Below!

The brown scar left from the falling block.
The quickdraw helps to provide some scale

Francisco, Ada and myself were at Navi Mumbai for a routine weekly climb.  That said, there are very few routine things in India.  We had just completed our morning exertions and were packing away our gear, ready to journey home.  A large group of local climbers had arrived, they are not normally early risers, and were working a number of routes.


One route involved climbing to an undercling which included a loose 30cm x 30cm block.  The climber studiously avoided the loose block but, much to everyone's surprise, a 1m x 1m block ripped loose and fell in a couple of pieces.

Everyone having a nervous laugh about the rockfall.
The injured leader is at their feet.

The leader was held by the belayer despite the belayer being very much in harms way.  The leader landed hard on his feet on a small ledge.  He didn't appear to have broken any bones but his ankles were very sore.  The rock missed his belayer and four of the five people standing around at the bottom of the crag. The fifth had a chunk of flesh taken our of his knee and some grazes on his shin.  Given the number of people underneath the climb, it is amazing someone wasn't badly injured or worse!

Bong, the local crag guardian, came up from his house and carried the fallen leader (sounds very Shakespearean)  to the road and he was taken to a nearby hospital.  It certainly underlined to Franciso the the potential value in wearing a helmet in order to protect that Harvard education!