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dorkmaster
Feb 22, 2004, 3:33 PM
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Registered: Feb 19, 2004
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I was just wondering what the worst thing anyones used for a rap anchor was?
Mine was a tree on a 1ft "ledge"...probably 5 inches in diameter...it held though :)
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innominato
Feb 22, 2004, 3:36 PM
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Alex Huber...
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micronut
Feb 22, 2004, 4:15 PM
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Registered: Sep 11, 2002
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a toaster sized block frozen into ice with one faded sling frozen around it. It was a life and death situation.
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din
Feb 22, 2004, 4:18 PM
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Registered: Feb 1, 2004
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a toaster.
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crzdriver
Feb 22, 2004, 4:39 PM
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Registered: Apr 24, 2002
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My partner and I made an all-or-nothing assault of the Diamond one year, and had to retreat from about 2 pitches above Broadway. We were kind of stuck between Field's Chimney and the North Chimney. We had never been there before, so we just started heading south, and hoped for the best. We should be dead. We only found one sling on the way down. One anchor was an 8' tall rock about 12 inches wide standing on a ledge. We moved it into the right position so it wouldn't fall over on the way down if it held. Another was on a dirt ledge, and we had to cave the dirt away from this rock. We could only get about an 1 1/2" of meat before we hit crap again, so we ran with it. If you let tension off of the rope, the sling would pop right off. My buddy almost fell the rest of the route when he was looking around over the edge and let his weight off the rope. We rock-paper-scissored, and he was the lucky first down. I held the sling on the rock as he went down. I my turn, I prayed, said Hail-Mary's, and even some old VooDoo tricks I knew just in case it all worked. Somehow we made it back to the car that night.
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kissthemtnairwebreathe
Feb 22, 2004, 6:07 PM
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Registered: Feb 16, 2004
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bd spectre hammered into frozen mud... :roll:
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jv
Feb 22, 2004, 7:34 PM
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Registered: Sep 26, 2003
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A piece of burnt, stale toast.
JV
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kman
Feb 22, 2004, 9:13 PM
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Registered: Oct 16, 2001
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In reply to: bd spectre hammered into frozen mud...
:shock: :shock: Damn dude. That would suck!
For me it was a computer sized block sitting on a scree slope. There were a few larger blocks around it so we wedged it in best we could and I sat on it while my 90 pound heavier than me partner went down first.
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dontjinxme
Feb 22, 2004, 9:19 PM
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Registered: Nov 18, 2003
Posts: 109
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I once said "HEY...MONTY, hold the other end of this rope will ya?"
Seriously though, I tied a firemans knot "Retreivable knot". While leaning back to begin my descent of 12 feet. The knot started to unravel.
Frantically, I pulled on the rope to get erect again. The faster I pulled on the rope, the faster it pulled loose. Thankfully for friction, I obtained the erect position just as the knot pulled loose and fell to my feet.
Moral of the story....Don't use a firemans knot. It works for general purposes, but certainly "knot" a trust worthy one for lifesafety.
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anythingxtreme
Feb 22, 2004, 10:00 PM
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Registered: Jun 13, 2002
Posts: 33
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A sketchy #9 Hex placement.
The worst was a rappel into a slot canyon in Zion last summer off of 2 pieces of sagebrush growing out of a crack in the slickrock. rWe tugged on it a couple times, "It'll hold...Right?" :shock:
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apoorva
Feb 22, 2004, 11:57 PM
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Registered: Dec 5, 2002
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a little bush growing out of some mud on a foot wide ledge - at the gunks. a word of advice, don't rap off any old anchor on the top even if you see others doing it, if you don't have 2 ropes :-)
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kissthemtnairwebreathe
Feb 23, 2004, 12:49 AM
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Registered: Feb 16, 2004
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In reply to: bd spectre hammered into frozen mud... Damn dude. That would suck!
The spectre was suprisingly bomber, plus it was a relatively short rap (~60') with a ((((deep)))) powder snowdrift landing... nevertheless, the pucker-meter was redlined...
bd spectres are a one of the sweetest pieces of gear
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yosemite
Feb 23, 2004, 2:10 AM
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Registered: Dec 5, 2002
Posts: 331
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A chicken head about the size of a chicken's head.
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dorkmaster
Feb 23, 2004, 2:15 AM
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Registered: Feb 19, 2004
Posts: 268
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Wow...you guy's rap anchors make my tree seem like a bomber anchor consisting of like 2 non-weathered/weakened sport bolts!
