When were you last really scared?We'd been watching the Shining. We were staying in an old church building. In hindsight, taking the shortcut home after midnight, in the mist, through the old graveyard was a bad idea.
I'm not sure what started it, but suddenly all the hairs on my neck had gone up and I was crapping myself. It was almost as bad as when, after a few cups of coffee too many and buzzing on caffeine, I got freaked out by my own reflection in the toilets.
When were you last really scared?
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chthonic, Thu 22 Feb 2007, 15:43)
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ChalkLast year I was out dry-tooling the chalk at Telscombe cliffs in Sussex. You can't climb chalk like regular rock 'cos it's too soft, so you have to use ice tools (axes and crampons), and none of the routes are bolted for sport climbing 'cos it collapses so regularly there's no point.
Anyway, I'm about 40m up having passed the overhung crux, feeling pretty chuffed when the axe I'm rather relying on with my right hand levers off a chunk of chalk which immediately plummets towards the ground with me desperately trying to catch it, falling falling falling...
Not the first time I've taken a big fall so I'm not too worried on the way down, until I feel my gear placements being stripped out overhead. Cack, I was relying on them to stop death (which is bad for you), I fall back past the overhang and thank holy cock, come to a stop with about 2m clearance to the ground, eye level with my belay who's gone whiter than the rock.
Alive I thinks, only to look up and see about a kilo of ironwork (the stripped gear) screaming back down the rope towards my face (nooooo!) so I lean back quickly to avoid face to metal interface only for a large cam to whizz past my face, and smack me square in the testes. Which hurts (if you want to see how much this hurts, kick a post-pubescent gentleman between the legs and he'll tell you). I wept like a yeast infected minge. That was quite a scary experience.
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Drunken Sod, Sun 25 Feb 2007, 17:40,
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