So ¦it,s my first time climbing in Acadia National Park. We are at Otter Cliffs, along with everybody else, enjoying our first time climbing sea cliffs. The sun is out, the rock is warm, it,s great. We set up a toprope on a particularly nice line, but for some reason I don,t recall now, I am belaying from above, sitting on the edge of the cliff with my legs dangling over the edge. That,s always tricky for the belayer, as you tend to get your hand or leg trapped under the rope if the climber falls. It works ok if you can find a higher anchor, and you stand up on the clifftop next to the anchor, but sometimes all you have is a low anchor right near the cliff edge...so I clip in behind my harness and sit down.
So I belay my friend up this climb and she finishes. Nice job. Now I begin to lower her. But Ive got puffy fleece pants on, and as I lower her a piece of the pants get caught in the belay device. Shit, that,s never happened before. I figure it will come loose, so I just keep lowering her. And more of the pants are sucked into the belay device. I think you know where this is going.
After a few feet of lowering, what gets sucked in next? Yup, my underwear. Now we have a ... situation. How far is this gonna go? She,s not at the bottom yet. I don,t know what to do, and I figure it,s a short route and the lowering cant last that long, so I continue lowering. The underwear keeps going ¦then ¦my Johnson follows the underwear. Now I stop what I,m doing and think real hard about other options. I,m no Simon Yates, so Ive got no knife handy to cut the rope. This is quite embarrassing and there,s around a hundred people all over the cliff. What am I gonna do ¦yell Help Ive got my dick caught in my belay device ¦Come save my dick!!! ¯
I figure I just gotta keep up what I,m doing and hope this ¦comes to an end real fast. But I,ve definitely got a piece of my dick in there ¦luckily not the end but the side sorta ¦so I figure its not actually gonna really go IN there. So, I keep it up and VERY SOON I guess the capacity of the belay device is maxed out and my dick breaks loose...I doesnt go springing back or anything..lets not get all dramatic. But a small piece of skin is torn off, just before my partner reaches the ground. I extract my clothing from the device, without anyone looking, and inspect my boys to make sure all is well. I am missing a tiny piece of skin, but everything appears ¦operational.
As soon as I get home I read up on belay technique and throw away the puffy pants.
- Almost Dickless
