What's your worst (or most comical) non-caving caving injury?

PeteHall

Moderator
Just for a bit of fun, as an offshoot from the "should I go caving" thread,

What's your worst (or most comical) non-caving, caving injury?

I'm thinking pre-trip, post-trip, in the club hut, in the pub, in the garage sorting kit, whatever you like, so long as there is a vague connection to caving.

My worst injury was a badly twisted ankle as I got back to the car. I survived the trip, I survived an hours walk off the fell in the dark, but trod in a pothole on the road, less than 100 yards from the car.  :-[

Other classics have been taking the top of my finger off while cutting the insulting tape I was using to mark rope lengths and putting my head through a tube light bulb while dancing on the table at Bull Pot Farm (before it became so civilised).

I've also torn my hands to shreds on furniture staples while playing sofa rugby...

So what about everyone else?
 

pwhole

Well-known member
Two years ago I was getting ready for a long round-trip in Speedwell, taking my friend Domee to all the main sites - Titan, Cliff Cavern, Bathing Pool, Bung Hole stopes etc., and we were just about finished getting changed at the TSG - I just had to put my wetsuit socks on. I stepped backwards and put my foot on the screw sleeve of a large steel carabiner, which slid across the concrete floor and it bloody hurt. Undeterred, we set off and spent the planned six hours underground - the nice cold water doing a good job of stopping my foot throbbing, though I was limping a bit. When we got back to the Chapel I took my wellies and socks off to see my foot was a father funny shape and colour - a sort of purply-green marbled effect. Hmmm. And it did hurt a bit more, now it was warm.

Anyway, I took pain-killers and ignored it, as you do, and limped around for another day at home until a friend visited late afternoon and watched me hobbling and suggested he give me a lift to the hospital - where they did an X-ray and showed me a picture of the obviously-broken meta-tarsal of my right little toe. "I thought it was hurting", I feebly said, as the nurse gave me the raised eyebrows when I mentioned it was 'yesterday morning'. But she did accept I was brave to go caving so as to not let my friend down. You can't have a cast on that, so you just have to limp around until it's healed, which she said would take six weeks 'basic' and six months 'full'. I think I lasted three weeks and then we started caving again - we had to, there was a lot of work on. Most of it was fine, but SRT was a bastard for a year really - no matter how much I padded the footloop it still hurt, and my left foot is hopeless for prussicking. I took a month off rope-access but even they started pestering me after a while.

No-one has built me even a small statue yet for my heroism. but I bet they still laugh at Speedwell remembering me trying to get back up the 106 steps and still look cool ;)
 

tamarmole

Active member
I used to spend a lot of time digging in Pen y Ghent Gill which is possibly the coldest place on earth.  Whilst getting changed very quickly in a forlorn attempt to keep warm I managed to get "a very tender part of my anatomy" firmly caught in the zip of my furry suit, much to the delight of my so called mates who suggested that they should call out CRO to rescue me from my predicament.  Much to my chagrin I later ended up going to hospital resulting in my chums nicknaming me the rabbi!

Obviously this was the fault of said furry suit as I later pointed out to the manufacturer (Bat Products), and to give him his credit JRat did buy me a pint by way of compensation.
 

Graigwen

Active member
....
pwhole said:
until a friend visited late afternoon and watched me hobbling and suggested he give me a lift to the hospital - where they did an X-ray and showed me a picture of the obviously-broken meta-tarsal of my right little toe. "I thought it was hurting", I feebly said, as the nurse gave me the raised eyebrows when I mentioned it was 'yesterday morning'.

I have broken all my metatarsals at various times. I got quiet blase about them, there is no treatment you just have to put up with the discomfort, after the first two I did not trouble hospitals. Then the last one was the one on my little toe and it hurt like hell, far worse than the others so I was back to hospital to find out what was going on. The hospital explained that the metatarsal for the little toe is on the outside and unsupported, which is why it hurts so much.

.
 

pwhole

Well-known member
The hospital explained that the metatarsal for the little toe is on the outside and unsupported, which is why it hurts so much.

It hurt like hell, if I'm honest. Also the issue with feet (which had never occurred to me until I did this) is that there isn't much room for expansion, unlike other parts of the body. There's virtually zero fat and no soft organs to squash up - just bones and gristle. Obviously once a bone starts healing it gets a lot bigger around the break until the structure has rebuilt itself, and the rest of the foot contents just sit there being most uncooperative in refusing to budge up a bit. For this reason I now make sure that all carabiners are never left on the floor, at least where I might walk on them!

Luckily I don't walk around the streets in bare feet or I'd have done it again by now on nitrous oxide canisters. I came across a full pack of 20 scattered in the woods yesterday, including the box. If I'd had gloves I would have taken them home but I'm not risking chav-rash any more than Covid-19.
 

Pitlamp

Well-known member
When I gave myself a metatarsal stress fracture 2 years ago (from running) I made myself a special (el cheapo) "orthotic" insert by cutting a hole in an old insole to accommodate the bulging area where the bone was healing, which did the trick nicely. Was back running within about 5 weeks, so no big deal (luckily).
 

