Sad to say but I was a member of the S.E.S VRT team that attended the scene.

May I first add I will not comment on cause of death or other details about the climbers involved. These facts are best left for the coroners report. I encourage CAWA to study the report when available.

What I will say is that the incident occurred late Friday morning involving two non local climbers after completing a climb in the Pulsar Buttress area and were making there way to another route. A single fatality occurred after an apparent rock fall accident.

There have been numerous rock fall near misses in this area and the degree of choss present near or on top of most routes is well known amongst local climbers.

If you read https://www.climberswa.asn.au/Community/Messageboard/default.asp?view=message&id=384 you will see that between 1955 and 2004 there had only been 3 fatalities due to rock fall in the activity of rock climbing.

This is not an official statement by FESA SES. I merely reply as a member of the team involved and as a fellow climber so that we may all take care.

Hi all, Thanks for sharing what info you can with us Michael. From what you have said, it sounds like the accident occurred either getting into a new area or out of Pulsar area. Being the extremely safety concious person that I am, I’d like to share some thoughts on this and hopefully generate some useful discussion.

Safety is so often only really considered while on a climb, the old 3 points of contact we all learn, and being taught to check each hold before you trust your full weight to it. How often do we really stop to consider the dangers getting into and out of a climbing area. I remember my first trip to WCH, being absolutely petrified trying to walk down into the Raft area. One slip and it’s a very long fall down toward the ocean. I seem to recall being warned to keep a bit of distance between us as we went down.

Mt Frankland also has a dangerous walk in over slab to the terrace level, again when first starting climbing I was told to go up one by one. You would all go rolling down like a pack of dominos should someone near the top slip.

Whether the danger is loose rock, other people slipping, or on the South Coast the ever present danger of King waves, all can be dangerous and it’s just so easy to become complacent about these dangers.

Steve could tell you about his slip while trying to get out of an area in WCH. He ended up with a fractured hip only 5 weeks or so before he was due to go on a long mountaineering trip. Luckily his fracture was to a non-loadbearing part of the hip. Getting out of WCH was a long and very painful trip for him.

The other thing to consider, especially when climbing the more remote cliffs, how much first aid knowledge do you have? Would you have a first aid kit handy? Could you tell if someone has internal bleeding or spinal fractures? The old safety in numbers is certainly true of the more remote climbing spots, as it takes a lot of people to lift out a seriously injured person. You also have to factor in the amount of time it takes to alert rescue teams. Few of these areas have mobile reception.

Safe climbing to all, and my heartfelt sympathy to the climber who has lost his wife in such a tragic accident.