Rock Climbing Rescue on Tiger Wall, Arapiles and Near Miss on Balls Pyramid

Climbing safety is everyone’s responsibility, and it’s something our editorial team are incredibly passionate about. Our Tale of Whoa column is our continued commitment to creating a culture of safety within our community. This edition we welcome guest contributor Natimuk climber Keith “Nod” Lockwood, who recounts some key moments from his five decades of climbing—an early rescue on Tiger Wall, Arapiles, and a near miss on Balls Pyramid.

Knees up

Arapiles 1967

The climb Syrinx, 510ft, grade mild severe (170m, grade 10 in modern terminology) was pioneered by Bruce Hocking and Michael Stone in 1964. It has become a popular three-star classic, but perhaps partly because of its popularity it has also seen its fair share of accidents ranging from the trivial to the fatal. One of the earliest mishaps was in 1967, when a young climber Carol* and her climbing partner Colin* ran into trouble on the second pitch. 

Carol, in the lead, fell from a few metres above the belay ledge. She had a runner in, but the ledge was coming up fast. Instinctively, Carol bent her knees to prevent her feet from slamming into the ledge. As the runner began to arrest her fall, her knees smashed into the ledge.

Murray Taylor, Garry Sudholz and I were walking past Plaque Rock when we saw the local doctor Rod Sutherland and a Natimuk policeman on the road. They stopped the car when they saw us and asked for our help—we were the only other climbers at the mount, a typical situation half a century ago. Murray, Garry and I were 16 and had only started climbing the year before. Nevertheless we had already ticked Syrinx in our new green guides.

Garry led me up the first pitch chimney (the arete had not been climbed then) and we pulled up the VCC stretcher which was stored in the Sudholz farm woolshed. The ledge was pretty crowded now but we managed to get Carol tucked and tied into the stretcher with a canvas “nappy” to take her body weight off her legs. Colin was pretty distraught, so it was up to Garry and me to lower her to the ground. Easier said than done. Harnesses and belay devices did not exist. Waist belays were the latest technology—wrap the rope around your waist and hold it in both hands, feeding out or taking in as required. 

We lowered Carol, taking care to go slowly so the rope would not burn our hands. Ropes from the foot of the stretcher went to Doc and Murray on the ground so they could stabilise the stretcher and hold it away from the rock. We did not hear how Carol recovered. Her injuries were clearly painful but not life-threatening.

*Names changed to protect privacy.

Take-home message: Many rescues present a unique set of circumstances, and rescuers need to be flexible. Fortunately, equipment is far better today, and there are often many more people on hand to help. To streamline rescues and make them “fit for purpose”, it helps if accurate information can be given when calling for help: precise location, patient’s condition, is he or she on the ground or dangling 80 metres up the cliff, etc.

Pay attention

Balls Pyramid 1975

Balls Pyramid near Lord Howe Island is the world’s tallest sea stack, rising 552 metres straight out of the Pacific Ocean. In 1975, Kim Carrigan organised an expedition to tackle its unclimbed faces. Kim, Roark Muhlen, Ben Maddison and I were the West Face team, while Kevin Lindorff, Peter Watson and Iain Sedgman were aiming to climb the East Face.

We landed, set up camp and set off on our respective objectives. Kim, Roark, Ben and I traversed along the base of the West Face on wet, salt-slicked and slimy rock with the waves crashing below our feet. The reconnaissance ground to a halt. The sight of vertical volcanic ash, grass and seabird rookeries did not inspire confidence—to put it bluntly, there was a bit of a mutiny against Kim’s project. So we returned to camp and after some debate agreed to do a double skyline traverse—up the South-East Ridge, down the North-West Ridge then back up and over.

Unfortunately that entailed heavy loads with bivvy gear, food and water, making for slow progress. To cut a long story short, the four of us found ourselves abseiling back down from a bivvy high up on the ridge. Kim had a reel of green half-inch tubular tape, from which he cut lengths to tie around a suitable bollard for each abseil. As we chatted idly, dodged the seabird droppings and watched Kim organise the next abseil anchor, a piece of white electrical tape wrapped around the green sling caught my eye.

“What’s that?” I asked Kim.

“Oh, that’s just the halfway marker,” he replied casually.

There didn’t seem to be much concern about it; nevertheless I peeled off the white tape and surprise, surprise—it was holding two ends of the green tape together. The first person onto the abseil would have ripped the ends apart and taken a thousand foot dive into the sea, leaving the rest of us aloft without a rope.

It didn’t come to that. We looked at each other, silently aware of what very nearly happened, then tied the tape ends together and continued our descent. The incident was so minor that some don’t even remember it, yet we were literally a hair’s breadth away from disaster.

Take-home message: Abseil accidents are all too common. We’ve all heard stories. One of the most recent was a miscalculation on Hum Terrace at Arapiles earlier this year. The bottom line in 99 percent of abseiling, climbing and miscellaneous accidents is that they can be avoided by paying attention to what you’re doing.