I made my first attempt at hauling a bag today. I went to a low-angle wall with bolts at the top, made an anchor, lowered the bag down on a munter hitch, then tried to haul it up with a 1:1 system on a microtraxion. It would get stuck on the underside of a ledge, and I'd have to rappel down to free it, then ascend back up. I had do that 3 times.
I realized that when it got stuck, I had tried to pull on the bag so hard, and got the rope so tight, that I couldn't release the progress-capture pulley. Even when I tried to transfer the load on to a friction hitch and separate pulley system, it still wasn't enough.
Is the moral of the story to never pull too tightly if you're hauling a bag solo? Or is there some way to unlock a microtraxion that's under load?
I ended up rapping down one more time, unsticking it, ascending up again, unlocking the pulley, then setting up a counterbalance rappel. I and the bag lowered down to the bottom and I just carried it out. The whole experience sucked, but it was an experience and I learned a bunch from it.
To add to that, I'm guessing the way to release a trax at the top if you had to without descending to the bags would be 1. a prussic on the line below the trax rigged back to the anchor as a 3:1. Tension this to take the weight off the trax (and crash the bags into whatever they are hooked on) and release the trax.
2. Or as I'm sure you know, a trax will release when loaded, if it is loaded equally by the rope entering and exiting the device. So put a put prusik on the line below the trax. put a pulley on this, or just a krab, pass the slack line exiting the trax trough this. Pulling on this should allow you to depress the button on the trax (you might need a redirect to allow you to pull downwards.
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