Watch What Happens When This Climber Breaks the First Rule of Alpine Climbing

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There are not many rules in climbing, much less in alpine climbing. But I decided to make one for myself several years ago, after watching a video of the late alpinist Marc-André Leclerc explain what he carried in his pack for cutting-edge objectives.

There were a lot of gems in that four-minute video, including:

“Two screws if it’s a big ice route…ice climbing is easy.”

“A roll of toilet paper, ‘cause you’ll shit yourself on most leads. And toilet paper is light—much lighter than a bigger rack.”

“A few pairs of replacement undertrousers…probably don’t need to explain why at this point.”

“A big pair of overall hardshell pants…they keep the air in so it’s harder for your partner to tell if you’ve soiled yourself.”

And my most memorable:

“Ropes are heavy. Usually I just bring a six-mil tagline ‘cause it’s light—and you never really ‘fall off’ in the mountains, anyways.”

Despite Leclerc’s shit-eating grin and obvious sarcasm, for some reason, I sensed the truth in this last point. I myself had just started to seek out crag-worthy difficulty on loose alpine faces, and, despite being an immature over-stoker, quickly got the memo that taking even moderate-sized falls while wearing crampons was a quick way to break my ankles.

I had all but forgotten Leclerc’s video until a couple of weeks ago, when two disturbing things happened almost simultaneously. 1) I took my first big whipper while alpine mixed climbing at home in the Canadian Rockies. 2) I watched a video of a Swiss alpinist, Nicolas Hojac, taking an eerily similar whipper in his own home mountains.

In my case, I broke my ice tool’s leash and got lovingly called a jackass by my girlfriend, once she realized I was unharmed. Hojac, in stark contrast, tore multiple ligaments in his foot.

“We often underestimate the consequences of a fall while wearing crampons,” Hojac told me after I’d watched his video. In rock shoes, our airborne feet bounce easily off of stone and ice; unless we clip a ledge, lower body injuries rarely happen. But a crampon’s front points—so crucial for torquing in thin cracks and penetrating glacial ice—catch easily on anything during a fall.

After my alpine whipper the other day, I lowered off, climbed an easier-looking corner to the right, and rappelled in from above to retrieve my gear. The finger-tip sized cam that caught me, which I’d shoved quickly into an icy crack, was a little worse for wear but had done its job. As I climbed out, I thought to myself I should begin playing by Marc-André’s rules again.

Happy Friday, and be safe out there this weekend.

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