How do you ascend double ropes?

Brett Sherman wrote:I would put a prussik around the two strands above the atc with a foot sling and switch weighting the atc, then prussik....etc.

Anyone else actually done this? I had to once for a bit over 150'. The weight of pulling two 10ish ropes through the device was the most workout of that entire climbing trip. Worked simply and seemed safe. I planned on practicing the technique before needing it, but never did. Back up knots are a good idea also and help with some rope weight.

youtube.com/watch?feature=p…

ParkerKempf wrote:i have had to do this before and i had ascenders on me, i just put both my jugs on the non-pulling side of the rope and my cinch as a backup on the other strand so if the knot did pull through i had a backup.

Brilliant! This sounds like it would minimize ascending effort and required forethought.

ParkerKempf wrote:i have had to do this before and i had ascenders on me, i just put both my jugs on the non-pulling side of the rope and my cinch as a backup on the other strand so if the knot did pull through i had a backup. however the autoblock idea would work really well too

Yeah, that would be easy, fast and safe.

To veer off the original question sightly, any tips for the best way to get the piggy off of you in a scenario like that?

I was pretty worried about this kind of thing when I rapped the Prow, spent a long evening trying to work out what to do if I missed an anchor. Thankfully didn't have to practice it.

My guess was to tie a bight in the end of both ropes, clip the piggy to them, somehow wrestle it off of me, then prusik back to the anchor. Once up there set up a haul on the non pulling rope, get pig back up, then have a cigarette and a cry before trying again.

I think this would have worked, possibly having to set up some kind of mini-haul bullshit to get the pig off my belay loop, can't quite visualise how that would work (mini-trax on the non pulling rope?) but seems like the kind of thing you'd figure out if you had to.

Any tips on a smoother and better way of doing this?

I highly recommend reading David J. Fasulo's book, "Self Rescue" by Falcon Press. After that, getting out and practicing some of the techniques wouldn't be such a bad idea either. In the book, I discovered a technique I could have used on Iron Hawk recently when my haul line snagged over a rivet.

In regards to the post about getting the haul bag off your waist:

In my experience, you should never ever set up a rap where the haul bag is attached to you. Rather, you should be attached to the haul bag.

In your post you made it sound like the haul bag was hanging off your belay loop. Instead, try this set up:

1. Set up ATC (or whatever device you use) on the rope and ready to rap
2. Haul bag attached with a shoulder length sling to a carabiner
3. The carabiner is then clipped in to the carabiner used for the ATC
4. You have a daisy, or shoulder length sling, or whatever attached to your harness
5. You clip your daisy (or whatever) into the carabiner used for the ATC

Now, if you get stranded at the end of a long free hanging rap you can escape by doing the following:

1. Tie off the belay device ala ropedup.wordpress.com/2007/…
a. now this can kinda suck, but it is doable even with heavy bags as long as the rope is not too skinny
2. Place ascenders above the belay device
3. Clip into ascenders with dasies (Although, when raping, I believe that each daisy should always remain attached to each ascender, but you call on this)
4. Weight daisies
5. Unclip from belay device
6. Enjoy some cardio

Yeah it seemed like it would be weird to haul bags that were sitting on a tied off atc, but I suppose it would work fine.

I know about the y-hang now, back then I was a bit green and didn't want to mess about with new techniques while on my own. If there's very little chance of having to re-ascend (not soloing, partner has fixed the line) I still prefer to hang it off my belay loop, just feels easier to maneuver with it. In the wonderful vision of hindsight a y-hang would have been a much better idea in that situation though.

What I was really wondering with my question was once you've got yourself into that situation how's the best way out of it.

Hey Eric,
While I agree that attaching yourself to the pig would be better than the other way around, you would be completely screwed if you followed the your recomendation for two reasons. One is you would not be able to free/adjust your ropes if your piggies were hanging from them, and secondly your belay device would be with your pigs so you would have to down jug weighted ropes which would not be the best part of your day.

Back to the OP, if you were climbing with a partner I would fix one of the ropes at your anchor(or build an anchor) and jug on the other rope. There is no reason you cannot jug on a 7 or 8mm rope I've jugged on 5mm Kevlar and Petzl ascenders work fine(don't try this at home). Once you get back to the anchor fix the ropes and lower your jugs down to your partner so he can join you.

If you are solo, you are going to have to use one of the above methods(the cinch backup on the other strand sounds most appealing. If you were the unlucky one to go down first and you partner is still at the upper belay have him wrap a prussic on both ropes and clip to the anchor so you can safely ascend one. Having jumars makes this whole process much easier than just a belay device and a cordalette.

Kevin, I am not sure if I get your concerns.

As far as being able to free/adjust the ropes, why does this matter? I am not sure what else you could do with the pigs? Do you intend to jug with them? That would be mighty hard. If you do not jug with them, they will necessarily be left hanging on the rope.

As far as the second concern. We were talking about a missed rap station. There would be no down jugging because you climb up to the previous anchor (if you cant swing to the actual anchors which is almost impossible with a hanging bag) and haul up the bags.

Moreover, I still don't see how you would ever be able to rap a line with the pigs hanging from them, so leaving the belay device is no big deal.

I am interested to hear more about what you would propose in the situation where you do an incorrect rap with the haulbags. There is always a better way...

-Eric

Didn't want to get too off topic, but here is the problem. If you leave the pigs on your belay device you are going to cause many problems for yourself that could easily be avoided. Swinging to a missed anchor is going to be next to impossible with a 100 lb haul bag hanging below you, even if you reach the anchor you now have to set up a rescue haul using a cordalette to get slack to set up to haul your bag to you. Now what if your bag gets stuck?

If I was in that situation while soloing I would attempt to build an anchor right where the haul bag was and get it off the ropes. Now I can deal with my mistake unencoumbered.

Assuming there was no way to build an anchor I would transfer the haul bag to the knotted side of the rope using a prussic and backed up with the line. Then I would jumar the other rope making sure the end of the free line was clipped into the haul bag. Now I can swing on the free line to the missed anchor, and use the free line to haul the bag to the anchor then pull the rope and proceed. If you were at the end of the rope when you figured out your mistake then tie the free end to your tether and as many slings as you have to give yourself wiggle room. If the missed anchor is way off to the side then prussic the end of the free end into the haul bag side 20 feet up and deal with the haul transfer later.

BTW it is possible to jumar and haul a bag at the same time using a far side haul and a redirect on your lower jumar back down to your grigri. This gets pretty complicated but is what you would normally do while hauling low angle terrain while solo so would be a good skill to learn.

Jane,
You should always have a "far end haul system" setup on your haul bag at all times. This setup would allow you to haul the bag back up while you're with it and would make it easy to transfer the weight off you if needed. The far end haul system is a necessity for soloists but should be implemented for teams as well.
It would save you time and eliminate the need to setup a haul from above and risk getting the bag stuck on something.

Having your haul bag on a load releasable hitch at all times is also warranted. It would allow you to lock off and then lower the bag onto a bight of rope.

I highly recommend Chongo's big wall guide. It covers everything and also educates you about simple old school systems that can be rigged quickly in a pinch.

You can get ascenders which work on double ropes. CMI and Kong make them FWIW they run $170 - $200 each!