Fulk

Well-known member
I was once experimenting with various modes of abseiling using one or more karabiners. I?d read somewhere that you can get enough friction to abseil by wrapping a rope a couple of times round a krab, so I tried abbing about twenty feet using this method; it worked until the krab re-orientated itself such that the rope turns were now wrapped round the screw gate . . . in the wrong direction, so the gate unscrew and opened, and I fell maybe 3? metres, sustaining merely a swollen ankle.
 

mikem

Well-known member
Fortunately none caving, but quite a list kayaking, although the best was a friend of mine who broke his hip falling over in a car park just before lockdown (& he's not even a pensioner).
 

Wolfo

Member
I fell once around 80m.
Some kind of ice cornice broke away with me on a winter GR20 trip on Corsica, in an area called "Cirque de la Solitude"...translated maybe:"Basin of lonelyness" which was basically describing the situation.
Woke up some minutes later in a big red spot on the snow, lost maybe 1,5l blood, but the chopper flight out was cool...
No bones harmed, only meat.
 
I did a Large Pot - Rift pot trip on a extremely hot day and on getting back to the car dehydrated +hot pulled the ring pull of a ginger beer can and it simply blew up -BLOOD EVERYWHERE
 
15 meters down Notts 2 entrance I was finishing off the building work sealing odd gaps with a huge can of building foam about the stickiest stuff known
Only it would not come out of the nozzle  :cautious:I stuck it into a cavity to seal in another time BUT  with my luck could rust and blow up on a passing caver!
So I put it in front of me shielded my face and most of my glasses and hit it with a small pick
IT went off like a extreme wet fart I was covered from head to toe and hair +bits I did not know  :eek:
Worse the bottom 5 metres of the shaft was dripping with it that was the way out most of my gear was a write off
took a good +2 hours to clean up paint and glues a doddle
ITS A WONDER I'm allowed out!!!!
 

pwhole

Well-known member
Andy Walsh said:
15 meters down Notts 2 entrance I was finishing off the building work sealing odd gaps with a huge can of building foam about the stickiest stuff known
Only it would not come out of the nozzle  :cautious:I stuck it into a cavity to seal in another time BUT  with my luck could rust and blow up on a passing caver!
So I put it in front of me shielded my face and most of my glasses and hit it with a small pick
IT went off like a extreme wet fart I was covered from head to toe and hair +bits I did not know  :eek:
Worse the bottom 5 metres of the shaft was dripping with it that was the way out most of my gear was a write off
took a good +2 hours to clean up paint and glues a doddle
ITS A WONDER I'm allowed out!!!!

I'm not entirely sure I got exactly what happened. Any chance you could demonstrate it again for an online tutorial video?  :)
 

Dickie

Active member
Cutting firewood in a mate's garden with a felling axe - there was a particularly tough log that needed a really big swing over the head, which hit the clothes line and rebounded into my forehead! Fortunately, it was the heel of the axe not the blade. Butterfly stitches fixed it!
Big blow to the head - explains a lot really!
 

Loki

Active member
Was getting things in/out of the boot sorting kit for a trip to the bottom of the newly extended boggarts roaring holes. Felt a slight twinge in my back but didn?t think any more of it. Anyway got to the bottom of the cave fine but then as if on cue my back went into spasm and was excruciatingly painful for the entire trip out. No one could help as all the pitch heads are tight and awkward.
 

Mark

Well-known member
Back in the 70s we were doing Top sink to Lancaster hole, there was a massive flood (there were loads of callouts that night) we had an epic in the streamway and had to abandon that route and find our way via the high level caverns.

We eventually found our way to Lancaster, all got out safely and made for the Hill Inn

My misfortune was caused by having a piss in my wetsuit to warm up, while sitting on a ledge in the streamway, shortly before finding the high level route. My wetsuit was generally in poor repair, with many holes, and sand got in and rubbed the skin off the inside of my thighs which was agony.

So we got to the Hill Inn, had to park up the hill because it was rammed, while walking down to the pub in the style of John Wayne, the massive heel on my trendy platform boots broke off causing me to fall over and split my head open on the wall.

Looked a right twat in the pub



 

Bob Smith

Member
Playing indoor cricket in the Belfry I was struck by a frozen tomatoe, that was bowled full toss, just below my left nipple. 2 cracked ribs and a very fine round bruise. Trying to explain that to the nursing sister raised an eyebrow. I had succesfully defend the wicket against a large knife and a small armchair.
 

Pegasus

Administrator
Staff member
Bob Smith said:
Playing indoor cricket in the Belfry I was struck by a frozen tomatoe, that was bowled full toss, just below my left nipple. 2 cracked ribs and a very fine round bruise. Trying to explain that to the nursing sister raised an eyebrow. I had succesfully defend the wicket against a large knife and a small armchair.

who freezes tomatoes??  :blink: :blink: ;)
 

Alex

Well-known member
I assume to make them viable as a cricket ball.

Gave myself a black eye with haul cord crab when I picked up my bag too vigorously when setting off from the car. I learnt my lesson always to clip the those flails to my back after that.

I also knocked out a filling by kneeing my hand-jammer into my face on an awkward pitch-head, but that was in a cave, so I guess that don't count.
 
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