Tasmania Emergency: Needle of Rock in the Waves

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0:56It's Friday, February the 13th, 1998, in Tasmania, an island state of striking natural beauty, located some 150 miles south of the Australian mainland. Jutting out from the southeast coast of the island, the carved, fluted cliffs of the Tasman Peninsula plunge down towards the foaming waters of the South Pacific, where chubby seals bask on sea-drenched rocks, while sleek-skinned dolphins frolic in the rolling waves beyond. From the clifftops, the horizon is an unbroken blue expanse of sea and sky. It's like standing on the edge of the world. And there, in a narrow cleft between the craggy cliffs, a tall, impossibly slender monolith rises from the turbulent surf, its base battered continuously by waves on all sides.

1:52This brittle, rocky spire is known as the totem pole. Measuring over 200 feet in height, or just 13 feet in diameter, the fact that it remains standing almost seems to defy logic. Midway up the needle-like pillar, a small, narrow ledge juts out from the stone, no wider than a single bed. And crouching on top of it, frozen in shock, is a woman in her early 30s, locks of sandy hair flying around her sculpted cheekbones. Celia Bull scrambles to the edge of the rocky shelf and peers down it, a sickening feeling stealing over her as she stares towards the seething mass of waves surrounding the column.

2:39There's like a few moments after the silence and I looked down, and when I looked down and saw him, I knew that we had a problem. Around 100 feet below, the body of a man dangles above the boulder-strewn swell. Slumped upside down in his climbing harness, his arms and legs flung out as if in supplication to the sky above. This is Celia's boyfriend and fellow climber, Paul Pritchard. Paul hangs motionless. The water beneath him darkens, ruby spirals seeping outward as blood trickles into the surf. Celia stares with mounting horror at the twisted figure below. They are alone, far from any help, and stranded on an inaccessible needle of rock with a human life hanging in the balance.

3:35There is only one thing that can be done. there had to be a rescue and the only way of getting that rescue was if I could get him safe so I could leave him so I could go off and get help

3:52Never wondered what you would do when disaster strikes If your life depended on your next decision could you make the right choice? Welcome to Real Survival Stories These are the astonishing tales of ordinary people thrown into extraordinary situations, people suddenly forced to fight for their lives.

4:13In this episode, we meet Celia Bull, climber, sailboat captain, and all-round adventurer. In 1998, Celia and her boyfriend Paul are climbing a totally unique natural formation, Tasmania's legendary totem pole, when a stroke of bad luck causes a devastating accident. Severely injured and dangling below the high tide line, Paul is suspended quite literally between life and death. His only hope of survival rests entirely on Celia. I mean, it wasn't pretty, but I knew that the only way he would survive is if I got him to the ledge where he would be safe and I got off and went and got help. With no other choice, Celia is forced to employ all her physical and mental strength to get Paul to a place of relative safety before it's too late.

5:06It is a perilous puzzle with only dangerous solutions. And even if she can accomplish such a superhuman feat, her work will be far from over. I was the first part of the puzzle. The puzzle was quite intricate, but I was the first part. I was either going to succeed or fail. There was no other ground. I'm John Hopkins. From the Noiser Podcast Network, this is Real Survival Stories.

5:58It's the morning of Friday the 13th of February, 1998. Despite the superstition and bad luck traditionally associated with this day, there is no hint of trouble in the rolling skies above Tasmania, where wispy white clouds chase each other across the wide expanse, propelled by frequent gusts of wind. In a forested campsite within the Tasman National Park, situated on a rugged peninsula to the southeast of the island, a British couple in their early 30s finish up their breakfast of fruit and oats. They then check their equipment once more to ensure they have everything they need for the climb they've planned today.

6:39Celia Bull and Paul Pritchard fill their water canteens from one of the outdoor taps, then hoist their rucksacks onto their shoulders and set out along a dirt coastal path bordered by dense trees and vegetation. The track offers stunning views of the South Pacific, and the couple keep a keen eye out for killer whales and sharks as they negotiate the uneven terrain. The further Celia and Paul get from the campsite, the wilder the landscape becomes. They appear to be the only people on the path today. Neither of them talks much as they pick their way along the winding trail strewn with boulders and tree roots.

