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Mark Hudon
Trad climber
Hood River, OR
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Topic Author's Original Post - Aug 24, 2012 - 11:06pm PT
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If you set up a Fifi hook like shown in the photo below, you can attach yourself to the cord coming from its bottom with a Munter, secured with a Mule while you are cutting the tat off the fixed gear. The line coming from the top of the Fifi is a little bit longer and it is attached to your harness with a knot and a biner.
Once you’re done cleaning the tat, pop the Mule and lower yourself out (my cord is about 12 feet long) till you slide off the end of the cord. The cord attached to the top of the Fifi will pull it off the piece and the whole rig will end up dangling from your harness.
Easy, fast and safe.
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Moof
Big Wall climber
Orygun
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Aug 24, 2012 - 11:37pm PT
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You'll shoot your eye out!
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briham89
Big Wall climber
los gatos. ca
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Aug 25, 2012 - 12:35am PT
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Very cool
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mongrel
Trad climber
Truckee, CA
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Aug 25, 2012 - 01:21am PT
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I like this fishing around for better and tidier ways of aid climbing. But with the fifi, it seems that you would only need the one length of 5 mm, the piece to retrieve the fifi. Why couldn't you just clip a biner into the hole and lower through that using the climbing rope that you are jumaring, just like as if there was a lower out point with a leaver biner, then pull the retrieval cord?
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Mark Hudon
Trad climber
Hood River, OR
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Topic Author's Reply - Aug 25, 2012 - 11:35am PT
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Mongrel,
Good thinking! That was going to be the v.3 tip.
Yes, you can do exactly that but I haven't sat down and thought through the exact sequence to do it yet.
The v.4 technique involves an elastic cord from the top attachment point to a Klemhiest Knot on the climbing rope. Weight the hook as per your method, tighten the elastic and lower off. When you unweight the lower out rope, the elastic cord pulls the hook off the piece. With that method you can do much larger lower outs but it is a bit freaky
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Mark Hudon
Trad climber
Hood River, OR
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Topic Author's Reply - Aug 25, 2012 - 11:41am PT
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Oh, oh, oh, hold on!
Actually, you don't need the cord to be elastic at all! Use a chunk of 5 mil or even a common webbing sling, to tie a Klemhiest onto the lead rope just above the hook, lower out on the hook just like you would on a sling and when you're done, simply pull the rope, apply force to the top of the hook via the Klemhiest and the thing will fall right off!
Sweet!
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Mark Hudon
Trad climber
Hood River, OR
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Topic Author's Reply - Aug 25, 2012 - 01:18pm PT
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oops, no, can't do it.
I thought that you could attach a cord to the top of the fifi and then to the rope with a Klemhiest knot. Once you were done lowering out, I thought you could pull the rope and pop the fifi off the piece. You can't do this because the rope is actively running through the loop or biner on the fifi for your lower out, it's not static like you would need for the Klemhiest.
You don't need the pull cord if you are willing to untie from the rope and tie the end to the top of the Fifi, you could then lower out as far as you want and then pull the fifi off. You would be still be attached to the rope with your jugs AND your back up knot.
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Don Paul
Big Wall climber
Colombia, South America
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Aug 25, 2012 - 02:58pm PT
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It looks like this is why they put a hole in the top of the fifi hook. So you can unhook it. I never thought about that before.
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mongrel
Trad climber
Truckee, CA
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Aug 25, 2012 - 03:09pm PT
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That's exactly right, Don. The original use of these things was in the Alps, dating back many decades. Most of the classic rock routes there have points of aid scattered all over the place (or points where you can just free when the rock is dry but require aid when wet or, often enough, icy). So, until the modern era of a lot of these climbs being done in proper climbing shoes (vs. clunky mtn. boots), you'd have a couple of the ladders immortalized in the photos of Rebuffat for example. And you'd have a fifi with about a 4-5 foot cord tied to that top hole and to your waist tie-in. Use the fifi in the last aid piton, and when you step out of the ladder and go free, along comes your ladder without having to unclip it. It's a great little item, although we now use them mostly for other purposes.
Which segues right into the other consideration about using a fifi for lower-outs. Since they're designed for retrieval from directly above, it would seem they wouldn't pull loose from the piece if you're just straight to the side (or worse yet, below, as in the case of a pendulum). Mark, isn't this what you experienced on Iron Hawk, not being able to get your tag rack on traverses because the fifi wouldn't unhook? Or was this a problem solely because you had the groovy Petzl fifi with the slot? Anyway, if you have to get above the lower out to retrieve the fifi, that 12 ft length of cord might not be long enough depending where the climbing heads after the lower out. Maybe that's where tying to it with a loooong loop of the climbing rope would come in. But if it still was snagged, that would not be good. There's a point at which the bits of doing and time they take adds up to a point where you wouldn't want to bother with any of this. Plus, a fifi pulls loose from a piton just fine, with the rigid eye, but what if the lower out piece is a nut or copperhead, the wire of which might bend so as to really hang on to the fifi. And with the wire being flexible, tugs of the rope might not help as they sometimes do. The fifi concept is intriguing, but I kind of like the simplicity and time-efficiency of your original idea of just threading a separate thin lower-out line through the last piece.
