http://www.rigb.org/contentControl? action=displayContent&id=3036

http://www.iphonekungfu.com/general/5-questions-for-peter- bentley-the-undercover-scientist/

Dear Dr. Bentley,

I thought you might be amused by this episode that happened to a fellow with whom, in a group of about a dozen, I went on a climbing weekend in the Sierra Nevada of California in about 1954. About a dozen of us, mostly students from Berkeley, went to the Eastern Sierra to climb in a granitic ridge called the Sawtooth Ridge. Close to the cars we left the trail to travel cross-country in the open forest at this relatively high elevation (ca. 7,000'). We soon had to ford a substantial little river over a long downed tree. This fellow, very eager and gungho, volunteered to go over in his underwear and set a handline. Everybody crossed with their large packs successfully and he got dressed, put on his own pack, untied the rope, balanced halfway across and predictably fell into the deepest part, though holding on to the rope to get pulled out (accompanied by hearty guffaws).

Steaming halfway up the terrain to the ridge, we stopped at a clear, inviting mountain stream (just short of the first snowfields), into which he jumped without testing the temperature and virtually "levitated" out of with loud screams.

We arrived at a suitable camp site early in the afternoon and proceeded to practice self arrest and roped arrest on snow, something Californians at that time were sorely deficient in. Despite warnings about the lay of the rope around the planted ice ax, he managed to give it a double loop or crossed the rope on the shaft with the result that his "victim", sliding rapidly down the steep practice slope, was stopped jarringly, with the ice ax flying out of the snow in two pieces and the "weight" having some bruised ribs.

We returned to camp to make dinner. In front of my eyes he walked to the edge of the creek to get water, ignored the possible corniced edge of the snow cover and promptly fell through the cornice into the creek.

The next morning we set off to climb the "Doodad", a peak with a large rectangular block sitting on the summit ridge. I volunteered to run back to camp to retrieve somebody's left-behind rope and was coming up in the brilliant morning sun behind the group, now ascending a steep snow couloir toward a notch in the ridge adjacent to the Doodad. Said fellow had no ice ax and had been holding forth how his piton hammer with a long claw might do service instead. No sooner said, than he fell and descended the harsh neveé slope at a good clip, frantically digging in his ineffectual piton hammer. Having neglected to wear gloves, he stopped at the bottom with thoroughly abraded and bleeding hands.

We went through the notch to the easy south side of the Doodad - the north face being vertical for perhaps 500' - and proceeded in loose fashion to ascend the staircase-like granite slope. Though firm rock, the inevitable call of "Rock!" came, everybody looked up and ducked and it hit Mr. Lucky squarely on top of the skull. The rock was small and only drew a little, though impressive blood.

By the time we got to the 30' summit block and climbed it, the party had shrunken to just four people (including him and myself), who got to the top. The first two then rapelled without a problem to the ridge next to the block, but when it came to his turn, he panicked and refused to rappell, since a sturdy afternoon mountain breeze was bowing the rope out over the north face, requiring a rappell with impressive exposure. I had to browbeat him, not to mention the rope handlers below him, to finally get into the then customary Dülfersitz mode of descent and make it to the ridge.

When we returned to the notch, he started complaining that his eyes were burning - he hadn't used sunglasses or goggles all day and was experiencing the onset of snow blindness. We got back to camp without any calamity, had dinner and crawled into our sleeping bags. The ensuing silence was split by a bloodcurdling shriek out of his tent, bringing the first aid experienced people running. It seems that his levator testis muscle contracted abruptly, perhaps as a function of stress, and yanked one of his testicles through the inguinal canal or at least far enough into it to compress the testis painfully.

Evidently some judiciously applied pressure corrected the anatomical defect, but he got all manner of consoling and empathic input the next morning, with his buddies inquiring "how they were hanging", 'if he might need a bop with a piton hammer" etc. On the hike out, it was only he who complained about being eaten by voracious mosquitoes He signed up with the US Marines the following week and commented that they were easier than climbing with the Sierra Club!

http://www.asylum.com/2009/05/06/8-common-ways-sh-t-happens- and-how-you-can-prevent-it/