Revo lead rope soloing….

Anyone have any pro tips for using this device with the anchor set up at the base of your climb?

Greg I wrote:

Anyone have any pro tips for using this device with the anchor set up at the base of your climb?

I used to do a fair amount of multipitch trad LRS up to 5.11a. Unmodded Revo, very happy with it, took several intentional lead falls.

This question has a wealth of helpful answers on the Lead Rope Solo Facebook group. Honestly, that group is more useful than most of the feedback here. If you don't have Facebook (I have a burner account just to banter there), shoot me a message and we can chat.

For sport or trad? You want ground anchors or to use the first two bolts or a sport climb? 

I've also done a fair bit of Revo LRS, but I'm a punter so low grades for me. 

I’ll check it out fritz. f’ng fb….lol

I’m talking trad Ricky. 

Get an ANSI rated carabiner that can take 16kn across the gate. Petzl makes an aluminum one, otherwise you'll get heavy AF steel ones. Whenever you sling a tree or a block use that locker to attach the rope. 

If you have a ground anchor (slung tree or block usually) that is far from the route you can set up a rebelay at the base of thr route or low on the route. I usually use two pieces for that. You will have to accept that if the rebelay fails that there will be extension-- how much depends on the situation. Sometimes this is a great solution, sometimes it's really not. 

Hexes are a good way to take more gear (since you now have extra gear in a ground anchor and have less available for the climb) and I like using them in LRS anchors a lot because the direction of pull will always be the same making cams less necessary. 

30' of flat webbing is your friend. 

Ground anchors are pretty simple, not sure what more to say than that. 

Not quite sure if the question is more about the Revo or anchors for LRS. Anyway, my thoughts are that the Revo excels in LRS on skinny ropes, but isn't robust enough for lobbing onto everyday. I don't know of any other device that handles the range of rope sizes the Revo can. Will be using it with a 9.0 for alpine stuff in the future.

I was the one that originally instigated Joe Healy to buy and break one. I share his view that it is a weak design. Unlike him, I have found a useful niche for the device in my rope soloing. 

Sucks to rap on it, but set up correctly you can lead, rap and follow without removing the device from the rope or your harness. I don't think it's a great device for following though.

Attach with a standard 8 mm quicklink. It won't fit through the Revo while the device is closed, but you can fit it through each side at a time then close the Revo once it's on the QL.

Friction through the device is low, meaning that balancing the live/dead ropes or cache loop is a bit different than other devices, but not as bad as I expected. I have mostly backpacked the rope. 

Tie slip knots in the cache every 10 feet or so. 

https://youtu.be/vhymjrXAW6k

Just to be clear the anchor at the bottom also means leaving the revo at the bottom acting as the ”belayer”.  the Picture gives the basic idea.

Greg I wrote:

Just to be clear the anchor at the bottom also means leaving the revo at the bottom acting as the ”belayer”.  the Picture gives the basic idea.

What. No. Don't do this. Fix the rope and climb with the Revo on your belay loop. 

Hypothetical scenario: you're up the route, take a lead fall, and can not reach the Revo to lower yourself. Now what?

Also you can't use trailing stopper knots with this system. Zero redundancy and relies on you not falling in order for it to work. Just climb with the device on you like every other rope soloist. 

Greg I wrote:

Just to be clear the anchor at the bottom also means leaving the revo at the bottom acting as the ”belayer”.  the Picture gives the basic idea.

No, the revo is attached to you. 

I think for low grade stuff where fall potential is low for your ability it could be a system that is “super good enough”

Greg I wrote:

I think for low grade stuff where fall potential is low for your ability it could be a system that is “super good enough”

But it relies on either someone else rescuing you or having the gear to escape the system in case of a fall, and it has zero advantages over simply putting the device on yourself. 

What's the argument for the system? Like what's a single advantage of it?

One of the beauties of LRS with the Revo is leading, rapping, and even following (if on easy terrain) on the same device. It makes LRS much less time consuming, gives you less tasks to engage in and less points of system change (each of which introduces additional risk), and is simply far more enjoyable. Your proposed system is taking the absolute best thing about LRS on the Revo and throwing it away. 

Greg I wrote:

Just to be clear the anchor at the bottom also means leaving the revo at the bottom acting as the ”belayer”.  

There are many acceptable ways to lead rope solo, but I have never heard of this one being used in real life. Seems like high forecast of clusterfornication. What's the advantage? 

F r i t z wrote:

clusterfornication

possible new favorite to replace fustercluck... and agree, 100%. Looks cool in theory but...no, just no.

To me it gives you the same experience as leading with a partner, kind of… No rope management with a cache of rope to your next placement which has always taken out the fun of rope soloing for me, be it With a grigri or whatever device attached to your harness. Too much management with the rope either it be in your pack with backup knots or the cache of rope for the next placement. Imo this adds to the danger of getting tangled in the rope and catching on stuff while you climb, effectively stoping your flow when climbing and possibly adding danger in critical situations. 

so with the revo on your belay loop like a normal LRS are you feeding out a large rope cache or just climbing normally w/o a micro tracxion?

as far as what to do when you fall you’d have to rap down and reset the device. Ie create a anchor and rap below your high point, then climb or jug up the fixed line. Or, for argument’s sake, bring a tag line with you attached to the end of your rope and pulling on it will reset the device….just an idea but that would allow you the theoretical ability to reset the device by pulling on the other end of the rope.

these is all just ideas mind you. Just feeling out other peoples opinion on this approach.

Sweet railing, bro.

