Backing up a rappel against a rope-cutting event or anchor failure

Michael Schneider wrote: Do you know what metalurgy is? NO I was not talking about bending paper clips, it was an example of 'work'. thank you for illuminating that fact I also have no idea what it has do with the topic That aside I'm always game to spar with people who are good teachers and can explain things in a way that I and so many others can understand. Only because I was using the paper clip as an example of the physical process called 'work'. . . ..and heat was a well recognized by product of bending back and forth . . . but now I am not sure of that or much of anything else either. So as you have so warmly reminded me to stick to your area of expertise , too, where I can ridicule others less experienced than me or you for not considering every single variable, and pretend like we never made a mistake? No I have made many. The most recent, I'd say, was just when I hit Submit. Yep, that seems like my best bet. If it is within your expertise to explain so simply the nature of how that process works, and in so doing, proving yourself superior to me in every way. I accept that. It is not my wheel house, nor did I claim that it was. What I do bring to the table is me . a person concerned for the state of the climbing, an imperfect, old school, climber - who has never dropped any one. I have been on the edge of some things no one else has ever climbed I still try to climb as often as i can I have Mopped up and preformed dangerous rescues and been climbing hard since 1973. before that I was taken bouldering, at the seriously stupid age of 5.(in the 60s) I was as much in the dark about what little one can do when the shit hits the wall as any one else starting out and never had the benefit of the internet to ask every question that I could think of . well that out of my craw, I think it is a very useful and interesting discussion. If the only choice is to use the rope to retreat, and one or more of the climbing party is , or feels the need, lower the person. then they can hold the rope and try to provide a fire-mans back-up as the other or others get lowered, or rappel.

Michael, I'm sorry I ripped into you. What I value so much about this forum is the ability to learn from others and their experiences. I haven't been climbing long compared to old-school climbers like yourself and I value any knowledge and input I can get from guys like you. I also have my own experiences, failures, successes and mistakes. Although they have happened over a short period of time and I am relatively inexperienced, I share what I've learned so that someone even less experienced than I am may learn from it. If I offer something up that's totally wrong, I have no problem being corrected on it whatsoever. I don't care about being seen to be right, I just want to share accurate information.

However, it's incredibly frustrating when I'm basically told I'm stupid and shouldn't be climbing because I make a careless or thoughtless mistake. Trust me when I say that I'm extremely hard on myself for making mistakes, particularly when it comes to the safety of myself and my climbing partner. It's serious to me. So to be belittled by certain individuals here for being honest about those mistakes just pisses me off. I don't have thin skin, but it seems needless to act that way when instead, a little education could make a very positive difference. Honestly I don't understand where that attitude comes from, but it's just not beneficial to anyone. I do my best to be polite to everyone on here, but I lost my patience on this one.

Now in this particular instance, I may not have explained the details in a way that makes sense as to why I could have missed the severity of the abrasion cause to my rope. The anchor was on the face of the rock, just on the lip of the overhang was a nub sticking out. I was going very slowly and so was swinging back and forth. I didn't see any real abrasion issues from the anchor to the lip, but I didn't notice the nub and was looking at the route in front of me rather than just getting down. My point was simply that if you're constantly making downward progress on rappel, the swing is mitigated, much like the swing into the wall from a lead fall is mitigated by a soft catch. I can understand how I failed to explain all of this well, but the blunt and negative comments I've received for it are, in my mind, unwarranted and totally unhelpful.

I don't hold grudges; it's just the internet. So I've got no problem with anyone on here, regardless of what they've said in the past. I've got no problem with you, I just lost my cool. Sorry for that.

Mathias wrote: Michael, I'm sorry I ripped into you. What I value so much about this forum is the ability to learn from others and their experiences. I haven't been climbing long compared to old-school climbers like yourself and I value any knowledge and input I can get from guys like you. I also have my own experiences, failures, successes and mistakes. Although they have happened over a short period of time and I am relatively inexperienced, I share what I've learned so that someone even less experienced than I am may learn from it. If I offer something up that's totally wrong, I have no problem being corrected on it whatsoever. I don't care about being seen to be right, I just want to share accurate information. However, it's incredibly frustrating when I'm basically told I'm stupid and shouldn't be climbing because I make a careless or thoughtless mistake. Trust me when I say that I'm extremely hard on myself for making mistakes, particularly when it comes to the safety of myself and my climbing partner. It's serious to me. So to be belittled by certain individuals here for being honest about those mistakes just pisses me off. I don't have thin skin, but it seems needless to act that way when instead, a little education could make a very positive difference. Honestly I don't understand where that attitude comes from, but it's just not beneficial to anyone. I do my best to be polite to everyone on here, but I lost my patience on this one. Now in this particular instance, I may not have explained the details in a way that makes sense as to why I could have missed the severity of the abrasion cause to my rope. The anchor was on the face of the rock, just on the lip of the overhang was a nub sticking out. I was going very slowly and so was swinging back and forth. I didn't see any real abrasion issues from the anchor to the lip, but I didn't notice the nub and was looking at the route in front of me rather than just getting down. My point was simply that if you're constantly making downward progress on rappel, the swing is mitigated, much like the swing into the wall from a lead fall is mitigated by a soft catch. I can understand how I failed to explain all of this well, but the blunt and negative comments I've received for it are, in my mind, unwarranted and totally unhelpful. I don't hold grudges; it's just the internet. So I've got no problem with anyone on here, regardless of what they've said in the past. I've got no problem with you, I just lost my cool. Sorry for that.

