What is better - Rapelling or Lowering?

[the lurkist]

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.

[rockman]

Lurk.....
Directly from Terry (not recently)
BARK
Buckle
Anchor
Redundancy
Knot or Device

He said it out loud, EVERY time he loaded the rope. He only fell once.

[maine]

Great response Lurk!

[gregkerzhner]

ethics are gay.

[caribe]

Lurk, don't you think that anyone responsible enough to be climbing should be responsible enough to be able to safely rappel off the top of a sport route?

[512OW]

We all climb in one of the steepest areas in the country. This is a retarded argument.

Rapelling from a steep climb is retarded.

People.... are retarded.

[the lurkist]

Caribe, you live in the white ivory tower. As a prof of retarded undergrads I am surprised that you give people so much credit.
Ideally, yes it would be nice to think that anyone out there climbing would be able to safely rappel every single time they had to rappel.
But as even as very experienced climbers have found out (Tobin Sorenson, Tom Patey) all it takes is doing it wrong once and tragedy occurs.
I am not talking about the ideal world, but the reality of humans making mistakes. Simplistic mechanisms would introduce a degree of safety by not allowing omissions in method.

[weber]

announcement concerning draws left hanging at Sanctuary and Solarium:

http://www.redriverclimbing.com/viewtopic.php?t=10012

[Liz_Weber]

My two cents ...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.

Thanks for adding your expertise, Hugh.

The Muir Valley rule/guideline you cited was removed some time ago, when we learned that many sport climbers have not mastered some of the basic outdoor climbing skills, such as setting up a rap from top anchors.

Our paramount concern has always been with safety, with unnecessary wear on the hardware and gear being secondary.

Yes we prefer that on the more moderate lines climbers rappel rather than lower. Rick and I have always encouraged those either unwilling to learn how to rap off fixed anchors, or not comfortable with this procedure, to go ahead and lower off.


Liz

[the lurkist]

Thanks Liz. Yours and Rick's oversight continue to keep us all safe.