Self-Belaying Techniques, while belaying your second? (Cables Route: Longs Peak)

I saw some seriously weird sh*t yesterday on the Cables route of Longs Peak - which doesn't seem out of the ordinary for a beautiful (if degrading) Sunday afternoon, on a popular route, on a popular mountain. The scene: a party of three was starting to climb up, as we were rappelling.

It's worth noting that we found them very much off route, as we were setting up the rappel. The leader downclimbed what he started and moved over to the actual start. This was around 11:30 am. I was able to reach the last bolt while rapping, before getting to my rope ends. That's no problem as I could either downclimb it easily and comfortably, or let my partner rap, then rap the final 10 or so feet.

But, the guy wouldn't get out of the way, even as I insisted I couldn't downclimb with him at the base. As I was having this heated discussion, my partner rapped to the final bolt. I was just hanging below the first bolt on a ledge, and my partner was now at his rope ends. So. two people, ten feet from the ground.

The guy can't get up without us in the way, and we couldn't get down, without him in the way. If there was a legitimate 2 bolt anchor with chains, this would be no problem, but there wasn't: it's just one enormo bolt - I'm sure lots of you know this route.

We were trying to figure out, you know: how to get down and the gentleman couldn't move for us. He cited that he wasn't comfortable moving him and his partners (made up of a young son, and his wife) out of the way. Much weirdness ensued, but talking to my partner about this - as we finally got down (we rapp'd from the bolt), we came to a funny conclusion:

We think the guy had a belay system, where he was - at the same time, belaying himself, while also protecting his seconds. The main reason he was so insistent on not moving was because he was not comfortable moving his seconds. He had already plugged a piece into the start of the route (a little of head-high, not at the base), which I want to think he was using as the anchor for his seconds. And, instead of tying the rope into his belay loop, he had a locking biner, then the rope tied to that, and then some sort of sliding knot.

Other than not being cooperative, there was a few other ways this guy was making this entire scenario a lot more dangerous and difficult than it could have: it was getting pretty late to ascend the route. As I noted, he was found off route and I had to instruct to him to where the route actually was. I was also peppered with questions about route beta (how many bolts are there? How far to the summit, 100 feet? How long does it take? What do you think about the weather?) while trying to work out how to descend w/my own partner (downclimb or rap?) - very distracting. This, all on a wet slabby ledge and without pro in for myself - I had to get off indirect, to let my partner rap down (also not ideal, I certainly admit, the situation SUCKED).

Looking back, I do not like these sorts of situations, and never have been in one before myself. I should have just yelled, "ROPE!" thrown the rope down, did my rap, told the party at the bottom what I needed to do and be done with. If he climbed UP and I was rapping down, I could have perhaps waited for him to get out of the way, then called my partner down.

I learned a pretty big lesson about being overly generous in a situation I made more dangerous because of my generosity. I've been in many situations where a party above is rapping on top of us, but we've always been able to work out a logical and safe way to work things out - it's usually NBD.

In the end, the dude couldn't climb up - maybe this was a saving grace to avoid more dangerous tactics, as the queue to rap was growing from 3 people after us, to a dozen, with only his party wanting to go up. Hope he at least learned the lesson of how an Alpine Start makes the odds of summiting much greater.

Anyways, sorry for sidelining, but the story in full had to come out of me in a fairly calm manner.

My main question is: is this a legitimate belaying tactic you would use in a non-emergency situation? I sort of wish he would have explained his belaying technique better so I could understand what to do better, but his temper just boiled over.

(again: wackiness at popular routes on popular peaks on popular days: not big surprise - another lesson relearned for me!)

It sounds like he was tied in short – the locking biner being his back-up knot, and the sliding knot being either a friction hitch or a clove hitch on the lead line. Usually when people do this, it's to simul-climb or self-belay.

It is possible to self-belay while having your second(s) "on belay": you build an anchor, pull up the slack in the line until your second(s) come(s) tight, and fix the portion of the line running to your seconds so that they can put an ascension or self-belay rig on their side of the line and climb/jug without your involvement. Then, you continue leading past the anchor, belaying yourself through your short tie-in, as your second(s) approach the anchor through free-climbing or jugging. During the period of time after the rope has been fixed, all members of the party make upward progress.

This is short-fixing and it's a technique developed by big-wall speed climbers. It's usually used on big routes that require sections of aid climbing. It is easier to self-belay when you're aiding, since you can make use of both hands at the same time to manage the system. To self-belay while free climbing, you have to use a device like a Grigri or Soloist, because it's a huge pain in the ass to manipulate friction hitches/clove hitches when you're only held to the wall by your own hands and feet.

