It was October 2014. My climbing partner TJ and I had just climbed No Future, in Dyurrite (Arapiles) and were preparing to rappel from the anchor. I threaded my device and did a final check before committing my weight to the ropes. To my astonishment, only one rope was clipped in, the other was threaded but unclipped. I could not believe my eyes. How did that happen?
I had been climbing for 35 years and had never made that mistake before. But that wasn’t the end of my whoas. In the same year, I made two other errors on the cliff that could have spelt no future in different circumstances.
The rappel from the anchor above Scarlet Sage in Dyurrite (Arapiles) is 10 metres long; it is the shortest abseil I know. Heeding the climbers’ first law of thermodynamics (avoid
