I'd use her rubberband suggestion or with a longish sling pretty quick above the belay so the rope stretch won't be enough to foul it with the pro. That would be the only place I [might] be inclined to use a sling as opposed to the rubberbands.

Yeah, just to clarify -- the rubber bands used to keep the rope from feeding back through your solo device is a completely different function than re-belaying the rope to protect against a shap edge while jugging; and different still then using something to keep the anchor tensioned in an upward direction to prevent shock-loading the anchor in a fall.

No, I understood that. That's why I asked about a reasonable length of cord, since elastics probably wouldn't cut it in that applications.

Materials/techniques used fall into two categories -- ones that you want to fail in the event of a lead fall, and those you don't want to fail.

In the case of simply holding the weight of the rope while on lead, you'd prefer something like a rubberband so that it's strong enough to hold the rope, but will break in a lead fall thus keeping your saftey system dynamic.

Agreed.

In the case of a re-belay you definitely do NOT want the material/tehnique to fail when loaded.

After my last post, I dug around for a while and found an old post by PTPP, in which he recommends using a Klemheist on a length of cord for all three of these applications; since it slips in one direction, it won't interfere with the dynamic properties of the belay. I can see an elastic being better in this scenario, however, since it will simply break under stress.

In the case of keeping the anchor tensioned -- depends. I like Lambones suggestion for using the pig as a counter-weight for belay. There are circumstances when this won't work (going light and fast, or toward the end of a climb when the pig doesn't weigh much). When I'm on shorter practice climbs I used to clove hitch to the first piece to keep the anchor tensioned. I eventually switched to using a hairband (stronger than rubberband) to keep it taught. I've never taken a lead fall on that configuration, though. The plan was -- band fails during fall, and I'd just re-belay from the next solid piece. Pull the anchor end tight, slap on another hairband, and clip it to the solid piece.

Ed

Why would you wait until 50' out (per your example) to rebelay the rope?

I was originally talking about placing a klemheist (or elastic band, etc.) on the first solid piece off the anchor to ensure that there is no slack in the rigging in the case of an upward pull. Since gravity causes your powerpoint to hang down, you'd have twice the distance from the PP to the anchors to fall before the rope came tight. Not the end of the world on El Cap, let's say, because you've probably got the thing tied off to at least three bomber bolts, but it seems pretty unecessary to me.

That's the problem I was facing. The pig belay is obviously a good solution, but I'd like to know how to properly rig it without one.

Barring your question, it seems like the klemheist might be a good choice for this purpose, as well as for adding addtional rebelays in the event of an edge. To prevent rope slippage through the solo-device, elastic bands seem better, since they don't detract from the dynamic properties in the system and will simply break under significant stress. I suppose elastics could work tensioning the anchor (not for protecting an edge, of course) as well, since you could just add another elastic after a fall to re-establish tension...assuming you haven't already done so to stop rope slippage through the Grigri.

-Matt

The real issue there is potential cross-loading of your PP locker(s), which is a good enough reason for me to give my solo-lead some upward tension when possible. I like the hair-band idea, especially since at the time I used them for my hair, so had plenty extras for this task. The thing you really want to avoid is clove-hitching your lead rope to create this upward tension off the PP, for as I understand it the clove pulled to failure will result in two separate pieces of rope. If one MUST use a knot to generate the upward tension, do what someone else recommended (Kate, I think it was) and use a butterfly knot. Even if the loop of the knot failed, the two resulting strands of rope would be held by the knot itself.