3 climbers, 1 route

A nice illustration of safely releasing a weighted ATC guide:

youtube.com/watch?v=G3zOisW…

Using one rope for 3 climbers - When the leader gets to the belay he pulls up the rope and fixes the line for the second to TR solo w/mini trax or grigri, then belay the third guy up normal. Simple, easy, and light, but not as fast.

TomCaldwell wrote:Using twin or double ropes are best for this. Tie in the two followers at the ends of the rope. Leading on twins is easier for an inexperienced belayer since both ropes are fed equally. Once at the anchor, belay both climbers in guide mode. Stagger their climbing distance by 20' so they don't hit each other in case of rope stretch during a fall. This is definitely best if the route traverses at all, because with twins both ropes will always be clipped into gear. Using a single with a trail can cause a lot of drag when clipping into all the pieces. Or just clip the trail into the important directional pieces. Don't do caterpillar style because it is very time consuming. Whenever you are using an atc in guide mode, be sure you know how to do a belay change over. If someone falls into the air, doesn't know how to aid the rope, they will be stuck unless you know how to unweight the atc. If you don't know this skill, use the atc regularly and be on terrain your followers are unlikely to fall on.

I'm not 100% sure about this, but I don't believe that you're supposed to even FOLLOW on a single twin rope, but it is acceptable on a half rope.

I've done half ropes with a team without experience belaying with half-rope technique. Just have each follower belay one strand. You'll get the best half-rope belay of your life.

Yeah, don't follow on a single twin on hard terrain. Weighting that over an edge is scary.

My preferred method, since I do a lot (most?) of my multi-pitch with 3 people, is skinny ropes rated as twins and doubles. Something around 8mm. That gives the leader the option to clip both strands as twins, or to split them as doubles, while giving each follower their own strand.

i was expecting something really dirty in this thread

Auto-X Fil wrote:Yeah, don't follow on a single twin on hard terrain. Weighting that over an edge is scary. My preferred method, since I do a lot (most?) of my multi-pitch with 3 people, is skinny ropes rated as twins and doubles. Something around 8mm. That gives the leader the option to clip both strands as twins, or to split them as doubles, while giving each follower their own strand.

I agree about the twins. I am using the metolius monster 7.8 which is rated as both twins and doubles. Kind of pointless to buy a twin that isn't rated as a double unless your on ice and even then...

Woodchuck ATC wrote:PRACTICE please, the rope management, the belaying, the anchoring, the tie ins, all of it somewhere safe before you go for it on the wall. Seriously.

Ditto

I TR solo a bit using the microtraxion on a single fixed line. Anyone ever consider having the 2nd climber follow in that fashion, and then the 3rd climber on the end of the rope? I dont see how doing it that way could be more dangerous than TR soloing. Thoughts?