7:16The spectre of the climb that lies ahead hangs heavy in the air between them, causing a strange mixture of tension and excitement. It's something they've been talking about attempting for years, but it's only recently been made possible. A few months ago, Paul won the Boardman Tasker Award for Mountain Literature for his first book, Deep Play, detailing his experience of tackling some of the world's most challenging ascents. Using the prize money, he and Celia have embarked on a world tour, taking off a series of bucket list climbs. There's lots of climbing in Australia that we were both interested in and he introduced me to the totem pole it was like you know the thing that he really wanted to climb when we were in Australia and that was like a few years before we went so I got involved in the whole story we had all the the old editions of Mountain Magazine and stuff like that so we would read up about it scour photographs.

8:16So before we went, it was always one of the things we were going to Australia to climb. The totem pole is what is known as a sea stack, distinctive column-like masses of rock that rise from the sea near the coast, having been separated from the headland and sculpted over millennia by the erosive forces of wind and wave. These freestanding pillars are striking geological landforms due to their dramatic beauty and the fleeting nature of their existence. The same erosive powers which created them will also inevitably destroy them. Though sea stacks exist all over the world, the totem pole has achieved particular status among climbers thanks to its remarkable longevity and its arresting appearance.

9:03At 65 meters tall and And just 4 meters across, or about 210 foot by 13 foot, it is one of the slenderest sea stacks in existence. It seems incredible that it remains standing, despite the waves that continually pound its base.

9:23The totem pole is both difficult to access and technically demanding to climb, but Celia and Paul are up to the challenge. Both started climbing in their teens, and have a wealth of experience and skill to draw on. To date, Paul has had a stellar career and is recognized as one of the most successful climbers of his generation. But Celia is also extremely accomplished in her own right. Well, I come from a climbing family. My dad was a mountaineer and my mum, you know, got into climbing through him. And although he died when I was quite young, I was very lucky to have godparents who were also really big climbers.

10:01And so I've always been surrounded by that. So it was just a matter of as a teenager, I just suddenly went, oh, they're actually onto something here. And I started to look for clubs and how to get into climbing myself. And then everything was like, where can I go to uni? Where there's climbing? Where can I go and live? Where there's climbing? It was all about climbing. Celia's life soon began to revolve around the sport. And as she progressed into adulthood, she honed her skills on rock faces and mountains across the UK. It wasn't just the spectacular scenery which attracted her but also the unique relationships she formed with fellow climbers as a result Yeah, I was lucky enough to travel a lot and go to different mountainous areas and just the places it took you and the bond you made with the people that you weren't climbing with kind of unlike anything you've really got something to interact and talk about and share Whether it's like the climbing itself, whether it's the environment, whether it's what you see, it's a bird flying by or just the craziness of where you are or just breathing the air or it's just, you know, it fills the soul.

11:14It fills the soul.

11:20Climbing also taught Celia important lessons about risks and responsibility, about how to ensure her own safety and that of others in potentially deadly situations. There's a responsibility, you've got your own life, somebody else's life. There used to do a lot of horse riding when I was young and the days when you were just sent out of the house for hours on end and your parents didn't know where you were, you know, So just alert responsibility. I weren't looking after myself. I was allowed to take risks. So obviously you have accidents. I didn't have any like major accidents or anything like that.

11:56Just falling off, hurting a little bit, but nothing that's got me into hospital or anything like that. But it still teaches you resilience. And then just the experience of being in these places, it notches up experience. and say when you'll put to the test. It's all there. It's all there. You know what to do.

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14:16Eventually, about five miles along the path from their campsite, Celia and Paul crest the brow of the cliff and the totem pole comes into sight. It's an odd sensation, looking down on the willowy stack from the vast overhanging crags which surround it It's an extraordinary feature, it's a really tall sea stack I mean it's really slender and yet it's 60 metres high So it's just extraordinary to see And the same with any extraordinary piece of rock If you're a climber and it looks clean and it looks beautiful, you want to go climb it. Usually, climbers have to abseil down to the bottom of the cliffs, then make their way across slippery seaweed-covered rocks to the base of the stack in order to climb up it.

