So, yesterday Mike and I climbed the Durrance Route up Devils tower. We got on it early (first light, after a 3:30am wakeup), and it went generally smoothly.
From the top of the tower, there are a number of choices for rappelling off -- The Bowling Alley Rappel (with all that implies) and the Meadow Rappel are two that are fairly well described. There were two sets of obvious cairns at the top, and The Bowling Alley Rappel is to the right of the Meadows Rap, so we went to that set of cairns. The Meadows Rappel is described as having an exposed down-climb, and that if you were not confident of your down-climbing, you might want to rope up for it. I got to a bit of a down-climb for the rap I was approaching, and I didn't think it looked too bad, and I could see the anchors, so figured it was probably The Bowling Alley Rappel (it didn't look like anything I'd rope up for).
After completing the vertical bit of the down-climb (easy moves on solid holds), I started to move towards the anchors when a piece of gear on my harness caught, then released. I fell forwards towards the edge of the cliff. Luckily, I landed on a big boulder, rather than pitching off the edge which was actually about a full body length away. Thoroughly scard me, though.
Also, I have a really serious set of scrapes and bruises from falling into the boulder -- I feel like I got into a fight with a mountain and lost
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2018-08-02 02:47 am (UTC)From the top of the tower, there are a number of choices for rappelling off -- The Bowling Alley Rappel (with all that implies) and the Meadow Rappel are two that are fairly well described. There were two sets of obvious cairns at the top, and The Bowling Alley Rappel is to the right of the Meadows Rap, so we went to that set of cairns. The Meadows Rappel is described as having an exposed down-climb, and that if you were not confident of your down-climbing, you might want to rope up for it. I got to a bit of a down-climb for the rap I was approaching, and I didn't think it looked too bad, and I could see the anchors, so figured it was probably The Bowling Alley Rappel (it didn't look like anything I'd rope up for).
After completing the vertical bit of the down-climb (easy moves on solid holds), I started to move towards the anchors when a piece of gear on my harness caught, then released. I fell forwards towards the edge of the cliff. Luckily, I landed on a big boulder, rather than pitching off the edge which was actually about a full body length away. Thoroughly scard me, though.
Also, I have a really serious set of scrapes and bruises from falling into the boulder -- I feel like I got into a fight with a mountain and lost