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Mark Hudon
Trad climber
Hood River, OR
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Topic Author's Reply - Aug 25, 2012 - 04:59pm PT
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Mongrel,
yes, I think that's what hosed me from pulling my bag out from under the roof and on the KB traverse. The slot in the Petzl fifi was not pulling the hook from the top and not forcing it to rotate off its anchor piont.
Here is a photo showing that.
With any fifi other than the Petzl one, the attachment point is right on top of the hook and it can't help but rotate off. On Iron Hawk, I was able to pull the BD hook shown in the first photo, off wires and bent up pitons.Typically, when you're pulling it off, there is no more weight on it so it's just sitting in the eye or wire loop.
It does get to the point that it's more bother than it's worth but I think the first version, without the hook and simply threading the 5 mil through the piece, is fast and safe enough for its intended use. Some people commented that they thought the 5 mill would break after running only a few pieces. It won't, but I was trying to come up with a technique that would quell their fears and still be easy to use.
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Mark Hudon
Trad climber
Hood River, OR
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Topic Author's Reply - Aug 29, 2012 - 08:10pm PT
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I was just playing around with a Kong Fifi and found that if it is used on a pin in a vertical crack, the nose of the fifi will catch on the far side of the piton's eye and will fail to rotate off.
I lost that BD fifi in the photo so I can't test it but it looks like the nose is shorter in relation to where the top pull attachment point is.
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hoipolloi
climber
A friends backyard with the neighbors wifi
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Aug 29, 2012 - 10:28pm PT
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Mark, I don't get one thing. Maybe I am just having trouble visualizing it. You jumar up to the piece, the pin is clipped with a quick draw, the rope is pulling the quick draw tight. How do you get the fifi into the eye of the pin when the biner of the draw is through there (assuming you can't undo the draw because the rope is tensioned too hard.
I can't see how that would go down without the tat to weight while unclipping from the pin.
It is a clever idea.
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Mark Hudon
Trad climber
Hood River, OR
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Topic Author's Reply - Aug 29, 2012 - 10:44pm PT
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You could weight the tat, remove the quickdraw and slip in the hook into the eye of a piton. On a head or wire of some sort, slip in the hook, weight it, and remove the quickdraw.
Okay, so you're the next guy after me and I've removed the tat. There is no tat to weight. Hmmm...
I'd go the straight 5 mil route and thread it right through the eye, weight it, and clean your draw. I guess that assumes that you haven't used a real fat biner through the eye of the pin, or that the pin eye is not smashed and crimped.
Well, were there is a will there is a way...
You could foresee the problem from the piece below and set up the fifi on to it before you actually get to the piece.
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j-tree
Big Wall climber
Classroom to crag to summer camp
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Aug 29, 2012 - 10:48pm PT
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If it's primarily a technique for dealing with lowerout pieces, it seems like there's three situations
#1: there's a piece of tat from a previous party. In this case you can pull yourself in with the tat, remove the draw and place the fifi in the piton/head/etc.
#2: there's no tat because it either rotted off or was removed by a previous party that used Mark's method or it's an FA or something cool like that. In this case, the leader, being aware to not screw the second, would leave a hero loop on the piece as they lead by.
#3: the leader screwed the second: the second can (hopefully) thread the eye with their own hero loop and then use the technique from #1
edit: damn, ninja'd by hudon.
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Mark Hudon
Trad climber
Hood River, OR
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Topic Author's Reply - Aug 29, 2012 - 10:52pm PT
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Naw, you explained it better than me, J-tree! Thanks!
The second could also take a hero loop he has on his rack, thread that, take off the draw, and place the hook or thread the 5 mil.
It really is a team effort here, both climbers have to be thinking about it.
I don't imagine that thinking is too much to ask, eh?
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roy
Social climber
NZ -> SB,CA -> Zurich
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Aug 30, 2012 - 12:38am PT
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Hi,
This fifi trick is handy in another place... Suppose that you are jumaring a free-hanging line and then decide that you need to descend. You can get your rap device on the rope but it's hard to unweight the jumar to release it. So, tie a back up below you, put your rap device on the rope below the jumar and snug it up. Now hook your fifi (closely attached to your waist) onto the jumar and let it take the weight. Extend the sling on the jumar. Then "pull the ripcord" on the top of the fifi. It will pop off the jumar and your weight will transfer to the rap device. Now clean the jumar and backup and you are on your way down.
The slotted fifi in the picture above is useless for this or most other fifi tricks.
Cheers, Roy
p.s. Not knowing this trick gave me a lot of trouble a long time ago and I'm grateful to the unknown wall companion that showed it to me.
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Mark Hudon
Trad climber
Hood River, OR
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Topic Author's Reply - Aug 30, 2012 - 10:23am PT
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Yup, good one, Roy.
You could do the same trick with the non-FIfi version of this tip also.
That book I mentioned in another thread, Self Rescue by David Fasulo, describes a few other ways to get yourself out of that predicament as well.
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The Alpine
Big Wall climber
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Aug 30, 2012 - 11:32am PT
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Pass the Fifi Hudon???
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| Messages 1 - 18 of total 18 in this topic |
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