perhaps my ice climbing trips are jinxed this season?

Unfortunately this time the jinx did not take itself out on me, but my hapless climbing partner. We drove to Haffner Creek, changed into boots, loaded ourselves up with climbing gear, hiked in to the climbs, picked a likely looking first climb, climbing partner racked up and started leading.

The ice was quite hard, the climb was very vertical, and climbing partner started to get pumped and shaky, attempting to place an ice screw that just wouldn’t bite. Front bail of one of climbing partner’s crampons popped off, and climbing partner rapidly went from being a few metres up on the ice to being on the ground.

Luckily he was falling onto snow and his legs were fine, but unluckily he nicked himself in the face with his tool on the way down. Meanwhile the other tool was still up in the ice. And a lot of blood.

After the lone tool was rescued we packed up and drove home. A hospital visit and two stitches later and he was as good as new again.

So we dashed off to the Junkyards for a couple of hours of laps on a toprope – and ended up getting some climbing in after all.