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Big Wall Tips- Anchors

Original Post
Mark Hudon · · Lives on the road · Joined Jul 2009 · Points: 420

Anchors

Just added it. Tell me what you think.

Big Wall Panoramas and Tips

Scott O · · Anchorage · Joined Mar 2010 · Points: 70

Thanks for putting these together. I loved the first one, so I'll take a look.

edit - That was a great read. I've done a few walls, and I'm working on upping my efficiency. This helps.

Mark Hudon · · Lives on the road · Joined Jul 2009 · Points: 420

Thanks.

Any tips or suggestions? These Tips Sheets will always be in a state of flux and I'm totally willing to keep adding to them.

Scott O · · Anchorage · Joined Mar 2010 · Points: 70

Well, using the butterfly in that way is new to me, but I like it. I've just always tied off to the bolts in sequence, so that the second was jugging off a bolt backed up by the others, but this way makes more sense. It's just as easy, so why not do it?

Tying the haul line short is also new to me. I usually just keep 30' of 6mm cord tied to the bags for lowering out. I can see how just using the haul line and tying in short could save some tangles.

I'm going to start carrying an anchor kit of 3 big biners. I usually just put whatever lockers I can grab up there, mixed in with a non-locker sometimes, but having big lockers to clip other things to would have saved me lots of hassle.

I'm curious about your haul bag docking cords. This is probably beyond the scope of this particular presentation, but I'm puzzled by how you've docked your haul bags. What are those knots/hitches? It looks like a munter and ???.

I'm also going to adopt the ledge on the adjustible daisy. I've wasted lots of time fiddling with all six ledge straps when really all I wanted was to go up or down a few inches.

One thing I'd love to see is a discussion on managing multiple haul bags. You have several in your pictures, and I remember thinking "holy crap, that's a lot of bags" when I saw Tom Evans' shots of you on South Seas. I've only done grade V walls, and the one grade VI wall I attempted was done with a big bag and a smaller "sub bag." It was a bit of a hassle (although it was our first wall, so there were a lot of kinks to work out).

Mark Hudon · · Lives on the road · Joined Jul 2009 · Points: 420

Scott,

All in good time!

The docking cords, the haul line tie-in, multiple bags, those topics are all in the works.

Yeah, one place where I'm a slob on a wall is my haul bags and tethered bags. Quite a bit of the South Seas was overhung and the bags never touched the rock, I just clip stuff all over the place and let it go (Max had a bunch of rather large items, his sleeping bag and rain gear were giant, some of those bags had nothing more in them than a sleeping bag).

Peter Zabrok · · Hamilton, ON · Joined Dec 2007 · Points: 645

Wow!  Great to see Mark's super useful big wall tips are still up and running.  

If you guys have never delved into Mark's website [see the top post] you really need to! Great stuff here to learn, eh?

Stan McKnight · · AZ · Joined Jan 2013 · Points: 261

Great article. When soloing, do you use the same anchor set up with the butterfly equalizing two good bolts for upward pull? 

Guideline #1: Don't be a jerk.

Big Wall and Aid Climbing
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