How Rap Slings came to the Gunks

Jeebus, what a contrast ! Getting lost in J-tree with myriad similar looking domes in every direction vs. walking along a clifftop that runs for a mile? Really? How can anyone route find up the cliff and then get lost at the top?

I don't get why the experience has to be dumbed down for the lowest common denominator, please explain. It's climbing, it involves serious, often life or death decisions, what purpose does idiot proofing rappelling at a trad cliff serve?

MojoMonkey wrote: Nice rant, ..

Ditto that! Super rant TR!!!! Keep them coming! Brings back memories of my certainly inferior wine-fueled rant regarding the Son Of Easy O "top rope" anchor! Me thinks we are only seeing a glimpse of your ability!

My sympathies lie with Stryker and Lucander. It would be nice if people cared enough to find existing rap anchors rather than adding to a growing list. And finding those anchors is hardly a wilderness pathfinding challenge. But this does not seem to be the case for a significant number of souls. What I like about the GPS solution is that it doesn't do anything to the environment. No signs, no cairns, no nothing. The utterly clueless get some direction, and those who can find their way around in the woods will find the woods pretty much unaltered, so everybody wins, right?

Why don't you just bring a knife and cut all of these slings if it really bothers you?

You are letting a 1" piece of nylon take this much time out of your day?

As for down climbing three pines because there was never a accident, there were also far less people climbing at that point. If there was an accident you would probably be the firs to complain.

Seneca does a lot of things right. one of them is they mark the trails well with blue plastic markers. helps keep people on the trails and not makeing new trails and causeing more erosion.

PosiDave wrote:Why don't you just bring a knife and cut all of these slings if it really bothers you? You are letting a 1" piece of nylon take this much time out of your day?

I do bring a knife. And I occasionally cut down slings I think are in a dangerous condition or are dangerously placed. But (fantasies notwithstanding) I am not a vigilante. Whoever walked the top of the cliff cutting down anchors was not me.

I'm interested in contributing to a discussion in the hope of changing perceptions and practices, and the fact that you've noted, that I've allowed it to "take this much time out of my day," surely indicates that I care, but I'm not an extremist crusader bent on enforcing my way. If the discussion doesn't move things in a direction I think is appropriate, well then I've done what I am capable of doing and will live with the results.

PosiDave wrote:As for down climbing three pines because there was never a accident...

Sorry Dave, you've lapsed into incoherence here, particularly with your use of the word "because." I did mention all kinds of downclimbing as a feature of earlier times. I didn't and wouldn't recommend it as any kind of solution to current issues.

PosiDave wrote:If there was an accident you would probably be the first to complain.

That's a very cheap shot Dave.

You aren't ripping a bolt from a wall, you could be saving a life if someone raps off of a sling that is old. They aren't approved rap station by the land owner (they aren't unapproved either), look
At the 3 hour driving distance from the Gunks. It is the land of convenience and it carries over into climbing for a lot of people up there

lucander wrote:I do not understand why people have trouble finding rappel lines. I started climbing in the Gunks in 2005 as a total n00b with a brand new rack and I've never had difficulty locating the bolted descents. The photos in Dick Williams's guidebook and a basic sense of direction (left or right) are very sufficient.

Tom Stryker wrote:Jeebus, what a contrast ! Getting lost in J-tree with myriad similar looking domes in every direction vs. walking along a clifftop that runs for a mile? Really? How can anyone route find up the cliff and then get lost at the top? I don't get why the experience has to be dumbed down for the lowest common denominator, please explain. It's climbing, it involves serious, often life or death decisions, what purpose does idiot proofing rappelling at a trad cliff serve?

I guess I'm one of those people 'without a basic sense of direction'. This is my third season climbing in the Gunks, and though I'm not nearly as hardcore as most of you on here (most of my trad leading started last summer), I've walked most of the cliff top and bottom, and either lead or followed many of the classic routes, and both rapelled and walked off from many places. Still, I get very easily lost up there.

I consider walking around the top of the cliff without a very good understanding of the area, to be one of the most dangerous things I can do up there. The terrain is very uneven, visibility limited, and trails are often not clear and precariously close to the edge. The few bolted rappels are dangerously close to the edge such that they often need to be approached while on rope, and it's often difficult to see them from a safe vantage point. I personally think that exploring the clifftop looking for a rappel station is a dangerous and tedious exercise, which I try to avoid if at all possible. I would welcome some sort of unobtrusive signs or markers to point them out, as well as additional rap stations to save our poor trees from further abuse.

