parachute

Suppose you have arrived, either from above or below, having prussiked, cinched, or biner-twisted your way there. Now you are dangling, either above or below an unconscious rappeller who is being held in position by a locked harness friction knot.

But listen, scenario-meisters, all this talk about how to reach the hanging rappeller is just about the prelude. Suppose you have arrived, either from above or below, having prussiked, cinched, or biner-twisted your way there. Now you are dangling, either above or below an unconscious rappeller who is being held in position by a locked harness friction knot.

What will you do to get him down, and how much longer will that take? All things considered, what is his likely hang time?

It might sound heartless, but it. doesn't. matter.

Take the time and make smart choices. Keep your head. Don't rush things, you're just going to end up with patients instead of one.

So no, I wouldn't say your 15 minutes might be life or death comment is relevant.

If all else fails and there is nothing you can do, then cut the rope.

Once someone is down, they can give a "fireman's belay." If the rappeller is rendered unconscious, they can still be lowered under control.

this has to be commented on because I believe it's dangerous advice in a self-rescue situation.

first, some assumptions I'm going on before I go any further:

1. your partner has definitely been knocked unconcious by rock/icefall
2. your partner is hanging on the rope

if these two conditions aren't met, the following doesn't apply, and desertwanderer is probably right.

if your partner has been knocked unconcious and is hanging by the harness, think for a second about how he is probably hanging. probably not upright, right? so as his tongue relaxes, it rolls back and blocks the airway. 10-15 minutes? more like 3 before they suffer permanent brain damage, 5 before certain death.

it's probable that you won't be able to get down the rope in 3 minutes anyway. but it's possible if you don't waste time.

and I bet if it's your son/brother/wife/husband on the line below you, you won't be wasting any time at all. personally, I think risking a 1 in 100 chance of death is worth it if it gives me a 1 in 5 or even 1 in 10 chance of saving my partner's life. basically I'm gonna skip the 5 seconds it takes to lock all my biners and such, double check only once, and hope that I'm not stupid enough to forget something.

again, if there's no need to rush, I agree that you should take your time and triple check everything. in stress situations, it's easy to not think clearly. but if the clock is ticking, go go go.

Majid why is it you always come up with ridiculously complicated and excessively dangerous solutions (or lack thereof), to the most simple tasks. I can see it now. You would be on some multi-pitch rap station with a GriGri, an ATC and a figure eight and you would do a full body rappell...

If you’re rapping a large ass rope like that in your pic a munter hitch is fine. Hell I know a variation of the munter hitch that is fine for 4 mm cordlet. I rapped a small climb using 4 mm cordlet with a high friction variation of the munter hitch and it didn’t involve some excessively complicated sub-prototype rap configuration using a billion biners and a spool of cordlet… The regular munter hitch and high friction munter hitch works for rapping any climbing rope you would ever find in the recreational climbing world and all you need is a locking biner. You should have one of those on your chalk bag…

this has to be commented on because I believe it's dangerous advice in a self-rescue situation.

first, some assumptions I'm going on before I go any further:

1. your partner has definitely been knocked unconcious by rock/icefall
2. your partner is hanging on the rope

if these two conditions aren't met, the following doesn't apply, and desertwanderer is probably right.

if your partner has been knocked unconcious and is hanging by the harness, think for a second about how he is probably hanging. probably not upright, right? so as his tongue relaxes, it rolls back and blocks the airway. 10-15 minutes? more like 3 before they suffer permanent brain damage, 5 before certain death.

it's probable that you won't be able to get down the rope in 3 minutes anyway. but it's possible if you don't waste time.

and I bet if it's your son/brother/wife/husband on the line below you, you won't be wasting any time at all. personally, I think risking a 1 in 100 chance of death is worth it if it gives me a 1 in 5 or even 1 in 10 chance of saving my partner's life. basically I'm gonna skip the 5 seconds it takes to lock all my biners and such, double check only once, and hope that I'm not stupid enough to forget something.

again, if there's no need to rush, I agree that you should take your time and triple check everything. in stress situations, it's easy to not think clearly. but if the clock is ticking, go go go.

I use a "fireman's belay" frequently, but some testing done on bottom belays for "long" rappels provokes some cautionary thoughts.

The parameters in the test are different than those we find in our typical climbing rappels (test rappel lengths are generally longer, test rappel device is different, test rope is thicker and less elastic); however, the results (a large belayer unable to stop the out-of-control "rappeller" in most situations) are somewhat sobering.

A few comments so far:

1. Going slow vs. going fast: Of course, the trick is to "make haste slowly." There is an awful lot that can go wrong, and you may either not be thinking clearly or just may not anticipate the way things will be, so erring on the side of caution is mandatory in my opinion.

