Jesse Jakomait

Coming soon!

Mr. Ankle, meet Mr. Cliff
Saturday, January 09, 2010

Life has been good back in Colorado but today I just paid one of the tolls for all the outdoor excitement. I was rock climbing with some friends at Shelf today and after warming up on reasonably tough climb I hunted down an 5.11b/c that I had been wanting to nail. Two years ago it was the very last climb I did before moving to CT and I was really close to getting it clean then. Now I’m back and starting to dig into the climbing groove that Alicia has been carving for us. I’ve been climbing every weekend and trying to keep up to the impressive progress she’s been making. She’s better than me but I want to keep her in sight!

I’m at the 5th bolt of my climb and things start to get hard. I clip the draw to the bolt but I don’t have the guts to clip the rope as I feel like I’m about to slip off any second. I step up to find a better stance. Still dicey. I move again and find a good foot hold. I’m secure but that bolt with my quickdraw is down by my ankle and off to the right. I can’t reach it. I look up. The next bolt is one big move away but the hold to get there is loaded with chalk. It means that hold is really crappy or the next hold is really crappy, I don’t know which. I still haven’t clipped the one below yet and the distance to the last clipped one is weighing on my thoughts. Skipping bolts while climbing at my limit seems like a recipe of disaster. I’m climbing hard, not reckless, I gotta get the lower one clipped.

I carefully step down to a tiny foot hold. My hand finds some grip on a sloper. I reach to the right as low as I can and just dance the tip of my finger on the bineer and jingle the sling to my hand. Gingerly I walk the sling through my fingers to the lower bineer and with it in my hand get the rope draped off my knee into the same hand. Foot on the small edge, hand barley holding onto the sloper. I focus and try and fiddle my fingers to make the rope go into the bineer. It’s awkward. I can’t quite get it. BOOM! My left hand slips off the sloper and I pitch off the cliff and fly through the air. The rope catches my fall but I’m swinging fast into the cliff. Instinctively my feet brace the impact but the force was too much for my left ankle and left me with a grade II/III eversion sprain. Damn!

It’s the way the cookie crumbles. Big thanks to Larry for sacrificing his day to get me out of there. He found me a great stick to use as a cane and humped my pack out on his chest while he had his own on his back. I pleaded for him to finish up his day climbing but getting me back home was a higher priority for him and he would have none of my argument. Ahead of me I’m looking at a few weeks of laying really low but with any luck I’ll be back on my bike before my birthday. Even if I’m not strong enough to climb I’ve got plenty of other things to keep me challenged.