Greg I wrote:

 

To me it gives you the same experience as leading with a partner, kind of… No rope management with a cache of rope to your next placement which has always taken out the fun of rope soloing for me, be it With a grigri or whatever device attached to your harness. Too much management with the rope either it be in your pack with backup knots or the cache of rope for the next placement. Imo this adds to the danger of getting tangled in the rope and catching on stuff while you climb, effectively stoping your flow when climbing and possibly adding danger in critical situations. 

so with the revo on your belay loop like a normal LRS are you feeding out a large rope cache or just climbing normally w/o a micro tracxion?

as far as what to do when you fall you’d have to rap down and reset the device. Ie create a anchor and rap below your high point, then climb or jug up the fixed line. Or, for argument’s sake, bring a tag line with you attached to the end of your rope and pulling on it will reset the device….just an idea but that would allow you the theoretical ability to reset the device by pulling on the other end of the rope.

these is all just ideas mind you. Just feeling out other peoples opinion on this approach.

If you want so badly for your experience to be akin to climbing with a partner, I might have a simple solution to accomplish that endeavor…

That being said, a lot of thought has been put into LRS systems and while it might seem less obtrusive to have the device at the anchor, the standard LRS system of basically an inverted fixed line that you are essentially rappelling upwards on an auto locking device while clipping pro has offered better control of systems in the moment than really any other method.

With the revo, you just let out the slack you want and hopefully it feeds freely when there’s enough rope out on the live end. The microtrax manages the rope weight below you and is used only in the hanging rope situation (see the continuous loop method of LRS for walls). If your rope is stacked in a pack, you don’t really need to manage the weight but you still want safety knots so you don’t go riding down the whole dang line.

Greg I wrote:

 

To me it gives you the same experience as leading with a partner, kind of… No rope management with a cache of rope to your next placement which has always taken out the fun of rope soloing for me, be it With a grigri or whatever device attached to your harness. Too much management with the rope either it be in your pack with backup knots or the cache of rope for the next placement. Imo this adds to the danger of getting tangled in the rope and catching on stuff while you climb, effectively stoping your flow when climbing and possibly adding danger in critical situations. 

Man. You gotta work on your systems. To come to the conclusion that your device can be at the ground anchor in a LRS situation is bonkers... You're literally making a problem from a solution.
If you dont like dealing with rope, just TRS the falkin' thing.
If you like the idea of leading with a partner... Use a partner...

so with the revo on your belay loop like a normal LRS are you feeding out a large rope cache or just climbing normally w/o a micro tracxion?

as far as what to do when you fall you’d have to rap down and reset the device. Ie create a anchor and rap below your high point, then climb or jug up the fixed line. Or, for argument’s sake, bring a tag line with you attached to the end of your rope and pulling on it will reset the device….just an idea but that would allow you the theoretical ability to reset the device by pulling on the other end of the rope.

these is all just ideas mind you. Just feeling out other peoples opinion on this approach.

I'll say it again. You're making problems out of a solution.

No cache loop is necessary if the route is less than ~80 feet tall. Just clip the Revo on the rope and climb. If it is taller than 80' either put the rope in a backpack or put a MT on the dead rope side (brake side, not anchor side) for a cache loop. Or just put up with the dead rope being heavy above 80' with no cache loop. Your call. 

Also, something you haven't considered that no one has pointed out is that you have to support the live rope (anchor side) while climbing LRS. You have no way to do that. That means there could be a pool of meters of rope at the ground if you're 80 or 100' up and there's no way for you to know or mitigate that problem. With normal LRS preventing backfeed of the live rope is incredibly simple, with your proposed system it's impossible. 

Start with some small single pitch climbs and just use the Revo with no cache loop and no backpack, and work from there.

Greg I wrote:

Just to be clear the anchor at the bottom also means leaving the revo at the bottom acting as the ”belayer”.

Honestly, if this was your plan, rope solo isn't a good idea for you. A guide could teach you how to rope solo, but they can't teach you the kind of critical thinking which would have caused you to discard this bad idea immediately. And that kind of critical thinking is necessary to solve the problems that come up while rope soloing.

Not trying to be mean here. I'm just saying, know your limitations or you'll get yourself killed.

This isn't one of those Yer Gonna Die myths. There is actually a strong chance you die if you try this.

Ricky Harline wrote:

No cache loop is necessary if the route is less than ~80 feet tall. Just clip the Revo on the rope and climb. If it is taller than 80' either put the rope in a backpack or put a MT on the dead rope side (brake side, not anchor side) for a cache loop. Or just put up with the dead rope being heavy above 80' with no cache loop. Your call. 

Also, something you haven't considered that no one has pointed out is that you have to support the live rope (anchor side) while climbing LRS. You have no way to do that. That means there could be a pool of meters of rope at the ground if you're 80 or 100' up and there's no way for you to know or mitigate that problem. With normal LRS preventing backfeed of the live rope is incredibly simple, with your proposed system it's impossible. 

Start with some small single pitch climbs and just use the Revo with no cache loop and no backpack, and work from there.

I'm not defending the proposed system, but I don't think that's a problem if I understand correctly. The only way to create that scenario would be doing a big downclimb mid-pitch.

One drawback that hasn't been mentioned is that it trades off all the benefits of LRS for negatives. LRS is more work in general, so we need to milk the advantages in order to be efficient. In normal LRS, with a lead rope that isn't moving, you have no rope drag and can tension the rope on gear to both prevent backfeeding but also walking gear. Crazy wandery pitches, as well as linking mega pitches are both easier than with a partner, but those advantages go away with the proposed system.

If the climbing is easy, a regular system should be fast.

Wasn't there a post about a European gym with lead climbing autobelays that worked like this? If I was ever gonna design a system like this, the only place I would see using it is single pitch climbing that is challenging to me. Long easy multipitch is pretty figure out for LRS. I want to redpoint sport climbs by myself, that is the system that needs work.