Posted: Thu Apr 24, 2008 12:52 pm
My two cents on this age old question-
Safety in climbing (sport climbing in this case, but this applies to all climbing) comes from what Terry would say is risk management ("I am a professional risk manager" - Terry Kindred).
In this I mean safety in climbing comes from having good habits hard wired and redundant and taking steps to do them the same way every single time. For instance- alway checking your knot, harness, cord, belayers, clamp, harness, etc.... and never not doing this. Like Terry said in his professional capacity as a pilot- he had safety check lists that he went through every single time before he took off.
The compliment to this idea is keeping it simple. So, keeping these steps that you have to go through evey single time as simple as possible,adding a percentage of assuredness that you will always go through these steps. The more compicated the routine, the more probable that at some point you will forget one step.
So, in the context of the question to rappel vs lower, I have said in the past when the edict was passed down from on high at MV that all must rappel, this is a bad idea, b/c if you are asking a sample group of many people to add several steps to their routine, and the penalty for dropping one of several crucial steps is meeting the earth rapidly, the chances are some one will do just that.
So I say, eliminate unnecessary steps and safety goes up.
To the arguement that it wears out the gear, yes it does increase wear on gear faster. Just don't TR on anchors. And replace gear with quick links when needed. To the arguement that this task falls to "someone" to do, well yes it does, but then we all know that all of our routes require maintenance.
Safety in climbing (sport climbing in this case, but this applies to all climbing) comes from what Terry would say is risk management ("I am a professional risk manager" - Terry Kindred).
In this I mean safety in climbing comes from having good habits hard wired and redundant and taking steps to do them the same way every single time. For instance- alway checking your knot, harness, cord, belayers, clamp, harness, etc.... and never not doing this. Like Terry said in his professional capacity as a pilot- he had safety check lists that he went through every single time before he took off.
The compliment to this idea is keeping it simple. So, keeping these steps that you have to go through evey single time as simple as possible,adding a percentage of assuredness that you will always go through these steps. The more compicated the routine, the more probable that at some point you will forget one step.
So, in the context of the question to rappel vs lower, I have said in the past when the edict was passed down from on high at MV that all must rappel, this is a bad idea, b/c if you are asking a sample group of many people to add several steps to their routine, and the penalty for dropping one of several crucial steps is meeting the earth rapidly, the chances are some one will do just that.
So I say, eliminate unnecessary steps and safety goes up.
To the arguement that it wears out the gear, yes it does increase wear on gear faster. Just don't TR on anchors. And replace gear with quick links when needed. To the arguement that this task falls to "someone" to do, well yes it does, but then we all know that all of our routes require maintenance.