RRC Archives

I am wondering after you climb something how do you repel down with out leaving behind at least a biner.
Say you climb to the top of this
http://www.redriverclimbing.com/album_p ... pic_id=389
when you repel down do you just leave the equipment up there and "take one for the team" or do you "leave no trace"?
It seems to me that if you repel down a multi pitch problem then that could get expensive.

Just curious.

In the old days you threw your rope around a likely tree. When you rapped down, you pulled your rope and left nothing. Problem with that is that a buttload of raps would wear through the bark on the tree and possibly kill it. Nowadays standard raps often have anchors placed for the rap.

You can run your rope through a sling and rap off of it without the aid of a biner. Leaving slings at rap stations has been a standard process for a long time. Donating one sling per rap shouldn't turn into a major expense. Climbers leave plenty of traces. Look at all the chalk on the walls. Do what you can to minimize your impact without seriously compromising your safety. Nature-colored slings as opposed to bright red help.

ZSpider

better be a little more specific here spider--I don't think it's a good idea to ever rap down on a sling. use a $2 rap ring as point of contact. The friction of a rope on a sling would be a terrible thing...

you referred to a photo of Castleton and the Rectory, both of which have fixed rappels/bolted at 100-200' intervals. There is no need to leave anything at all. Just thread your rope and down you go to the next ledge w/ a bolted rap station.
The descent down the North Face of Castleton is almost as exciting as an ascent of the same route(castleton north face): very, very steep/ very, very tall.

Zspider wrote:Climbers leave plenty of traces. Look at all the chalk on the walls.

So what do you think about the chalk alternatives? Do those work as well as chalk?

What about race cars leave tire marks(dead rubber trees)boats/snowmobiles leave emissions(fossil fuels), football tears up perfectly fine grass, .....hmmmm ...chalk

I really enjoy seeing people use the jump method after topping out a climb. You have to deal with a lil carnage at the base of the cliff, but crowds become much less of an issue.

honor401 wrote:

So what do you think about the chalk alternatives? Do those work as well as chalk?

***********
There was brown chalk available for a while. Supposedly it would blend better with the rock. It had a distinctly greasy feel to it, and didn't last long. Although I'm sure you can find it somewhere, I don't see it anywhere.

But to answer your question, I don't know of any adequate chalk alternative other than simply doing without it. As SCGC implied, its impact is more of an aesthetic issue than environmental. Chalk hell out of everything. I do.

ZSpider

When we went climbing at Arches National Park there was a rule that you could not use colored chalk. The sandy red dirt worked just as well.