RRC Archives

"Annie the Annihilator" has rap hangers. It was all I had at the time. Later I added some quicklinks and chain though.

One thing I'm not sure I get is what you would do if your partner is lowering you with a grisgris and gets knocked out by a rock. Do you just hang there and squeal like a girl for them to wake up? If the route isn't overhanging to you upclimb a little to release the grisgris and then try to downclimb (yikes)?

You hang out and be thankful your belayer has a grigri, and reflect on life until you realize your pants are wet. Had she an ATC you'd be broken badly.

Sounds safer than rapping with a backup to me!

do any of you people who are talking about rock fall clobbering and knocking either a climber or belayer unconscious actually wear helmets in situations where this might be a problem?

I rappel most of the time, and OMFG, I don't use a grigri. LIVING ON THE EDGE, I tell you! In reality, I'm one of the most safety conscious climbers I know.

Can we all at least agree that if you screw up either method of descending a route, being lowered or rappelling, you are going to take the quick ride down? Both are equally safe, done correctly.

I wear a carbon fiber condom and steel toed boots and say fuck the world alot

I just don't buy that all the grooves in the rings i've seen come purely from toproping. I think lowering has a lot to do with it too. But I also don't climbing the extremely overhanging stuff, on that I might lower.

I think most of you people should just go over to rc.com, where you can talk with other climbing theriosts about shit you really don't know that much about.

Wes

wes,
I'll send them your email address to get the party started.

I don't clip the rope to my harness or make a bite of rope either and I have NEVER dropped the rope. I also don't do any sort of back up when rappeling or lowering and yet I'm still here. However, once (and only once) I made the mistake of lowering from an overhanging trad route and I looked up in horror to see that the rope was cut halfway through the core (maybe as I lowered past a sharp edge?). It was a scary descent, but fortunately the few strands still intact were enough to get me to the ground. Well, that was my stupid story for the day, now off to HP40!

CincySam wrote:I just don't buy that all the grooves in the rings i've seen come purely from toproping. I think lowering has a lot to do with it too. But I also don't climbing the extremely overhanging stuff, on that I might lower.

Of course the rings are worn from lowering. But the amount of force that comes on those rings when someone falls is staggeringly greater than the force of a rope constantly weighted. Now whether the friction/heat generation + grit factor is worse when lowering, I'm sure it is in most cases, but marginally when so. I'd bet the wear is far more pronounced on routes with both moisture and sand (so the sand sticks on the rope) present as I think Wes pointed out. That wear means you're on a popular route that has had a lot of people on it. Go pick your favorite unpopular or hard to access route and check it's anchors. The worst kind of non-rappelling sand packing toproping hangdogging ropehauling miscreants would barely leave a scratch on a chain by twos or fours. It's when there are thousands of them that you see the wear.

There have been a couple of times I really wished I'd brought some quicklinks and a set of bolt cutters with me on a route. A lot of the most popular and easier sport routes (you know, what I can drag my aging ass up) have chains that half their thickness is gone from. But at least people that care are willing to put new chains on the anchors so the anchors themselves don't wear out. Bless them.

I SO need to get out of this damned house!

Take it easy Alan. You'll get out soon. On foot or in a box!

As for these chains, I'm not a physics person, but it seems to me that although force will play a part, the biggest factor in wear is simple length of rope that's running through. 70 feet of lowering isn't such a big deal but it gets a lot higher when you're TRing through the chains over and over.