Climber Narrowly Escapes Death After 80-foot Fall on Colorado Mixed Climb

On December 10, Nathan Chaszeyka was descending from a successful ascent of the famous Colorado mixed climb Bird Brain Boulevard (WI5 M5; 1,200ft ) when something went horribly wrong.

Chaszeyka had already rappelled around 50 feet down his descent line, the neighboring WI4 The Ribbon, and had come to a slight bulge in the wall. “As I stepped over the bulge, I felt this pop,” he said. “I started to fall. I was completely out of control.” Some 1,000 feet below, the frozen canyon floor was coming up fast.

“I remember thinking, ‘I’m about to die.’”

Bird Brain, put up by Jeff Lowe, Charlie Fowler, and Mark Wilford in 1985, is well-known for its tight chimneys. And although he and Clarke climbed the route without issue, somewhere in those narrow, ice-choked chutes, Chaszeyka had lost a crucial piece of gear.

“I thought I heard something fall at one point,” he recalled, “but I looked down the chimney and didn’t see anything.” When he reached the next belay, for the final pitch, he realized his belay device was missing. “I guess I hip scummed against the chimney at one point, and it pushed the gate open and popped the carabiner off,” he said.

Chaszeyka used Clarke’s belay device to lead-belay him up the final pitch, then Clarke brought him up using a Munter hitch. Then the pair tried to decide how to descend with only one belay device. At this point it was roughly 6:00 p.m. and dark. Both climbers were wet from the climb, and increasingly cold.

“I was sick to my stomach right then,” Chaszeyka said. “I knew we might be in for a bit of an epic.” Two friends had been forced to cut their ropes after getting them stuck on Bird Brain just a few weeks before, so Chaszeyka and Clarke opted to rappel The Ribbon.

There are a few ways to rappel without a belay device. One solid option is the double carabiner brake. But Clarke and Chaszeyka were using an icy 8.5mm single rope with a tagline, and he said he was worried about being able to generate enough friction with this technique. He opted instead to rappel with a Munter, which he was more familiar with. Munters are another common tool for rappelling in a pinch, mostly maligned simply due to their tendency to twist and kink a rope. “I’ve used Munters many times in the alpine to belay and rappel,” Chaszeyka said, “and I felt more confident that I could get friction with a Munter than a carabiner brake.”

Clarke rappelled first and then Chaszeyka followed, lowering himself with his Munter. It was dark enough that he was using a headlamp, and the terrain was uneven and varied, so it was hard to keep his eyes on the hitch at all times. While rappelling over the bulge in the wall some 50 feet down the pitch, he looked over his shoulder to see where his feet would land. That’s when Chaszeyka believes the Munter walked itself up and over the gate of his carabiner, unscrewed it, and pinched it open.

POP! He was in freefall.

Chaszeyka plummeted some 80 feet down the pitch, bouncing off vertical to near-vertical rock, hitting his head and breaking his headlamp in the process. But a primal urge to survive coursed through him.  “My brain was just like, ‘Die fighting.’”

As he fell, he reached his arm up and entangled it in the rope, jerking himself to a halt some 20 feet from the end of the line. In the process, he tore his bicep in half, but saved his own life. The 1,000 feet of open air below would have swallowed him.

Hanging by one arm, in near-vertical terrain, Chaszeyka quickly secured himself with a Prusik and re-tied his Munter. Both feet and ankles were severely injured and he was unable to put weight on them without extreme pain. Miraculously, he had no major damage to his head or spine. He’d collided with the cliff several times during his fall, but his backpack and helmet had protected him.

Chaszeyka had come to a halt just a few feet above Clarke. Both men were carrying Garmin inReach satellite messengers, but they also had cell reception on that portion of the wall, so Clarke called 911 for a rescue. He then lowered Chaszeyka, who was at this point battling hypothermia, down eight rope lengths of climbing to the base of The Ribbon, where Ouray search and rescue team members met them and ferried Chaseyka out on a litter and to the hospital in Montrose.

“I can never express enough gratitude for the men and women who showed up to help me in that time of need,” Chaseyka wrote on his Instagram. “Nor can I overstate their efficiency, professionalism, and excellence. Without them … the outcome would have been much more severe.”

He added that he owed his life to his partner, Jim Clarke. “He kept his cool, worked hard and efficiently to do what needed to be done, and got us down without further incident. He was truly a warrior when it mattered. I’m writing this because of him.”

All told, Chaszeyka came out of the epic with predominantly ankle injuries, including a broken heel and multiple torn ligaments, a partially torn hamstring, and a torn bicep from catching himself on the rope. His prognosis is good, but murky. He spoke to Climbing just a few minutes after a meeting with his surgeon, who told him he has a long period of recovery ahead, “before we get an idea of how much function I’ll regain [in my left ankle].”

Because he is unable to stand, Chaszeyka can’t work either of his jobs (emergency room nurse and ski patroller) for the foreseeable future, and with the added burden of medical bills and his wife out of work after a layoff, the couple are struggling financially. “We have private insurance, and it essentially has covered nothing,” he said. “I’ve already received thousands in medical bills, more are coming, and our insurance has covered about $500. We’re going to lose our house, and still have this mountain of debt from medical bills.” Friends have established a GoFundMe to help Chaszeyka get back on his feet.

What Went Wrong? Accident in Retrospect

There are a few takeaways from Chaszeyka’s accident. For one, the reason why he lost his belay device in the first place was because the carabiner attaching it to his gear loop was unlocked. This is common practice, but if it had been locked, the device likely wouldn’t have been lost during the chimneying. Chaszeyka said he had his reasons. “In the ice realm, I’m cautious about locking carabiners more than they need to be, because they can freeze shut,” he said. “Hindsight is 20/20. If I’d locked the biner I wouldn’t have lost it, but dealing with a locked frozen biner on the back of my harness, wearing gloves, could have caused other problems.” [Editor’s note: Some locking carabiners do a better job of not freezing than others. The Grivel Plume HMS has an opposing-wire-gates design that drastically reduces how iced-up it can get.]

Others have asked why he didn’t have a Prusik hitch backing up his system. Chaszeyka did have the means to make one, but asked his partner to back up his rappel by holding the ends of his rope (a “fireman’s belay”) instead.“In hindsight, knowing what happened, I would have rappelled on a carabiner brake with a Prusik to back it up,” Chaszeyka said. “But I really don’t know, if you took me back to that point in time, if I would have made a different decision. I thought I made the best call possible.”

Chaszeyka has spoken with several experienced climbers and guides in the wake of his accident, and done some testing himself. He and another climbing partner, Greg Steele, managed to recreate the phenomena at home. “I was shocked, really, at how easy it was,” Chaszeyka said. “We found it only takes about six to 12 inches of rope running over the barrel of a screwgate to unscrew the gate and pop a Munter off. I was aware the brake strand of a Munter could be a problem if it runs over the gate,” he said. (This is why, when rappelling on Munter, the carabiner gate should always be on the opposite side of the brake strand.) “But I never knew the body of the Munter could walk itself to the gate and unscrew it.” At the end of the day, Chaszeyka could have avoided this terrifying scenario by adding a second locking carabiner, facing the opposite direction, to his Munter rappel. That redundancy would have removed the possibility of total system failure.

Readers can donate to Chaszeyka’s GoFundMe here.

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