Leader fall, Gallwas Crack, Mission Gorge, San Diego 5/18

On Saturday, May 18, at about 10:40 in the morning, my climbing partner and I prepared to climb Gallwas Crack (5.9) at the Main Wall of Mission Gorge in San Diego. We had been climbing together for 5 years, and he has 10+ years experience trad climbing. We had gone out that day to take another friend for his first time climbing outdoors. We had already warmed up and put him up on a few 5.7’s.

From the base of Gallwas Crack, there is a large drop off to the trail below (this route starts at the top of Handyman 5.9), so we built a three-piece gear anchor to secure me as the belayer before my climbing partner led. He racked up, tied in, and I set the rope up in my Gri-Gri to belay him. We checked his knot and my belay device, confirmed that the system was closed (the other end of the rope was tied to the rope bag), and he started climbing at 10:49am. We both had our helmets on (we had all been wearing helmets all day and were especially focused on safety, since it was our other friend’s first day out).

My climbing partner got to a first secure stance, put in a 0.5 Camalot, and clipped an extended alpine draw. He climbed to where his feet were right at the first cam, placed another cam, then started climbing again. The second cam was probably around his waist when he placed another cam above his head. He started climbing again, and when the third placement was about at his waist, he called, “Take!” I pulled in the slack, and right when the rope started to have some tension, he came off the wall. As he fell, the third piece he had placed immediately came out, and as he continued falling, the second piece also came out. He had rotated backwards so that now he was falling head first. He fell until the 0.5 Camalot, his first piece, caught him, but he had already hit the deck. He had fallen a little past the ledge we were on and was hanging upside down on the sloped ledge behind me. 

Our friend quickly started pulling my partner towards the large, flat ledge down and climber's left of the route, as I lowered him down slowly. After he was level on the flat ledge, I pulled my phone out of my pocket and called 911 (at 10:56am). The operator indicated that someone had already called it in and they would continue with that call. Soon, a helicopter arrived and lowered a paramedic down, then flew away to wait. The paramedic assessed his condition, put him into the litter and strapped him down. The helicopter returned to pick them up, took off, and flew to a local trauma center by 11:45 am, less than an hour after he started the climb. 

My climbing partner suffered a severe traumatic brain injury, but he made it through emergency surgery and, while the future is still uncertain, he has started on the long road to recovery. 

I believe that one of the pieces that pulled was a #3 Metolius TCU, because that was the only cam that had a quickdraw clipped to it. The plastic trigger wire guide on a green BD 0.75 was tweaked, so this could have been the other piece that pulled, but he was also laying on his rack while we waited for the helicopter, so it might have gotten tweaked then. I’m not sure which one pulled first, and the gear got all mixed up during the rescue. 

If you were there that day and helped or called 911, thank you. 

Happy to hear he is alive, thanks for the update, was just wondering about this yesterday evening. May he have a healthy and as full recovery as possible. That crack is full of bat guano from what I remember when I 1st did it, and can be very slippery, wonder if that may have been a cause for cams failing.

Sorry to hear about the accident. It would be nice to figure out the reasons for the gear failure to avoid potential accidents at this location. Excess vegetation and dirt, of course, could have contributed.

Ivanchenko Vladimir wrote:

Sorry to hear about the accident. It would be nice to figure out the reasons for the gear failure to avoid potential accidents at this location. Excess vegetation and dirt, of course, could have contributed.

Agreed. I’ve been on it, fallen on it, and walked away with rope burn and a bruised ego. Would like to get back on it.

If conditions are cool and you climb this smooth then it could be called 5.9. But this is old school 5.9. These days people rate things like this 5.10. The rock here is the famous Mission Gorge polished rock. Very technical footwork. Minimal friction. That applies to the gear too. I could see a situation if you placed your cams shallow, they could just slide out. Not a common thing but it could happen. Maybe that is what happened here? Hope this dude is having a decent curve on the recovery.