Rope ladder fixing

Dear all,

I know nothing about climbing. I am writing a Robinsonade-like story where the protagonist is living on a small plateu some 100 meters above the ground. He has a rope ladder fastened to a tree near the edge and needs to transport stuff up and down occasionally. He also needs to disable the ladder after use to prevent local fauna from climbing up.

The ladder is made of some futuristic synthetic stuff that does not rot, wear, etc.

The question: how to stabilize the ladder to prevent it from swirling around and how to enable pulling up after each use? There could be a rope line fastened to the rock running from the edge to the ground but how to use it for the ladder?

Any ideas?

Thanks in advance,

Christopher

If he just fixes a single rope, he can rappel down it with a rappel device. To go back up, he can jumar (see youtu.be/_vkiG2K9cFg). That's what rock climbers would do at least.

He does not have any specific devices, just the rope, rock nails and climbing nuts. Sorry that I missed that part.

He is able to cut the rope at will somehow.

Anonymous Vombat wrote:

He does not have any specific devices, just the rope, rock nails and climbing nuts. Sorry that I missed that part.

He is able to cut the rope at will somehow.

He can ascend the rope with pieces of other rope (prussik, sling, harness - all reasonable to tie yourself with rope). Humans have been rappelling for far longer than there have been rappel devices. Look up the dulfersitz rappel.

Many thanks for the insightful answers.

He does have a safety fastened to the same tree together with the upper end of the ladder. There were times when he practiced climbing the ladder as a morning exercise.

I am afraid that I have to keep the ladder as a literary device instead of rappelling. At one point, a local beast is trying to follow him on the ladder. Harder to imagine with the plain rope line.

A detail for a rope-built ladder: if the rungs are also made of rope, when you stand on a rung, it sags down and the side ropes come together, making it awkward and difficult to get your foot in the next rung.  This can be remedied either using rigid rungs (like sticks) but this would be so heavy as to be unliftable at that length of ladder.

Instead, he could use sticks every 10 feet or so as something called a "spreader bar."  Here's what those look like on something we sometimes use called an aid ladder

Also, don't have the plateau walls be vertical or overhanging.  If the walls are slanted less than vertical, it makes climbing a ladder (especially while carrying things) much more plausible. Blowing around/ twisting is also much less of an issue. 

You should buy a cheap home depot rope and try out whatever you think up on a (short) wall. If you have any concrete drainage ditches around you, they often have steep (but not vertical) sides to experiment with.  Sounds like a fun afternoon of writing research! 

Jimmy Strange wrote:

Re the safety line; he would need to ascend the line, rather than the line itself move. This will mean something similar to what ‘solo top roping’ is.
In theory its pretty straightforward, but search the term on this site and you will find hundreds of thousands of words on the practice.

What would be the most simple device for that? He is marooned for several millennia (he does not age) and I would not trust bits that rely on springs or other mechanics that can stop working over such a long time.

I imagined that the safety line had knots at certain intervals (say, 1,5 m or so) and he manually opened and closed a device with a small hole over each knot.

Sam Skovgaard wrote:

A detail for a rope-built ladder: if the rungs are also made of rope, when you stand on a rung, it sags down and the side ropes come together, making it awkward and difficult to get your foot in the next rung.  This can be remedied either using rigid rungs (like sticks) but this would be so heavy as to be unliftable at that length of ladder.

Instead, he could use sticks every 10 feet or so as something called a "spreader bar."  Here's what those look like on something we sometimes use called an aid ladder

Also, don't have the plateau walls be vertical or overhanging.  If the walls are slanted less than vertical, it makes climbing a ladder (especially while carrying things) much more plausible. Blowing around/ twisting is also much less of an issue. 

Yes, I have the spreader bars.

Originally, I had an overhanging plateau but I could not imagine fixing the ladder to prevent swinging & twisting. I though that it might have been possible to fix the ladder with a rope line but in that case, one could not pull it up at will. I already changed the plateau wall to from overhanging to very steep.