I seem to be the only person in the discussion who has done this in field conditions (maybe even in practice conditions), so I'm going to make a blanket proclamation: you ain't gettin' there in three minutes. Just getting properly set up and passing the lip binding point will probably take more than three minutes.

By the way, in the situation I dealt with, the stuck rappeller was hanging in space, so building an anchor and attaching the rappeller to that was not an option.

Majid's carabiner-twist rappel would be faster than down-prussiking (and I for one thought his description was clear at the beginning). The question is whether you can force the twists on with a fully-weighted rope---I have no idea about this; I do know that you can "pop" a munter off a weighted line, but it is always going to be considerably easier to do something that lengthens the available rappel line as opposed to something that shortens it. Then there is the question of whether you can get the right level of friction, since the friction in this system isn't variable. Friction demands might change considerably if there are twists in the rappel line, and passing binding points will be extremely problematic. All in all a possible but extremely dicey solution in my opinion. Personally, I wouldn't try it under emergency conditions.

As for the carabiner brake suggestion, that one I'm positive can't be set up with a weighted line.

2. Hauling solutions. Forget hauling. Not only does hauling not work much of the time with improvised gear anyway, but in this situation the climbing ropes are under tension and cannot be set up. Maybe if the rescuer has a long cordelette that can be untied, something could be rigged---maybe, but very far from certain.

3. Transferring to assisted rappel: This at least seems plausible. The suggestions so far have what I'd call "gaps," moments when an instruction does not seem to take account of obstacles to carrying it out. Rather than a detailed response, let me just note that if the assisted rappel is to take place using the rescuers device, than that device can only be attached to a slack rope, which means it must go below the victim's device. This creates a number of problems in getting the victim's weight onto the rescuers device that I don't think have been explicitly addressed yet.

Since the victim already has an attached rappel device, it seems to me that this is the device that should eventually be the one used for the assisted rappel.

Besides the intrinsic interest (for some) of working out what to do in a puzzling situation, and the fact that discussions like this put ideas in the back of people's minds that may prove helpful somewhere down the road, perhaps in a completely different context, I think the main message of the discussion ought to be to think a bit about the benefits of a harness autoblock as a universal approach to rappel safety.

Majid why is it you always come up with ridiculously complicated and excessively dangerous solutions (or lack thereof), to the most simple tasks. I can see it now. You would be on some multi-pitch rap station with a GriGri, an ATC and a figure eight and you would do a full body rappell...

If you’re rapping a large ass rope like that in your pic a munter hitch is fine. Hell I know a variation of the munter hitch that is fine for 4 mm cordlet. I rapped a small climb using 4 mm cordlet with a high friction variation of the munter hitch and it didn’t involve some excessively complicated sub-prototype rap configuration using a billion biners and a spool of cordlet… The regular munter hitch and high friction munter hitch works for rapping any climbing rope you would ever find in the recreational climbing world and all you need is a locking biner. You should have one of those on your chalk bag…

You're absolutely 100% wrong and have no clue whatsoever about rescue/emergency situations.

You're just some gumby fool who rushes into a situation and makes it worse.

I seem to be the only person in the discussion who has done this in field conditions (maybe even in practice conditions), so I'm going to make a blanket proclamation: you ain't gettin' there in three minutes. Just getting properly set up and passing the lip binding point will probably take more than three minutes.

I'm indeed a gumby, no need to point that out. please, let's keep the attacks to a minimum and stick to rational discussion. even gumbies can be right.

I was taught what I know in a self rescue course with mark synnott. what he told us is that if your partner is hanging unconcious, it's possible that they will die in 3-5 minutes. what course of action do you think is best given that information? honestly, my opinion is by no means set in stone. I really would like to know the best thing to do, but more importantly I'd like to know why.

as it stands, I'm under the impression that the chance that the airway is blocked is considerable. if it's not a considerable chance, then by all means I agree with desertwanderer. if you have time, take your time. no need to have two icy corpses littering a route.

the 3-5 minute range is what synnott taught us, and a quick search shows that he was right:

http://wiki.answers.com/...rvive_without_oxygen

Use a NZ Prussik knot...

Yeah, and I'll tell you this, in that situation, there is very very little chance that no matter what method you use, you're not going to get to the person in 3-5 minutes.

I was taught what I know in a self rescue course with mark synnott. what he told us is that if your partner is hanging unconcious, it's possible that they will die in 3-5 minutes. what course of action do you think is best given that information? honestly, my opinion is by no means set in stone. I really would like to know the best thing to do, but more importantly I'd like to know why.

as it stands, I'm under the impression that the chance that the airway is blocked is considerable. if it's not a considerable chance, then by all means I agree with desertwanderer. if you have time, take your time. no need to have two icy corpses littering a route.

the 3-5 minute range is what synnott taught us, and a quick search shows that he was right...