Walking off isn't always so simple either. Because of the aforementioned dangers, my policy when there is any ambiguity about the location of the trail or how close I am to the cliff edge, is to veer further to the right, so that I'm guaranteed not to walk off the cliff. While this policy has kept me alive, I've gotten lost more than once, including one night where I ended up on the Overcliff road, and spent a very long but very pretty moonlight walk off, after my partner dropped her rappel device and I didn't feel like using a munter.. Plus, walking off requires that either both climbers bring up shoes with them, or damage their feet as well as the expensive rubber on their climbing shoes..

As for the Grey Dick, I've always found that very tedious and often nearly useless. This is why I'm very grateful for the new Trapps App as well as Mountain Project. I may be bad at directions, but there are plenty of other climbers who do not know there way around the cliff or have all the rappel lines memorized, and that's not going to change anytime soon..

Christian Fracchia wrote:Someone late last season must have walked the top of the cliff and chopped many anchors. Many of the guides reported this season of multiple occasions of people rapping directly off trees. I confronted a party just 2 weeks ago just as they were about to rap. I was really shocked to see it. Most of the anchors have already been replaced, though some of them are just a single sling with one rap ring. We are making an effort in the Trapps App to make finding the bolted anchors easier. The Shockley's Tree is a great example because it's only about a 100 ft walk to the left to reach the Arch/Ribs bolted rappels, but I think most people see the tree and just use it because they don't know how close it is to the bolted rappels. Some of the anchors are difficult to locate even when you know where they are. We were just discussing how we could use GPS to help find the bolted stations.

I'm glad to hear most of the anchors are back. Last Monday I put a new pair of slings and a rap ring on the top of Middle Earth, and the day before the anchor was missing on Horseman. One more reason to always carry some 1" webbing and a rap ring or two! (FYI the Omega Pacific rap rings are currently only $4.20 on Amazon, and very light, but a bit small for permanent rap anchors. There are some larger/heavier aluminum rings for $6.52).

As for identifying rap anchors in the Trapps App, I would dispense with all the GPS stuff which is often unreliable, and just put a good description in each route about how to get to the nearest rappel lines and walk off, and maybe some pictures. I think an overview / aerial map of the cliff top, with all the rappel lines and maybe some major routes, would be extremely helpful as well.

So you mention that walking around the top of the cliff without a good understanding of the area is or seems dangerous to you. In your view should you get a better understanding then, or some remedy be put in place for your lack of understanding? I don't mean any disrespect, just trying to understand.

Of places I have climbed the top of the Gunks is probably one of the least troublesome. Much of it is level, and requires very few sketchy maneuvers. In addition you CAN walk off if you can't find a convenience rappel anchor.

When I read about your moonlight adventure, and your partner who would not munter, am I to understand that you would not simply give her your device and munter yourself, or make a carabiner brake, or simply tie the device to the rope for her to pull up after you got down?

Speaking of the anchor on Horseman, I wish that would be permanently chopped. The walkoff is about 2 minutes, and the rap down that route is dangerous to everyone on the ground. Throwing ropes from 120 feet up directly on to the busiest part of the carriage road? That's just totally stupid, and extremely lazy.

This thread is legendary. Rold gave us Co-Ex and now this. Sir, your stature grows with time.

Tom Stryker wrote:So you mention that walking around the top of the cliff without a good understanding of the area is or seems dangerous to you. In your view should you get a better understanding then, or some remedy be put in place for your lack of understanding? I don't mean any disrespect, just trying to understand. Of places I have climbed the top of the Gunks is probably one of the least troublesome. Much of it is level, and requires very few sketchy maneuvers. In addition you CAN walk off if you can't find a convenience rappel anchor.

I agree that becoming more familiar with the cliff top is a good thing, and over time I will gradually do so. I guess my point was, not everyone has the ability to memorize it as quickly as you and some others seem to believe. To be honest, there are even some routes I've climbed before, that I could not find today from memory alone. And of course there are constantly new climbers who are visiting and unfamiliar with the area, or are just getting started climbing in the Gunks.