15:08However, Celia and Paul are lucky. Some of their climbing friends have recently been making a film about the totem pole and have already rigged up a fixed rope between the mainland and the summit of the stack. Known as a Tirolean Traverse, the setup allows climbers to clip themselves onto the rope, then pull themselves across the void to the other side.

15:31Paul is the first to make the traverse, quickly followed by Celia. After zipping themselves along the thin line, they reach the top of the totem, unclip, and soon find themselves teetering on the upper platform of the tower. 200 feet below, the swell thrashes. The wind roars furiously around them, sending clumps of sea foam flying into the air. The totem pole is so slender, it almost feels as if it's swaying in the force of the gusts. Losing little time, Paul abseils down the sea stack, heading to the base of the columns to check out the condition of the sea-lashed rock below. The climb is divided into two pitches or sections The first runs from the bottom of the stack to a ledge about halfway up And the second goes from the ledge to the top of the spire Where Celia waits to hear from Paul We'd already kind of made the decision that if it was too wet for him to do the start Then he would climb the rope back up to the ledge And we'd just climb the top pitch and go that way When Paul reaches the bottom of the pillar, he finds a tiny, unsubmerged patch on a boulder jutting out of the sea.

16:46He balances precariously on his seaweed-slimed perch, examining and assessing the rock to see if it's safe to climb. But moments later, a wave washes over him, soaking his boots, chalk and rope. It's too dangerous to attempt the climb in these conditions. Shouting over the roar of wind and waves, Paul calls up to Celia, telling her to come down to the midway ledge and secure his rope. He can then ascend to meet her, and they can begin to climb the top pitch together. Lashed by the wind, Celia abseils down the scarred rock face until she reaches the midway ledge. She anchors Paul's rope to the rock and shouts down that it's safe to ascend, a voice almost carried away by the breeze.

17:36Paul is now on a different face of the totem pole to Celia, and she can't see him. He'll have to swing around the corner of the sea stack to begin climbing the first pitch. Celia crouches on the narrow shelf, waiting for Paul to reappear, watching as his nylon rope grows taut with his body weight. It starts to swing as he flies around the corner of the pillar and then something makes her freeze. The unmistakable, ugly sound of rockfall. A series of heavy crunches and cracks, followed by silence. As an experienced climber, it's not the first time Celia's heard this. When you hear rockfall, there's that horrible silence and then there's a kind of like, Okay.

18:24You know, you're just hoping and praying that nothing's gone wrong. It's a horrible, horrible sound to hear. And you do hear it when you're climbing, you know, and you hear people shouting, Baa! But yeah, it's a horrible sound. Tendrils of fear snake through Celia's body as the silence stretches on in the seconds following the rockfall. There is no word from Paul. Celia clambers towards the edge of the rocky shelf and peers down the face her boyfriend should be climbing up What she sees below makes her stomach drop I heard the rock falling and then there's a few moments after the silence and I looked down and when I looked down and saw him I knew that we had a problem

19:19On a narrow ledge, midway down a tall, slender sea stack off the coast of Tasmania, Celia Bull stares in horror towards the sea-washed base of the pillar, where her boyfriend Paul was supposed to be climbing up to meet her. But a recent rockfall has changed everything. Paul isn't moving. Instead, he dangles upside down in his harness, his limbs limp and lifeless, his head thrown back at an unnatural angle. Below him, the indigo sea turns wine-dark, the white foam of the swell stained pinkish-red as Paul's blood pours into the water. Just looking down and seeing Paul just hanging from his harness, legs and arms and head just facing back, just sort of held on to the waist, just hanging there.

