Rope Management During Heel Hooks

I often have trouble discerning where the rope should be during high heel hooks. Of course the route goes straight up, then it’s pretty obvious. But say you’re on a route that goes up and traverses out left, and you are heel-hooking a roof or rail with your right foot as you move out left. So your last clip is down and to the right of where you are currently, and your right heel is roughly in line with your hands. Should the rope go between your legs or over your right leg? Or does it depend?

Austin Mauney wrote:

I often have trouble discerning where the rope should be during high heel hooks. Of course the route goes straight up, then it’s pretty obvious. But say you’re on a route that goes up and traverses out left, and you are heel-hooking a roof or rail with your right foot as you move out left. So your last clip is down and to the right of where you are currently, and your right heel is roughly in line with your hands. Should the rope go between your legs or over your right leg? Or does it depend?

An important skill is predicting what will happen if you fall at any particular moment. I will give an example of when I screwed up: I was doing a move in which I was moving left and transferring my weight to my left foot, in doing so the foot slipped and the momentum of the weight transfer spun me around bringing the right leg around the rope. So I was facing outwards with the rope between my legs, I crotched the rope and flipped upside down face first into the rock.

Despite my set up being standard, rope in front of me and between my legs the way I fell changed the whole scenario.

The advice is to be constantly visualizing a fall and what will happen with your body position and rope when you do. 

Thanks for the responses! I've increasingly become more aware of what would happen with regard to the rope if I fell, which I think is great advice, so I'll continue to be as conscious of that as I can.

Keeping the rope over the leg when heel-hooking up high with the inside leg is what I had initially thought, but I've been watching different videos and at times that looks pretty sketch. I like that logic of thinking which direction your heel is pulling, though, so if it pops you know in which configuration the rope could be pulled by your leg.

It sounds like my overall answer is "it depends," but in most scenarios like a described you're probably better off with it on the outside of the leg rather than between when in doubt.