I don't expect any sort of remedy be put in place to assist me. Whatever is there, I'll work with. If that means I have to spend more time carefully exploring to find an existing rap station, replace sketchy webbing on trees to make a rappel safe, scour the beta on Mountain Projects and the Trapps App, or walk off (and possibly get lost), I'll manage. When I'm out there, I'm responsible for myself and my partner, I don't expect anyone to help me, though I'm certainly grateful for a helpful point in the right direction. Since this conversation was discussing the merits of fixed rappel anchors on trees, and possibly making rap stations easier to find through better signage and/or better guides / apps, I was stating that I see a value in these things, and I would support them. I think more accessible rappel stations has benefits for both convenience and safety. Whether they are needed or appropriate, and what the environmental impacts are, is a matter of debate, but I wanted to share my perspective. And among the vast majority of climbers who know better than to waste time on the MP forums, I'm sure there are quite a few that appreciate convenient and safe access to rappels..

Tom Stryker wrote:When I read about your moonlight adventure, and your partner who would not munter, am I to understand that you would not simply give her your device and munter yourself, or make a carabiner brake, or simply tie the device to the rope for her to pull up after you got down?

What I meant was (but didn't want to complicate my post any further), is that I was not sufficiently comfortable with the munter hitch at the time to rappel with it. I knew the knot, had belayed with it a couple times, but never rapelled with it. If I had to, I certainly would have given my less experienced partner my ATC, and used the munter myself, but walking off seemed like the safer option. This was last year, since then I have rapped on a munter more than once, and while it tangles the hell out of the ropes at the bottom, it works well and I would use it without hesitation.

Tom Stryker wrote: When I read about your moonlight adventure, and your partner who would not munter, am I to understand that you would not simply give her your device and munter yourself, or make a carabiner brake, or simply tie the device to the rope for her to pull up after you got down?

That's three perfectly good ways to cope with a dropped rappel device. Yet another option is to lower the first climber, then rap using the one available device.

Want one more? Tandem rappel.

Easy walkoffs maybe, but what happens is you have a bunch of non-regulars on top of the cliff showering everyone down below with rocks while they try and find their way down.

For folks who do not climb with their phones or books dangling from their harness it would be nice to know there was an anchor with 50', not just some old tat in a tree.

I think the only way to ensure people use bolted anchors and not sling trees is to have an anchor visible at the top of every route, which would be ridiculous. On the average day most parties I see don't appear to be too concerned with the damage to the trees, they just want to do as little as possible at the top of each climb, usually something dumb like tossing a rope around a tree or a sling around anything that'll get them down (ie that stupid cck sling). And while some of the stations are a bit more exciting to get to from above than others (Arrow comes to mind), the gunks are incredibly mild when it comes to sketchy scrambles. On the other hand, I did have to show someone who'd been climbing in the gunks for at least a decade where the last will be first station was, so maybe the current stations aren't exactly in the most convenient places (strictly's is also tough to see). Maybe a rap access placard would help similar to the "climber access" signs in the NRG? Either way, without doing something as dumb as putting in 50 new stations, you'll always have to put up with this kind of stuff. I personally would like to see more thought put into areas where few continue above the first pitch, or are currently using anchors cobbled together from decades of old gear (Fillipina/Double Crack/No Man's Land/Tiers/The Sting/The Yellow Wall/A whole bunch of stuff in the Nears) and climbs with currently poorly up kept fixed gear (Carbs/The hard stuff in Sleepy Hollow/FCD). Not suggesting a one size fix all for all those climbs, but why do we have a nice recently placed pin on Apoplexy (picture perfect horizontal) and junk bolts on carbs (no chance of backing up that ancient bolt, leaving you with a micronut and a spinner). But that's a rant for a different day.

Gunkiemike wrote: That's three perfectly good ways to cope with a dropped rappel device. Yet another option is to lower the first climber, then rap using the one available device. Want one more? Tandem rappel.

I don't trust the carabiner brake. that's a whole lot of gates and moving parts to be moving around while a pair of ropes is rapidly moving through it. Out of the question for me.

Sending a rappel device up on a rope seems like a bad idea to me, especially when multiple rappels are required, and I'd be out communication range with my partner, who was a solid sports climber but new to multipitch. I'm not going to go through all the things that could go wrong, but scenarios involve one or both of us stranded without a rope on hanging rappel anchor. Also did I mention it was about to get dark?

Lowering on this multipitch climb would be similarly problematic. If we were within sight of the ground, and well within a rope length, sure.

And Tandem rappel?! Seriously? I don't know how to do that, and that is more than enough reason not to attempt it. The little that I've heard about tandem rappelling in general is that it is more dangerous, more complicated, and more things can go wrong. When difficult situations arise, I think it's best to avoid further complication, risk, and uncertainties if at all possible.