I guess they could have been simul-climbing but I've never heard of it being done with two seconds. Honestly, the whole situation makes little sense to me. P.s., you can stay in direct to that eyebolt while your partner rappels - you girth hitch a sling to the bolt and clip it with a locker to your belay loop. The sling occupies a small enough portion of the cross-sectional area of the bolt to permit threading a rope. Or at least, that's how I did it with an 8.7mm line a few weekends ago.

I appreciate people who are willing to take inexperienced people into the alpine, but there is a basic level of skill everyone should have. Proper belaying of the lead climber being one of them. There is no reason for unusual belaying in the alpine.

Wow, Marcus, that does sound advanced.

We weren't sure of this person's skill level, but his seconds clearly weren't comfortable with the situation - the boy starting actually crying. One of our theories on why the leader got so uncooperative and angry was because he felt embarrassed messing up, in the presence of his family.

I am by no means an expert - I was helping up a friend of my on his first 14er - he's a competent sport climber, but just beginning with mountaineering (thus our route selection). We still felt a little weirded out by our encounter, but somewhat happy that that's as far as the gentleman got, given the competence he was presenting us.

He did give a piece of his mind to a SAR person who was jugging up from Chasm View, as we were hiking down. We half expected to be asked some questions about the incident at the trail head (the other half thought that SAR had more important things to do). Instead, I said hello to the ranger working, and gave him some personal items we found on our hike in, that must have been dropped (pair of kid's prescription glasses). I've been up there so many times this summer, they probably know me by name!

LongRanger wrote:And, instead of tying the rope into his belay loop, he had a locking biner, then the rope tied to that, and then some sort of sliding knot.

LongRanger wrote:My main question is: is this a legitimate belaying tactic you would use in a non-emergency situation?

There is no way to tell from your description but he he may well have been simply self belaying with a clove hitch. This is commonly done as an aid rope soloing technique but would be pretty easy to do on the cables route. Certainly valid enough if done correctly, if a bit slow.

Also, your point of view is rather clear from your post, but you might want to consider that the lead climber has the right-of-way and just because your chosen rap route is over top of the route he is on or he is moving too slow or you disagree with his style doesn't mean he gives up that right-of-way. I don't know...maybe you tossed your ropes before he started? Sorry for taking the other side but these types of posts always seem a little self-congratulatory.

I think it's worth noting that the Cables is universally regarded as the standard descent route for people topping out on the Diamond – and like LongRanger pointed out, it's foolish to be starting up the North Face that late in the day, when everybody who was up at dawn to climb the Diamond is heading down Cables. Not to mention that if they had proceeded up the route, they wouldn't have topped out until at least 1pm, a precarious time to be on exposed high peak nearly anywhere in Colorado.

No apologies necessary Xam, I appreciate your alt. point of view than my own.

I didn't feel as if I was 100% in the right in the situation, but I felt it strange that the situation escalated to basically: yelling at each other. So not cool.

Marcus Russi wrote:I think it's worth noting that the Cables is universally regarded as the standard descent route for people topping out on the Diamond – and like LongRanger pointed out, it's foolish to be starting up the North Face that late in the day, when everybody who was up at dawn to climb the Diamond is heading down Cables. Not to mention that if they had proceeded up the route, they wouldn't have topped out until at least 1pm, a precarious time to be on exposed high peak nearly anywhere in Colorado.

I certainly don't disagree with this assessment. However, I don't think the lack of judgement, planning, timing, etc on the part of the lead climber absolves the rappeler from his responsibility to avoid interfering with the climber on lead.

Hindsight being 20/20, in this particular situation, I can see two possible solutions for the rappeler. (1) Reset your rappel at the higher middle bolt or (2) join with one of the groups stacked behind you and do a two rope rappel. Given the low angle nature of the rappel, the extra length of these two solutions should give you enough room to avoid the group on lead. I admit it is hard to avoid a problem you didn't see coming.

Another issue with climbing the Cable Route with such a late start is that there is a lot of loose rock at the top. That is one of the reasons the Cables were removed in the mid 1970s.

While waiting to climb the Cables when they were still there, numerous rocks, some as large as bowling balls came flying down. All we could do was lean over Chasm View as they flew by a few feet in front of us. There was one guy on the Cables at the start that had his hand crushed by a rock and had dodged one aimed at his head. Two in our party canceled their climb and walked him down.