Personally I (generally) tie the bag to the end of the rope and use a knot protector. After each pitch I'll switch ends of the rope- this way I can stack the rope as I haul.

josh

Maybe it goes without saying, but untieing the humans or the bags as standard practice requires extra, extra vigilence!

I use a wide-mouth bottle topper to protect my knot. If I need to tie into the middle (which I do for lower-outs) I shove a bight through the bottle and then tie the 8. Presto.

The first statement is a VERY GOOD POINT.

The second tip is why I like looking at these forums....a great tip.
I learned something new today!

josh

The large mouth bottle sounds like a neat trick, but what about my lower-out section of rope rubbing between the mouth of the bottle and the lip of the next roof?

I've always used a figure eight for the bag and haven't had any problems. So what do I get extra if I switch to the butterfly?

... Bottle topper? or is it a topper?... what exactly are we talking about here? I must be a bit screwy or something...

Typically people cut the top off of a plastic soda bottle.

Sure as hell is, cuz it's ten times easier to untie than a fig. 8.
You use TWO knot protectors, dude. One on each end of the rope. If you have a 200' rope hauling a 150' pitch, you would have to slide the rope protector 50' up the rope, and then tie the butterfly beneath it.

As you haul, you stack the haul line in your rope bag up top. Remember when climbing with a partner, you need TWO rope bags per haul line. One on the bottom, one on the top. If you are soloing, you can get away with ONE rope bag per haul line. You can make a rope bag from ANY big nylon bag or backpack or anything, merely by sewing on a clip-in loop.

So you're hauling, and you're stacking the haul line in the haul line bag as you haul. You get the pig up to the upper station, and anchor it with its Docking Tether. Once anchored, you release it, and remove the haul line. Some advocate using the haul line or a separate daisy as a backup, but I prefer not to, because there is a great tendency to forget it during pig release later, and you end up having your pig hanging from it!

At any rate, you remove the haul line, and slide the rope protector 50' towards the end of the rope as you stack it. This is easy if you run the haul line through a crab above the bag. You get the rope protector near the end of the rope, then as the free end of the rope comes towards you [with no knot, obviously, since your excess haul line was your lower-out line, right?] you have to tie a fig-8 knot in the end of the haul line, to ready for it being zipped up to the leader. Put the rope protector up against the fig-8, and tie a little knot below it to keep it in place.

Either that, or just use one rope protector, and do lots of sliding.

The BEST ROPE PROTECTOR by far is one of those long skinny black plastic autmotive funnels that you use for pouring in transmission fluid. The smooth taper makes it far less likely, and much more durable, than a 2 litre pop bottle ONLY the bottom cut out. BWT's use only the top - you should cut off ONLY the very bottom of the bottle.


Well, that is an option when you HAVE a partner. When you are soloing, you have no choice - you HAVE to tighten up on the haul line from the bottom, cuz if you don't you will have to haul all that extra wasted distance!

However, with someone above you, what you describe is a viable option. And in a perfect world of plumb-vertical lines, it is no problem. Usually, however, you have all sorts of piggage ready to take off on some crazy diagonal, and unless you want to smash your beer cans to smithereens [oh, the horror!] you had best lower out your pig.

There are two ways to do this. One is a separate lower-out line, and the other is to tie the pig in short with an alpine butterfly [easier to untie than an 8 on a bight] and use your excess haul line as your lower-out line.

To me, the latter is the Better Way. But remember - Dr. Piton's Better Way is not a panacea. The Better Way is what works best for YOU.

Right. So the bottom of the haul line, which was your lower-out line, becomes the top of the haul line. Your excess haul line = lower-out line was left dangling beneath the pig after you released it, and you took out any knot in the end, because you know how buggered you'd be if the excess haul line got blown horizontally and the forgotten knot hung up in a crack fifty horizontal feet away!

So you slide up the rope protector til you're nearly at the end of the haul line, then you put a fig 8 and locker on the very end, then there's the funnel thingy, then below that, just a knot like a butterfly to keep the funnel from sliding. Cuz when the leader later zips up the top of the haul line, you don't want the funnel sliding back down towards the middle. [this scenario assumes two knot protectors per haul line - if you have only one knot protector, just pull the damn thing off, turn it around, and stick it back on the haul line below the fig 8. As the leader zips up the top of the haul line later, the rope protector will simply slide down the haul line as he lifts the haul line. Get it?
why not? Just shove it in.
Nope. It's just below the end of the rope.

it would if you didn't tie a knot in the haul line beneath it to keep it in place at the end.
There is nothing wrong with using only one knot protector - you just tend to do a bit more stringing the thing along the haul line. That is, incidentally, what I do because I only have one of those funnel thingies.

Another clever idea is to SLIT your rope protector up the side, and duct tape it each time. This way you can put it on and off the haul line anywhere without doing all the threading through the little hole.

Remember to have a clip-in loop on every knot protector!!!

I'm feeling much better - my leg isn't hurting so much any more, and the narcotic haze has cleared. My ankle has so many screws in it, it looks like the bottom drawer o f your work bench. Yeeesh. Good news is I'm on track for a rematch with El Cap in the fall. I'm mad as hell, and I'm doing absolutely NOTHING about it, cuz the doc told me I can't weight the ankle, even though I have this spiffy walking cast.

So I crutch.

But look at the bright side - compared to aid climbing [the slowest form of locomotion known to mankind] I can positively RIP along on me crutches. Uh, at least on level ground......