20:11so obviously the rock had hit him. When he swung around the corner of the totem pole to begin his climb back up, Paul's rope dislodged a loose chunk of rock the size of a small television. He had no time to see it before it plunged through the air and struck him. From her ledge 100 feet above, Celia can't tell how seriously Paul is injured but clearly the situation is dire. He is hanging below the high tide line. If he stays there, the sea will slowly engulf him as it rises. This, combined with the amount of blood he's clearly losing, means Celia is now in a race against time to get him to safety.

20:56Despite the grave circumstances, she manages to maintain her composure and consider the next logical steps that need to be taken to try and help him. It was just like, OK, I've got to sort this out. How can I sort this out? So first of all, he's sort of upside down. So I need to get him the right way up. At that point, he's got all his weight on the rope that he's climbing. And I need to put him onto a rope so that I can pull him up, which has to be sort of free running from him to a point above me and then back to me so that I can use my body weight to pull him. That's the plan then. The first thing Celia must do is get down to Paul and attach him to a different rope which she can then rig into a pulley system on the ledge.

21:49With shaking but decisive fingers, she uncoils a spare rope and lowers it towards Paul then double checks her own line is secure. Gingerly, Celia starts to abseil down the sheer face of the needle-like sea stack, its slender frame impossibly delicate. It almost feels as if she could pull the teetering tower over. Plus, there's the constant potential for further rockfall. As I was going down, I would have been checking. I'm very nervous about that sort of thing. I was pretty nervous beforehand, but very definitely, yeah, I was very aware of it. The crash of the waves grows louder as Celia descends the rock face, inching down the brittle wall, knuckles white as her hands grip the rope.

22:36Slowly she approaches the base of the sea stack, salt water slamming against the pillar and spraying up to meet her. Eventually her feet touch down on the hard, slick boulders, and she wobbles for a few precarious seconds before finding her balance.

22:56Now, the full scale of Paul's injury becomes apparent to her. The chunk of rock collided directly with his unprotected head, leaving a gaping four-inch by two-inch hole in his skull. His inverted position means his blood is streaming out into the sea at an alarming rate, and there is no telling how badly his brain might be affected yet. Somehow, he is still alive, though only just. He's obviously got a massive head injury. So my first thing is like, well, you've got to get him upright so that he's not just completely bleeding out into the sea. So, yeah, I mean, it wasn't pretty, but I knew that, you know, the only way he would survive was if I got him to the ledge where he would be safe and I got off and went and got help.

23:49Dazed and semi-conscious, Paul tries to help Celia to get himself upright in his harness, but his movements are strangely uncoordinated, his limbs clumsy and weak. Celia manages to wrestle him into a sitting position, then secures him in place. Her fingers are soon sticky with his blood. The couple only have one helmet between them. So far, Celia has been wearing it, as the plan was that she would be belaying for Paul. In other words, she would be below him managing his rope as he climbed, thereby increasing her chance of being hit by falling rocks. Now she takes the helmet off and places it on Paul, in the hope that it will help staunch the bleeding and protect his head from any further damage as she pulls him up the rocky spire.

24:40After swapping Paul onto a new rope, Celia begins to climb back up the sea-slicked rock, working as fast as she can to reach the ledge 100 feet above. Despite the horror of the situation she finds herself in, when she gets back to the shelf, her years of climbing experience kick in and she is able to work logically to create a pulley system. I had done a lot of big wall climbing, so I had done a lot of hauling of heavy bags up a wall. But because I'd been doing big walls, because I'd also done a rock climbing instructor program where you do a day of rescue systems and stuff like that. I knew what to do.

25:23It was just a matter of calming the mind and getting on with it. Celia rigs up what is known as a Yosemite haul, a two-way pulley system which runs from Paul to a clip anchored in the rock above her head and then back to her. It's used by climbers to haul heavy equipment up big rock faces, and means that Celia will be able to use her own body weight to help pull Paul up. But given that he's a couple of stone heavier than her, it isn't going to be easy. This will take all her strength, experience and endurance. Hauling big bags at El Capitan and other big mountains. I had done, you know, things that are heavier than me, that are a dead weight.

26:11But yeah, I had done it. So I knew I could do it. I knew I was strong because of the experience of climbing for all those years. I knew I was really strong.

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