Links for Bailing Sport Climbs
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Hey, |
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Brian Wiesner wrote: Is there a trick to doing it without losing gear?Stick clip your way up to the chains. |
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Climb an adjacent route, or walk to the top if it's an option, and rappel the route you left your gear on. |
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Do not use links. They are a PITA for the next person to get out. In some places they will also rust and be even harder to undo. Sacrifice a biner. If you're nervous about using a non-locker, tape the gate shut or use a locker. Consider it the price of failure. If you climb long enough you will pick lots of extra binders that other people left. |
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I'd just bail off a single non-locking biner. That said better make damn sure the bolt is solid first because bolts do fail. Fatality last week from someone who trusted a single bolt: supertopo.com/climbers-foru… |
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This is the only thing I like about cold shuts: you can re-thread through the shut and lower, then pull the rope. |
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teece303 wrote:This is the only thing I like about cold shuts: you can re-thread through the shut and lower, then pull the rope. But they are falling out of favor, for good reason...He's talking about bailing off of the middle of a route. Why are you bringing up cold shuts? I've never seen shuts in the middle of a route. Have you? |
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Yup, I've seen them all over the Front Range, csproul, and not just as anchors. Becoming less common. But great for bailing off of! |
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Texas rope trick if you are only 1/3 of the rope length from the ground. Otherwise bail biner with some tape on the gate. |
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If you have to bail on one bolt or piece of pro, attach a prussik to the rope going up through the quickdraws/gear, and clip it to your harness... That way if that top bolt or piece blows, you fall down on to the last piece as if you were on lead. You can slide the prussik down as you clean the rest of the gear. |
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teece303 wrote:Yup, I've seen them all over the Front Range, csproul, and not just as anchors. Becoming less common. But great for bailing off of!Interesting. Don't remember ever coming across one in the middle of the route. |
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Eric Chabot wrote:If you have to bail on one bolt or piece of pro, attach a prussik to the rope going up through the quickdraws/gear, and clip it to your harness... That way if that top bolt or piece blows, you fall down on to the last piece as if you were on lead. You can slide the prussik down as you clean the rest of the gear.A few years ago this was fully illustrated in one of the petzl catalogs. I can't find it right now, maybe someone else knows where it is. |
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I had to lower off with a carabiner today thanks to a failed sport climb. $6 seems like a good price for failure. |
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I don't have a stick clip and have never used one, so that's not really an option, although it sounds like a neat, albeit exhausting trick. |
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Brian Wiesner wrote:I don't have a stick clip and have never used one, so that's not really an optionI've never owned a stick clip either, but I've found plenty of sticks. If you're climbing with any ladies or bros with long flowing locks, hold the gate open with their hair ties. Otherwise some climbing tape or a small twig works too. Brian Wiesner wrote:Why would I tape the gate shut or use a locking biner if no one ever does that with the draws in the first place? Why is the biner on the draw any safer to lower from or fall onto than a single biner on a hanger?If you look at a quickdraw, you'll note that the dogbone is very loose where it attaches to the bolt-side of the biner. This limits the movement it can induce on the bolt-side biner. If the rope is directly through a biner on the bolt, there may be some concern that a swing or bounce could rotate the biner in a way that would work or bounce it loose. Seems unlikely to me though if you're not lead-falling on it. But then again, yer gonna die. |
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Personally I would use a locking biner if you have one. Think of the minor cost as incentive not to bail... and if you really HAVE to bail, then a few bucks is a small price to pay to get down safely. After you've been climbing for a while, the bail biners you collect will probably start to outnumber the ones you leave behind. Circle of life. |
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Ya, I've already collected a couple locking biners, but everything I've been taught says to never use gear you find out in the field, and I would think that would ring especially true in this situation when it is the only thing holding me up. |
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That advice is more important with something like slings that may have been sitting out in the sun for an unknown length of time. Hard goods are pretty easy to check. No visible cracks or rust, smooth gate action, no sharp spots that may damage your rope or slings... probably good to go. |
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csproul wrote: He's talking about bailing off of the middle of a route. Why are you bringing up cold shuts? I've never seen shuts in the middle of a route. Have you?Yes. Lots of routes have them. No I don't have citations to prove it. |
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the problem with quicklinks is that a lot of folks use the hardware store ones |
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Whether the biner is locking or not adds little margin to your safety. Do you really think your rope is going to magically jump out of a non locker while you are lowering? Lower off a non locker and keep your rope clipped to a second bolt below with another biner. Lowering off a single piece is your real danger. |