Climbing at the Red river gorge has been a beautiful part of my journey in the US. Sometimes, in the middle of freaking hectic life as a student on campus, it randomly comes across my mind how nice it was if I were in the Red, camping out at Miguel's Pizza, rocking the rocks, hanging out with climbers, enjoying hand made pizza with self-grown vegetables and chatting about lots of stuff. I made tons of friends at the Red both local climbers and foreigners. They are all friendly and fun to be friend with. The environment is always warm that everybody is being nice to each other. It does not matter who you are, where you're coming from and whether you are a good climbers or not, everybody respects each other equally.
Today, I was so in shocked when I found out that two climbers at the Red River gorge were dead on a crag. Here's what I got from my club's mailing list:
"The two passed at global village around monday. Ben left Miguels monday with Laura. Their plan was to climb white-out and lower to the ledge to climb " The Man Behind the Curtain". Tuesday afternoon Jordan and Kobes drove by the parking lot and realized Ben's car was still there. Worried for their friend, they hiked up to the wall. They found Ben and Laura dead at the base of the cliff. They quickly ran down and called 911. At the scene Ben had Laura on belay and she was tied in. Ben was farther down the hill than her. Today Dan and I rapped in from the top to discover what happened. It appears that they climbed "white-out" and then lowered to the ledge half way up the wall. This ledge is the belay for the 11a "Man behind the Curtain". From what we could tell, they decided not to climb it........there was no chalk.... The anchors on the ledge were two rusty bolts with webbing run through them. At the ledge we found the webbing was broken. On the ground we had found a rap ring with blood on it.
They must have put the rope through the rap ring and started lowering Laura. The webbing broke, pulling Ben with her. There was no gear on the anchors, so we think he went in direct to the sling that he was lowering her with. The webbing was completely white. Where the webbing was against the bolt there was a faint color of its original color, dark purple. We assume they didn't notice the poor condition of the webbing."
I literally wept when I read this that this could happen to good climbers who had been climbing for almost their whole lives. And they were those people who I met regularly and talked to when I went to the Red. Now, they are dead because of falling on a climbing route.
Rest in peace Ben and Laura~
