Paradise Thriller

Just An Accident

Moments later she felt the familiar jolt and the springy give of the rope catching, then her feet were back on solid rock. Her right foot slipped and as her knee banged painfully against the rock she wished again that she was wearing her climbing shoes with the sticky rubber soles instead of a pair of worn hiking boots she'd picked up at the last minute at a second-hand shop in L.A.

She moved quickly to establish a sound foothold, not wanting to rely on the rope for support any longer than necessary.

What the hell had happened? She never used oval carabiners, preferring the more modern "D" shaped ones that kept the rope more consistently away form the spring latch, but still the ones Brogan provided were standard equipment, even if they were a bit outdated. She resolved to climb back down later and try to find the one that failed and figure out what had gone wrong.

She considered for a moment whether she had been careless in wedging the chock into the cliff wall, but disregarded that possibility. Despite the inherently risky nature of rock climbing, Alison prided herself on never taking chances. Each move was carefully calculated, each piece of gear checked and rechecked. She climbed rocks like she lived her life – always careful to make sure a back up plan was in place.

By coming to Reality Island to search for Gwen, she realized, she was traveling without a self-constructed safety net for the first time in her adult life.

She gave Travis a thumbs-up to indicate she was ok, and then carefully chose a path that kept her to the side of the impassable section she'd encountered before. Her knee ached where it had banged into the rocks, scraping off several layers of skin, but other than that she seemed none the worse for her mishap.

Alison reached the top, pulled herself over, then stood up and looked around, taking a few deep breaths. The sky was clear, and from her vantage point she could see over the trees to the coastline, an expanse of white sand giving way to a series of rocky protrusions. From here at least, the water looked calm. Peaceful.

She reluctantly pulled her focus back to the task at hand, looking around to see if there was anything she could use as an anchor. There were no trees close enough to the edge – and no permanent anchor drilled into the rock – so she pulled a sturdy, steel spike with a ring on one end out of her backpack, then lay on her stomach, leaning back over the edge.

She'd seen a suitable crevice near the end of her climb, only a few feet from the top – one that angled downward into the rock face and would therefore get the spike more deeply embedded when the weight of a climber was applied to the rope. She wedged the anchor in as far as she could, then ran the end of the rope through it, then tied the second rope to the first one so it would be long enough for Travis to belay the rest of the group from the bottom.

She tossed the loose end back down, and watched as Daryl retrieved it, hooked up and started his climb. As far as she could tell, Daryl was moving up the face of the rock below her with relative ease, and she hoped that was a good sign for the other contestants.

In no time, Daryl's head appeared over the edge. After reassuring him that she was fine, they sent the rope down for the next person.

Billy Ray attacked the climb in a macho and overly zealous manner that had him wheezing by the time he passed the halfway point, making the typical male novice mistake of trying to pull himself up the climb using upper arm strength alone. Once he reached the top, he didn't object as both Daryl and Alison grabbed him under the armpits and helped haul him over the last few feet. He grunted, then moved away from the edge, stretching out flat on his back and breathing deeply.

"I'm going to rap back down and talk the rest of them through it from the bottom," Alison said to Daryl, "if you want to keep an eye out from here and help them over the last part."