Very well put !
and I agree,
I'm learning to use that quote thingy
I hope it is not as annoying as it seems to be to me.
We endeavor, try. to be good yo yos
Going up and Down safely mostly on a string.
I am Not talking about bouldering or Free-solo climbing.
The forces generated when using gear and soft gear over rock can and do get multiplied exponentially.
Yes, it is important to take all the factors that contribute to wear and potential damage
Into account.
I want to point out that it is a silly thing this game we play.
Getting hurt Going up or down,walking in, or out, or driving Home( much more common than when on the way to go climbing)
Are just a few of the many risks that are part of the outside climbing game.

Is that too snarky again?
I really do think it is great that we can bat all this around
I had to HTFU, and it made me a climber. That may not be worth the effort.
As climbing is getting safer and easier to pursue, due to many factors.
(The grades of of course! are getting astronomically Harder)
The changes - harder climbs - real long lasting fixed gear - hoards of well trained climbers - gyms
And the ability to click and learn are among the more reformative factors that have helped to main-stream climbing.
It is a great resource this internet thing and as you kids say I'm just jelly that the curve for my climbing is waning as so many's are going the other way.

I had few opportunities to do multipitch this summer and up to recently, the ones I did were unsuited to rappelling (easy walk-offs and rappels occupy belay stations and get in the way of next climbing parties). I finally recently had a chance to climb something that required two full-rope rappels where I thought (with my partner's consent) that I'd test placing pros to enable a self-arrest back-up to the rappel. Unfortunately, the rappel anchors were set well-back from the lip. As a result, lowering me required installing a long belay anchor. In other circumstances, this may well be one of those situations where it's just not worth it to lower (and thus to achieve a similar - or even better - level of safety for the first partner down as for the second one).

Communications to slow down and stop lowering me so that I could place the cams and to resume lowering afterwards were pretty straightforward (although in windy conditions, we would have needed the hand/arm signals). I did miss one good placement by failing to stop in time for it and, as a result, ended up placing only 4 pros on the first rappel. Placing and removing the pros did, of course, add a few minutes to the rappel but the whole thing went pretty smoothly and neither of us saw any hint of clusterf*** or particular danger resulting from placing the pros. My partner's only frustration with the whole thing was having to remove the long anchor at the top and pulling the ropes up/back to install the rappel. That does not mean that there is no potential for clusterf***. Attempting to place pros while rappelling down a route with another party climbing it would most likely be a problem but that is situation-dependent (and probably a good reason not to do the self-arrest pro placements in this case - or not to do the rappel at all if there is an alternative) rather than inherent to placing pros on rappel.

We even went a bit more complex than what I had described earlier. For clipping the cams, I quickly prepared 6 "double draws" just before going down: each with 1 pro biner and two slings: one short, the other long, each of these with its own biner for the two ropes (simple and quick reassembly of existing alpine draws). This allowed me to keep my weight on one rope only and hold the second one off to the side while I was being lowered and was not placing pros. As a result, the two ropes were kept separated throughout, further reducing the chance that both could get cut together by a single event.

Of course, in the discussion above, in addition to the general "clusterf***" objections, there were concerns about being able to achieve the self-arrest while falling, using a combination of third-hand friction hitch (on the "brake strands-turned-loaded strands") and hand braking (on the "loaded strands-turned-brake strands"). We didn't test this. I explained before why a reasonably safe test would be both guaranteed of success but also unrepresentative of a real accident. I agree that if you unwittingly maintain a death grip on the third-hand as you fall, to the extent that you completely prevent the hitch's tail from sliding through its loop (probably despite a lot of pain too, since your hand will then get squeezed between the ATC and the third-hand), the hitch may not cinch around the rope. Also, as I mentioned earlier, even if the third-hand effectively cinches, it might melt or break under the impact.

What my partner did was install a long and loose "fourth-hand" as an additional back-up to the third-hand. Installed below the third-hand with a longer tail and moving down with the third-hand when sliding it down the rope, this "fourth-hand" stays out of the way and would activate only if self-arrest was needed and the third-hand failed for one reason or another. This seems like a better option than hoping that your own hand-braking will be sufficient back-up to the third-hand (although it does not obviate the need for this hand-braking or the advisability of trying to get both hands on the "loaded strands-turned-brake strands" in an eventual self-arrest).

Despite this, I freely admit that this self-arrest procedure cannot be 100% foolproof. For one thing, you need the pros to hold (as you usually do in climbing situations) and there's never any guarantee that they will. As I explained earlier, this approach is very similar to, and has essentially as good a chance of working in a real situation as the Petzl-recommended prusik back-up for lowering off of a single mid-pitch bolt while cleaning the draws below.

That's it for the update/test feedback.

However, with all the focus on my needlessly adding clusterf***s and risks to everyone's beloved standard rappelling procedures, it seems that this point got lost in the shuffle:

jktinst wrote:...no-pro compromise: lower me first; I'll ensure that the next rappel station is a bombproof multidirectional anchor, ideally with a Jesus nut within easy reach, and clip the rope to this anchor, provided I can do it while leaving enough slack for rappelling. This would add next to no time to the rappel. If the ropes or top anchor got severed, there would be an outside chance that the partner might survive the fall, plus what's left of the ropes below the cut would not be lost, which means that I'd be able to rescue myself (and, hopefully, my partner as well)...

As mentioned, an approach to rappel back-ups involving rope anchoring + 1 Jesus pro, and with the rappeller using a loose 4th-hand would add very little time to the rappels, nor would it add any clusterf*** (real or imaginary) and it would have the not-insignificant potential benefits discussed, however unlikely the eventuality.

Opening this thread was a bad idea. {grabs bottle of Advil}

you know...most times, getting off the mountain/face as fast as possible is a much safer approach than taking the painstaking time to safeguard against unlikely risks like getting your rope cut. on the other hand, you can always bring a file and smooth down all the sharp edges you encounter on a cliff.

Holy $hit

Lol