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cacalderon
Feb 26, 2011, 12:01 PM
Post #26 of 30
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Registered: Mar 10, 2006
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crazy wabitt
(This post was edited by cacalderon on Feb 26, 2011, 12:02 PM)
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rgold
Feb 26, 2011, 4:45 PM
Post #27 of 30
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Registered: Dec 3, 2002
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Like Marc, I've got a lot of years in---53, but who's counting. I haven't been as lucky or as skillful though, in that time I've had four rappels I couldn't retrieve---at least not right away.
Two of them were raps that couldn't be pulled at all because of friction. One case, in a storm on Steeple Peak in the Wind Rivers, did require reascending the ropes and rerigging the rappel. In the other case, on the South Howser Tower in the Bugaboos, we yarded hard on the ropes and pulled the entire anchor off (yikes!).
In the other two cases, one on the descent from the Durrance Route on Devils Tower and the other on Solar Slab in Red Rock, the trailing rope hung up after coming free of the anchor.
In both cases, we were able to use the rope we had in hand to ascend and free the stuck rope. In both these cases, we would have been stranded if we had been using a thin tag line you can't lead on. The Devil's Tower situation would have been merely embarrassing, but the Solar Slab hang-up would have involved at least a bivouac in cold and very windy conditions and then depending on other parties to show up the next day to help---something that could conceivably not happen if the next day was stormy.
These experiences, widely-spaced as they were, convinced me to absolutely never use a tag line that couldn't be used as a lead rope in any place that was even a little remote. But once you are dragging a leadable tag line, you're better off with double half-ropes, which is what I settled on for many additional reasons.
I might add that in none of the situations I described was the knot the thing that jammed. Nonetheless, I believe that using a knot that is less prone to jamming (and also reduces the pulling effort required) is a sensible precaution.
As with any such precautions, one can overshoot the mark and head down the road to excessive and unwieldy procedures. I'd put the velcro'ed coke bottles in that category for me, but of course risk and safety are in the eye of the beholder.
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happiegrrrl
Feb 26, 2011, 4:55 PM
Post #28 of 30
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Registered: Mar 25, 2004
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rgold wrote: ...on the South Howser Tower in the Bugaboos, we yarded hard on the ropes and pulled the entire anchor off (yikes!).  I'm sure it's funny now(sort of) but then?
In reply to: These experiences, widely-spaced as they were, convinced me to absolutely never use a tag line that couldn't be used as a lead rope in any place that was even a little remote. But once you are dragging a leadable tag line, you're better off with double half-ropes, which is what I settled on for many additional reasons.
Thanks for that rgold - great advice
(This post was edited by happiegrrrl on Feb 26, 2011, 4:57 PM)
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marc801
Feb 26, 2011, 5:03 PM
Post #29 of 30
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rgold wrote: Like Marc, I've got a lot of years in---53, but who's counting. I haven't been as lucky or as skillful though, in that time I've had four rappels I couldn't retrieve---at least not right away.
However, I'm going to recant my earlier post about never having a rope get stuck. There was indeed one time that I had forgotten about where we would have had to reclimb the first two pitches of Dark Shadows (Red Rocks, NV) if another party hadn't been descending after us.
You can get to the ground in a single rap from the top of P2 with double ropes. I forget the exact anchors, but there were some kind of chains and quicklinks involved. On the pulldown, because of the location of the links and the knobs of rock, just before the end slid through the anchor, somehow merely a loop - not a knot - formed in the last few inches of the rope and firmly wedged between the links and the rock. Three of us standing well out from the wall were unable to free it. Obviously though, this had nothing to do with the knot joining the two ropes.
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