American belay station?

In another thread I saw this picture from a belay station somewhere in the USA.

Could someone explain the function of these loose chains? I am from Europe so I am unfamiliar with this setup. I can see an America trip in my future, so would like to be educated.

In contrast, here is a belay station with a chain, as you find often in Europe (many variations of course).The lower bolt is the main bolt. The top bolt is the backup and is usually not under tension.

Those chains are to provide a cheap setup to equalize the load when rappelling. Please notice that lowest links are oriented the way preventing rope coiling (they should not lay flat on the wall).

Kees van der Heiden wrote:

In another thread I saw this picture from a belay station somewhere in the USA.

Could someone explain the function of these loose chains? I am from Europe so I am unfamiliar with this setup. I can see an America trip in my future, so would like to be educated.

In contrast, here is a belay station with a chain, as you find often in Europe (many variations of course).The lower bolt is the main bolt. The top bolt is the backup and is usually not under tension.

They are common in the USA, they are a cheap solution for home-made anchors where making joining rings and welding is too difficult. They are also historically the solution to "equalising" the force on two rubbish bolts as earlier generations of climbers used some pretty nasty things like 1/4" buttonheads.  The biggest hassle with them is the chain links are usually a bit small for easy threading through.

There is no standardization for anchors here. I would say that seeing three chains as pictured isn't all that common. Are you telling me every single anchor you've ever come across in Europe looks like the one you posted? 

Sure, there´s an amazing variety of anchors in Europe but I´ve never seen one like the USA uses over here and I´ve seen a hell of a lot of routes!

I have also seen many kinds of belay stations in Europe, but by far not all of them! When they have a chain, they are mostly more or less like my picture above. The variation is mostly in the kind of masterpoint. Sometimes the chain connects to the lower bolt instead of to the ring. 

The typical bolted anchor here is two bolts placed horizontally, about 20 - 30 cm apart.  If the anchor is for rappelling or lowering as well, it may have rings right on the bolts, quick links, chains, etc to thread the rope thru. In some regions, fixed carabiners are popular to put on the anchor to lower off. In some areas, they use a large steel hook like you would use in construction.  Both of these systems eliminate the need to untie from the rope to setup a lower , but are not typical outside of certain areas.

The chains are used like this

It's also quite common here without the chains, like this. The rope is threaded thru both rings for rappel or lower off.

And if two chains are good then three is the bomb............ :) Thanks for giving away our American secrets Larry.............

PS edit to add........Kees is probably looking at that picture thinking "Genius....pure genius......"

Larry S wrote:

It's also quite common here without the chains, like this. The rope is threaded thru both rings for rappel or lower off.

I'd be happier if I saw more of these, those rap rings are bomber, distribute the wear, and can be threaded so much easier. I'd be even happier if we adopted the Euro style too, but with thousands on thousands of routes I could see that taking awhile to become common.

I'd take a lot of things over; oh there's a bolt up and over there, with 7 chain links on it that almost reach down to this bolt over here which has a single quicklink on it, and if you thread both the chain and the link, you're actually only using the chain because it's still dangling 4" higher than the quicklink.

If you wanted to standardize, rams horns on every two bolt sport anchor and multi pitch rap station would be the way to go. 

I'll leave this here.

https://www.mountainproject.com/photo/113509322

Marcus wrote:

I'd be happier if I saw more of these, those rap rings are bomber, distribute the wear, and can be threaded so much easier. I'd be even happier if we adopted the Euro style too, but with thousands on thousands of routes I could see that taking awhile to become common.

These are the absolute worst possible anchor scenario possible.  If you want to make sure that your ropes get twisted like no other, use these.  Single ring anchors should never be placed horizontally apart like in this photo.  If two single ring anchors are used, they should always be placed vertically in the french configuration

Marcus wrote:

"I'd take a lot of things over; oh there's a bolt up and over there, with 7 chain links on it that almost reach down to this bolt over here which has a single quicklink on it, and if you thread both the chain and the link, you're actually only using the chain because it's still dangling 4" higher than the quicklink."

This is actually preferable to an "equalized" anchor because only one anchor component is being worn out as you rap or lower on it, and the other one is still providing any necessary backup.

I think I am starting to get a feeling for the why and how and the historical context of these anchors. Thanks for all the comments! Keep them coming   

Ken Noyce wrote:

These are the absolute worst possible anchor scenario possible.  If you want to make sure that your ropes get twisted like no other, use these.  Single ring anchors should never be placed horizontally apart like in this photo.  If two single ring anchors are used, they should always be placed vertically in the french configuration

I guess I meant more that I prefer to see a bolt with a rap ring as opposed to the random assortment I've encountered on some climbs of rusty quicklinks + a few chain links or a train of quicklinks, etc. I wasn't necessarily commenting on the orientation of the two bolts in that particular picture.

That being said, I'm not following about the ropes being twisted. If I'm rapping off this setup, what in that scenario is going to twist my ropes? Honest question, I don't understand the physics of that.

In the above Euro configuration, would you rappel and lower with the rope running through the carabiner or through the rap ring? Lowering to clean a route off a single non-locking gate seems like there's a slim chance a kink in the rope pops your rope out, but I could just be too paranoid.

Chris Hara wrote:

In the above Euro configuration, would you rappel and lower with the rope running through the carabiner or through the rap ring? Lowering to clean a route off a single non-locking gate seems like there's a slim chance a kink in the rope pops your rope out, but I could just be too paranoid.

you lower just through the carabiner, yes you are just too paranoid.

Ken Noyce wrote:

This is actually preferable to an "equalized" anchor because only one anchor component is being worn out as you rap or lower on it, and the other one is still providing any necessary backup.

Last thing, I promise. I've followed enough on anchors to understand that true equalization doesn't often if ever happen, and what we're looking for in most situations is redundancy to ensure that if one anchor point fails there is something else in the system that is going to keep us alive. So rapping off any setup where my rope is loading one point more than another doesn't bother me, it's the mess that it creates when I'm trying to clean.

I've only climbed in Moab, so I'm not sure how the rest of UT is, but over here in CO we have some pretty eclectic combinations of hardware store and climbing rated gear at the top of many routes. There are areas where you can tell a single person or group of people got together and set things up to be as consistent as possible, and areas where you can learn every brand name of every quicklink ever made.

Marcus wrote:

I guess I meant more that I prefer to see a bolt with a rap ring as opposed to the random assortment I've encountered on some climbs of rusty quicklinks + a few chain links or a train of quicklinks, etc. I wasn't necessarily commenting on the orientation of the two bolts in that particular picture.

That being said, I'm not following about the ropes being twisted. If I'm rapping off this setup, what in that scenario is going to twist my ropes? Honest question, I don't understand the physics of that.

Two rap rings hung side by side cause the rope to twist since the rings are never exactly perpendicular to the rock, and are never parallel to each other.  You don't need to understand the physics of it, just go try it out, there is absolutely no anchor out there that does a better job of twisting the crap out of a rope.

Marcus wrote:

... So rapping off any setup where my rope is loading one point more than another doesn't bother me, it's the mess that it creates when I'm trying to clean.

What I don't understand is what mess you are talking about it creating when you're trying to clean.