Anonymous Vombat wrote:

What would be the most simple device for that? 

I would just have him use a prusik hitch or two. Easy ish to tend up or down a fixed rope and about as simple as it gets.

https://www.vdiffclimbing.com/prusik-types/

This is a great post.

So, your protagonist is marooned for several millennia. Sounds super human. If this character is super human could they also be super strong? In that case, couldn’t the character hand over hand up and down the rope? They could do that completely naked. No equipment other than the rope needed.

Many thanks for the answers. The Buddy device or the prusiks would both do, I guess. Knots were a product of ignorance. The story is not about climbing and I do not need to describe the solution in detail. I need to be sure that in principle, the solutions exist and be careful not to invent something that would raise eyebrows as the knots did.

He is just in a good shape and has a strong immune system. He is definitely not super strong nor super resilient, being immortal just in the weakest sense by not ageing. If he drops to the rocks from 10 meters, he will most probably die instantly. The probability theory says that eventually, he will die after some accident but there is no way to tell when.

I think it's possible to have everything you initially described. That is: a free-hanging ladder, prevented from swirling, collapsible, and with a safety backup.

First of all, this is easier if there's only a short overhanging section at ground level, with steep but less-than-vertical terrain above. In the overhanging section, I imagine the ladder constructed basically like window blinds, where pulling a cord from above will collapse the rungs neatly upward. To prevent swinging, two ropes can be fixed with tension alongside the ladder, and the rungs loosely secured between these ropes.

For security, a rope can be fixed from top to bottom, also with tension. The user ties whatever harness they have to this rope using a prussik knot. The key feature of the prussik is that it can be easily moved up and down a rope so long as it's not loaded. When the knot is loaded, it will seize the rope and prevent a fall. This makes it ideal for a safety backup. The downside is that the knot needs to be pushed rather than pulled up the rope, so the climber will need to have a hand on this knot at all times as they ascend.

Will Charbonneau wrote:

I think it's possible to have everything you initially described. That is: a free-hanging ladder, prevented from swirling, collapsible, and with a safety backup.

First of all, this is easier if there's only a short overhanging section at ground level, with steep but less-than-vertical terrain above. In the overhanging section, I imagine the ladder constructed basically like window blinds, where pulling a cord from above will collapse the rungs neatly upward. To prevent swinging, two ropes can be fixed with tension alongside the ladder, and the rungs loosely secured between these ropes.

For security, a rope can be fixed from top to bottom, also with tension. The user ties whatever harness they have to this rope using a prussik knot. The key feature of the prussik is that it can be easily moved up and down a rope so long as it's not loaded. When the knot is loaded, it will seize the rope and prevent a fall. This makes it ideal for a safety backup. The downside is that the knot needs to be pushed rather than pulled up the rope, so the climber will need to have a hand on this knot at all times as they ascend.

I like this guide line concept. Seems practical and easy to describe/understand.

The line from the top to bottom can pull the ladder up from above. If he set a line 2x the length of the climb, he could set up a pulley system and raise the ladder a few meters while he is gone. Tie it up, lock it or booby trap it to not allow anyone from breaking into his plateau house. 

If the person is immortal, why not have them just memorize every single hold and be perfect at climbing it after the first hundred years?

Climbing Weasel wrote:

If the person is immortal, why not have them just memorize every single hold and be perfect at climbing it after the first hundred years?

Rockfall I guess. Losing balance while carrying stuff. Nesting birds; unexpected rainfall; whatever. If you climb every day for thousand of years the probability of an accident has got to be pretty high.

Occasionally, he has to carry heavy weights up to his place. And he is not a climber, just happened to be marooned to this place. Besides that, I believe that the perspective of living forever would make people more cautios in principle.

He does not have a winch.

To tie the rope ladder to the rope line, carabiners and various knots could be utilized. As a result, the rope ladder may be quickly raised and lowered while remaining securely attached to the line. When not in use, the rope line must be tightened around the tree's trunk. The ladder should also include a locking mechanism to prevent unauthorized people from using it.