June Lake turns to misadventure ...

Where do I start .... My family has been having a great trip in June Lake, CA. Coulson couldn't make it and Jess's on his mission, so it's been Eric and Thayne and my parents and me and we've been having a great time! This place is amazing and we've done a bunch of fun stuff. We went biking at the Mammoth ski resort and it was really fun trying to keep up with my younger brothers.



The thing I've been wanting us all to do is go to Yosemite. I love that place and my brothers climb a little and I wanted to do a route with them. So I found this route I've done before called Munginella. This is a little hard to explain in non-climber terms, but when I did it before, I did it in 3 pitches, (a pitch is basically is a rope length). Normally when you do a multi-pitch route the leader climbs first, gets to the anchors or a good ledge or something to stop on. Then the second climber climbs up to the leader and they keep going up from there. So, with multi-pitch routes, each pitch could be about the full length of your rope since you're never come back down. But with a single pitch route, the leader gets to the top, hooks in to the anchors, then comes back down, thus doubling over the rope, so that a single-pitch route needs to be shorter so that the leader can get back to the ground. Eric and Thayne have climbed a little, but not a ton and they weren't feeling up for a multi-pitch route so I thought we'd just do the first pitch of Munginella, then call it at that. Since I had climbed it before I didn't even think about my rope not being long enough. Another blunder I had made was when I was packing to come, I'd put all my climbing stuff together, but I'd put my climbing helmet with my bike helmet and realized about an hour away from Yosemite that I'd left it at the condo. But admittedly I'm not super good about wearing a helmet when I climb and the route was only a 5.6 which is a route I can climb without my trouble.


So, we bush-wacked a little to get to the base of the wall, then we had to scramble up like 50 feet to get to the base of the route. My mom and dad came up because they wanted to watch us and I was way impressed that they made it up there. (That's Mama Shell in the picture)


So I was the first to go and I lead the route and it was some fun climbing.


I set the anchors and had Thayne start belaying me down. He's climbed a little but enough that I trust him and we'd gone over how to belay and how to let me back down but I didn't even think to tell him to watch for the rope, and I have never been good at tying knots in the end of my rope. No one I climb with really does and it just never even crossed my mind. Thayne was talking to everyone and was distracted and Eric noticed just a second too late that the rope was too short and it went through the belay device, which means that I was free-falling about 30 feet from the ground. It's funny because my first thought when there was no tension on the rope was "funny Thayne..." I thought he was letting just a little bit go to kinda scare me, but then it just never caught and I realized I was falling. I think I hit my heals on a little lip on the face and it flipped me upside down and I hit my whole lower back / butt area pretty bad and I don't know what else, but my brothers knew that if they didn't stop me at the belay ledge I would have kept going another 60 feet to the ground. Luckily they kinda tackled me and stopped me but I hit my head on a pretty sharp rock when I landed and instantly started bleeding. My dad ran down to get help and we put pressure on it while I tried to get my barrings.


So, to my embarrassment, the Search and Rescue Team came up. I kept trying to feel OK about getting down myself. I never blacked out so I thought I was pretty well off, but both my ankles were swelling up and my pelvis hurt pretty bad so I swallowed my pride and decided to do what Matt Stark -the main SAR guy in charge- suggested and get all bundled up and short lined out of there.


It was a pretty cool process. I have always loved knots and safety systems and doing swiftwater rescue and stuff like that. I didn't have the best view of what all was actually going on, it was pretty cool to see it all work and they were such a well-oiled team. It was funny because I knew one of the girls from Snowbird. She's on the patrol up there and I've climbed with her at the gym, it seems I always know someone where ever I go and although I was a little embarrassed to see her in my situation, it was cool to see a face I knew.


There were also a bunch of other rugged, manly faces I wanted to get to know, but didn't think that was the ideal situation to be picking up dudes with blood all over my face and hair.



They rigged me up and lowered me off the edge down the scrambly part that was pretty steep. This guy in the video (it will come later, the internet here is pretty lame), after he got situated, pulled me away from the cliff while they lowered us down.


At the bottom there were like 3 more people waiting with this sweet cart thing with one wheel on it, that made for a pretty nice ride down the mountain.


