Learning to climb outdoors is an adventure, one often filled with various dangers. This is an example of a VERY hard catch on a large fall from the anchors. Belayers, try not to do this to your climber.
UPDATE: Due to some comments below, I feel I should provide more info on exactly how this hard catch happened. The sudden hard stop you see is purely because of a mistake by the belayer in catching the fall. He literally jumps up as I started falling, and by the time my fall is ending he's on his way down from the jump, this causes the rope to stretch on the other end, reducing the amount of stretch left to soften the fall, as well as eliminating any softening that should happen when a belayer is pulled up at the end of a catch. Experienced lead climbers know that a belayer's role in catching a fall is to let themselves to be pulled up, or in the case of a weight difference, to slightly jump at the moment the fall ends, not before. The belayer was relatively new to lead climbing and this was his first catch of a big outdoor fall. I was acting as a teacher here, knowing the risks. I took the fall on purpose, for the sake of the learning process and giving the belayer experience in catching big falls in a controlled manner. And although the result wasn't what anyone wanted, we did learn from the experience. The belayer would never make this mistake again. As far as injuries - I sustained a bruised/scraped knee and some mild lower back whiplash (nothing serious, although I realize I got away pretty lucky). This video is meant for educational purposes so others don't make the same mistake. I am not making any claims that this is by any means proper technique or a "safety" video.
