started to drill the hole for the first anchor and with the hole half way drilled I stopped to rest and reposition myself a little on the RB.

Now it's important to explain here that when I'm drilling a new route I have my drill leashed so that if something happens and I drop it it won't go to the ground. I had the leash clipped to a sling I was wearing over my right shoulder and under my left arm, which would soon turn out to be a painful mistake.

So I'm hanging from this RB resting, with my drill still half way in the wall and my last bolt at my feet with the Willy-stick still clipped to it. As I repositioned myself on the RB the damn thing pops, but instead of taking the ride, and pray that my belay technique works, the leash to the drill comes tight and catches my fall but that brings the sling that it's clipped to up across my neck and starts to choke me! Luckily the Willy-stick is still hanging from the wall and I was able to clip back into it and get the leash unclipped before I passed out.
When I got back up to my drill, it took some doing, but I was able to get the bit out of the wall and this is it...

Bill [the willy-stick inventor and all-around hardman], and I had wondered what would happen if you were to fall while in the middle of drilling a hole and I guess I answered that question for everyone. Needless to say I'm a bit more careful when I'm hanging on an RB now and I don't ever rest with the drill still hanging in the wall.