We were met by an ambulance that took me to a field where a helicopter was waiting .... that's right a helicopter. I tried to fight that but they wanted to do a CT scan and Matt assured me that I wanted someone with a little more experience with plastics to close up my head than they had at the clinic there. So they loaded me into the helicopter for a 45 min ride to Modesto.


I was pretty bummed I didn't get to at least see how cool it was to fly over Half Dome and through the Valley. How sweet would that have been! The flight nurse tried to sit me up a little to no avail, but she did send me pictures of the flight in. She was nice. She gave me morphine, like I said, she was nice. My hips were getting pretty sore from lying flat on them the whole time.

So, in Modesto, they did X-rays of my head, neck pelvis and both ankles and no broken bones! It's pretty much a miracle! Including my skull! Which you can see in some of the pictures! My mom doesn't think I should put some of these pictures on here, but maybe it's my missing the OR that makes me think these are cool, and having someone take a picture and show me was the only way I could see it, so I'll put some of the more graphic ones at the end and you can choose to not look if you don't want to, but I think they're pretty cool. I had a PA for a plastics guy sew up my head and it took forever but she did a great job. She did a layer of stitches under a layer of staples and so I am now the proud holder of the most staples / stitches of all my brothers! With four younger, wild, active brothers, that's saying a lot! Eric and Jess already have scars just back in their hair lines but mine beats them hands down. Mine is pretty much along my whole part. Luckily they didn't have to shave my head or anything, but a lot of hair was cut by the rock and my mom said a bunch fell off in her hands when she first put pressure on it. So, that's sad, I'm going to have to part my hair on the other side. That'll ruin my whole look!

If you're ready for it, here's the finished look.

All (well, not all) the goop around it is KY. They say that breaks down the proteins so it's easier to wash out the clots and stuff. I'm so lucky to be on this trip with my family. I'm getting such great service! My mom gave me a bath today and washed my hair and my brothers are carrying me everywhere and making me food (when I don't feel like I'm going to barf) and rubbing my back. I'm thinking I may have to try this more often! Absolutely just kidding. I realized in the helicopter that this happened almost exactly 10 years after I broke my back on a family trip. (If you don't know that story check it out) So, in 10 years in August I will lock myself in my house and not go anywhere with my family!

That being said, I'm not going to stop living my life. Much to my dad's chagrin (who almost sold all my gear for like $20 to this other couple that climbed up and got it all after we left) I'm not going to stop climbing. I will be adamant about wearing a helmet, even on a 5.6 I've done before, and I will always tie a knot in the end of my rope. Had this happened biking or hiking or something, I don't think it would change people's attitude of that, but I think that since people already think climbing is dangerous this gives it such a bad reputation. But I've always said, and I still believe that climbing is safe. It's a great sport that requires a lot of mental dedication and trust in your gear, yourself and your belayer. I don't know of any other sport that is as mental as climbing and I love that about it. There were a lot of dumb factors that went into this accident and I don't blame Thayne! I'm the one that knows what's going on and I should have told him to look for the half way mark on the rope and I should have tied a knot and worn a helmet. I feel so bad for him because I know he's going to be scarred for life and if it had been worse, he'd never get over it. But he's taken such great care of me and I am really bummed to be giving climbing a bad image.

So, I've got 10 days to be OK to go on a river trip, and I'm thinking I can pull it off. Lots of beauty rest in this great mountain air and I'll be fine in no time! Sorry if this freaked anyone out! I'm doing fine and my family is doing great and we're ready to enjoy the rest of the vacation here! (Or, I'll learn about it from stories and pictures, but that's almost good enough)

Point is, climbing is safe and I still love it. I don't mean to be adding a high adventure risk to my life, but I just love it ... still.

Here's some of the gruesome photos. Don't look if you can turn your eyes away....


It's looked a little better...


The funny thing about this is that the scratches on the front are from my cousin's rowdy dog that I took for a walk a couple days before the trip and he attacked some cat and through chasing him and hitting him he clawed me a little.



This is the first picture they took that actually convinced me that I probably shouldn't walk down and I'd let them bring the whole SAR team.

The helicopter pilot took these when he dropped me off and sent them to me.


Notice the bald spot in the front and how thick the skin is, and how not broken my skull is!