Thanks for all the feedback on this tangent, but I'm quite confident that I made the right decision to walk off, given our situation, my skill level at the time, and hers, and the fact that for someone new to outdoor multipitch climbing, hanging on a rope in the dark can be scary on its own. In the same circumstances today, I would almost certainly use a Munter.

Perhaps one of the underlying issues is what seems to me to be a contemporary trend to isolate the cliff face from its natural context and view everything that is not climbing on the cliff as not part of the climbing experience. Perhaps this is related to the increasing divide between mountaineering, where it obvious from the beginning that the party will be engaged in all kinds of coping activities (bushwacking, stream crossing, navigating in forests, canyons, and on glaciers, etc.) which are not climbing vertical rock.

Rock climbing, by contrast, is increasingly perceived as only starting at the very foot of the cliff and ending at the top, and any activities that take place beyond those confines are viewed as tedious and possibly dangerous distractions from what everyone is really there to do. The idea that wandering around the top of the cliff, possibly getting "lost," and heading up various blind alleys before finding a particular descent point isn't part of the climbing experience is, I think, becoming much more common, and with it the pressure insulate parties from having to engage in something they don't view as part of their sport.

Naturally, what happens is that to the extent that the insulation process succeeds, parties find the truly minor issues of woods navigation in the Gunks increasingly foreign, distressing, and even forbidding. Rather than seeing those efforts as an integral part of their outdoor activities, they instead speak not only of wasted time, but also of what to me is a skewed view of the dangers of the cliff-top forest, which seems to loom more threateningly than the myriad and, I think, considerably more intense dangers of the climbing on the cliff below.

As most people know, one of the iconic texts on climbing is subtitled The Freedom of the Hills. Marinated as I am in the primordial ooze of climbing prehistory, I always thought this phrase captured the essence of climbing, which is the collection of skills and strategies that allow us to wander freely in all possible terrains. As climbing moves away from this concept to more performance-oriented genres in which the rock is more like a piece of apparatus than an aspect of the natural scene, the entire logic of things like rap stations is upended.

I don't know how or whether these changes could be addressed, of if indeed they should, in any sustainable philosphical sense, even be addressed. I don't think the Preserve ever thought it was in the business of managing an outdoor gym, but now they are increasingly confronted with issues that seem to me to go to the core of how the land is or ought to be used.

Alec32 wrote:Speaking of the anchor on Horseman, I wish that would be permanently chopped. The walkoff is about 2 minutes, and the rap down that route is dangerous to everyone on the ground. Throwing ropes from 120 feet up directly on to the busiest part of the carriage road? That's just totally stupid, and extremely lazy.

Throwing ropes down from the top would rude, kinda stupid, and reckless if there's anyone below (as there usually is). But who said anything about throwing ropes? In most cases it's better to gently lower the ropes anyway. Rapping down is not dangerous to people on the ground. And I will give my favorite tricam to anyone who can make it from the top of Horseman back down to the base of that route in two minutes. I could believe that walking off might be faster than rappelling, but both are pretty fast, and I think both are valid options. Especially if you have newer climbers with you, that you want to teach how to rappel in a less intimidating situation than say, Madame G.

Dan Africk wrote: Throwing ropes down from the top would rude, kinda stupid, and reckless if there's anyone below (as there usually is). But who said anything about throwing ropes? In most cases it's better to gently lower the ropes anyway. Rapping down is not dangerous to people on the ground. And I will give my favorite tricam to anyone who can make it from the top of Horseman back down to the base of that route in two minutes. I could believe that walking off might be faster than rappelling, but both are pretty fast, and I think both are valid options. Especially if you have newer climbers with you, that you want to teach how to rappel in a less intimidating situation than say, Madame G.

I think you're ignoring the context. Many climbers who climb horseman don't know what the hell they're doing. (Trust me, I've been on the receiving end of it more than once.) They don't know to snake ropes down or carry them with them. I learned that lesson very early on in my climbing career from someone who was nearby when I tossed ropes. Luckily, I wasn't directly above the most crowded piece of real estate in the Gunks. It's dangerous to create a situation where people are encouraged to learn that lesson in a place like Horseman.

There is absolutely no reason to rap from Horseman other than laziness. The walkoff and rap take the same time, and the walkoff is (as it essentially always is at the Gunks) much safer than rapping. This doesn't mean I think rapping is bad always or that rap slings at the Gunks are always bad. But when people install rap stations, they need to think about the behavior that will encourage. On Horseman, that behavior is dangerous and that station should be chopped.

Also, anyone who teaches a new climber to rap on Horseman should rethink their teaching methods, for those reasons and more.