My mistake almost killed him

Everyone has a thrill seeker inside. There are many extreme sports, but my favourite is rock-climbing. I love introducing people to this fun activity, which is why I became an instructor. Some might say I’m a stickler for the rules, but I always have more fun when I know that nothing will go wrong.

What my colleagues don’t know is that one day it did go wrong and it was all my fault.

It was the first day I’d climbed outside of a gym. An older climber named Matt had offered to take my partner Tom and I up the mountains to teach us a style called lead climbing. At the end of winter it was sunny on the rock face, but there were still unmelted patches of snow under some of the trees. I took off my gloves but kept on my warm, oversized jacket and my woollen hat. Matt showed us how the person on the ground (the belayer) needed to keep the rope loose. The climber would put the rope through a clip, then the belayer would let out more rope for him to climb up to the next clip. If he fell, the device on our belts would catch the rope, as long as you held it at the bottom of the device.

We were getting the hang of things and Tom decided to try a harder route. When he got to the first clip, I hadn’t let out enough rope for him. He had to hang on while I pushed it through the device. He was getting tired. As he climbed up to each new clip, he got frustrated waiting for me to let out more rope. He was 20 metres up, at the top of the climb and just about to put the rope into the last clip. I couldn’t push it through my device fast enough, so I grabbed it with both hands on top of the device and started pulling it through.

First I heard a scream from another climber over to our right. I looked up and Tom was already falling. I tried to grab the rope whizzing through the bottom of the device but my jacket was in the way so my hands couldn’t find it. In desperation I grabbed the rope in front of my face. Now the device was doing nothing to help me. Tom’s falling weight pulled the rope, and me with it, until my feet were half a metre off the ground. My hands were clenched vice-like around the rope and my arms were stretched over my head. I had closed my eyes but I peeled them open now to look over at Tom. He was hanging, crouched into the foetal position, with his tail bone just half a metre from the ground.