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hosh
Feb 23, 2004, 2:20 AM
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Registered: Dec 15, 2003
Posts: 1662
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the second floor of my Texas appartment when I was living there. Yeah, I'm a dork. I was trying to figure out how an ATC worked when I first started climbing. Fell from the 2nd floor into the living room my first try (don't even remember how I rigged it, but it was wrong). Hurt. Sucked. Tried again and I won round 2. But that's the worst Rappel situation I've ever been in. Any one else seen the hip "No Sport Rappelling" sign on the way into Zoo Wall in the Witchata's in OK? Sucks to be a boy scout there...
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dynamicpanda
Feb 23, 2004, 2:27 AM
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Registered: Jun 13, 2003
Posts: 288
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A rounded horn with a few crystals sticking out of it. Luckily, the crystals sorta held the rope in place. To make matters worse we were rapping down a slab so the rope had an outward pull. SCARY AS HELL!
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ottoman
Feb 23, 2004, 2:36 AM
Post #17 of 26
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Registered: May 26, 2003
Posts: 149
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old #4 rock in eldo canyon..in a rainstorm.......went back next day and retrieved it...it was lonesome.....
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xanx
Feb 23, 2004, 2:41 AM
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Registered: Aug 6, 2002
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anyone seen the movie "Touching the Void"? in it, Joe raps something like 80' down an ice crevasse with a shattered leg off of a single ice screw... sounds way sketch to me!
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krustyklimber
Feb 23, 2004, 2:53 AM
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Registered: Jan 25, 2002
Posts: 1650
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A chickenhead about the size and shape of a Volkswagon moon style hubcap, flat on top of a Joshua Tree rock formation, with a very slight groove at the base.
It was before, and the reason, I learned about simul-rapping off each side of the JT rockclimbs,
Krusty http://pages.prodigy.net/.../emoticons/wave1.gif
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dirtineye
Feb 23, 2004, 2:41 PM
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Registered: Mar 29, 2003
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A cluster of scrawny mountain laurel. nothing larger than 1 inch in diam, but several of em.
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wallwombat
Feb 24, 2004, 12:10 AM
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Registered: Jun 17, 2003
Posts: 727
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A chockstone wedged in a flared crack/chimney kind of thing. I don't know what was holding it there but it held. I have also done the tying off a patch of brush thing which works on the premise that lots of really weak anchors equal one almost decent one.
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rngrchad
Feb 24, 2004, 12:51 AM
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Registered: Feb 9, 2004
Posts: 163
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My worst rap incident was quite exciting, I would like to think quite safe also(you may think otherwise). It was one of the few snowstorms we had here in Ohio. At about 11:00 at night I decided to go cross country skiing...seeing as how this didn't excite me enough, I came back to the house, loaded my Marmot pack with my climbing rope, webbing and a few carabiners. Off again I went but this time with my pack on. My destination, an 80 ft Train Tressel about a mile away located in between forests, and cornfields. I figured, this should be fun, cross country skiing, then rapelling off a train tressel in near white-out conditions :P The cordellete was bomber, and the setup was perfect. I rapp'd about 15 times off this tressel and about the 16th or so time I began to hear a murmor :shock: coming down the tracks...no way could a train be coming down this late I thought. (I've hunted coyote's down these tracks all my life and never seen a train this late) Well sure enough, it was a train. Somehow it ended up sneaking up on me and to this day I realize this was one of the stupidist, yet funniest things I've ever done! The conductor saw me too and just gave me a short blast of the whistle! Good times. That's all I can say :D
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iltripp
Feb 24, 2004, 1:44 AM
Post #23 of 26
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Registered: Oct 6, 2003
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1 inch diameter dead tree (if you can call it that... more like a bush) sticking out of a slab.
The real b#tch of it is that there were a pair of bolts about 20 feet to my right that I never saw... stupid, stupid, stupid...
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joegoesup
Feb 24, 2004, 2:09 PM
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Registered: Jun 26, 2003
Posts: 197
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one of those old army pitons with the steel ring that was real old.
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billcoe_
Feb 24, 2004, 8:43 PM
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Registered: Jun 30, 2002
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A chockstone wedged in a flared crack/chimney kind of thing for me too.
But I thought it was fairly solid as the webbing wedged into the space fairly tight. It made my nads snug up at first, but it was OK. Wasn't anything else around.
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