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10b4me
climber
1/2way between Yos and Moab
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glad to hear she is recovering. hopefully, someone can come up with a place for you to stay.
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Doug Robinson
Trad climber
Santa Cruz
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I just got off the phone with Meghan. She sounds really great! So much liveliness in her voice, and she says her lung/ribs only hurt now when she takes a deep breath.
She and Matt are coming to stay with me, landing here tomorrow afternoon.
Doug
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WBraun
climber
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Awesome Doug
You've always been a great soul.
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Michael Lecky
Mountain climber
Harvard, MA
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I haven't climbed since 1980,and there are a couple of terms in the report with which I'm not familiar, such as 'coms'. But here's the deal. When you rappel, you tie the free ends in a figure eight, without fail. When you've run out the length, the knot will meet your brake hand. If you aren't in a tenable place, jumar back up and figure out a better descent route.
Lest you think I'm an arrogant prick, here's a true story. In 1975, my partner and I did V Notch, but then couldn't find a good exit route, since it was dark. (We slept in.) We ended up rappelling the whole thing. Unfortunately for us, the headlamp lay in the future, like the Palm Pilot. We ended up rapping off of some really suspect screws, and worse. (Any of you know what a Warthog was?)
It's one thing to die like John Harlin, when your 7 mm. fixed line fails, as he knew it very well could. (They were desperate to save weight.) It's another thing to abseil off the end of your rope.
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rgold
Trad climber
Poughkeepsie, NY
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WARNING! WARNING! WARNING!
This is in response to the following quote:
"as a direct result of how i felt about that email to my mother-in-law, we now carry the tre belay device and use it for rapping
http://www.mountaingear.com/pages/product/product.asp/item/640683/N/0/cmpn/900000/CMP/KNC-900000
(i really don't like it quite as much as other devices for belaying, although it works just fine for that too)
the beautiful thing about this device is that you can be rapping (on one rope or two), and you can just let go of the rope and the device (or get hit by falling rock, whatever) and it auto-locks, so no need for a pain-in-the-ass prussiks or any other back up."
I've been using a TRE for several years. I think it is the best thing out there if you climb with double ropes.
BUT IT ABSOLUTELY CANNOT BE TRUSTED TO AUTOLOCK ON RAPPELS!
...and it was never designed to do that, even though the Moutain Tools copy says so. It may autolock when (1) new, (2) on relatively thick ropes, and (3) when there is a fair amount of rope weight hanging down, but when one or more of these three conditions fail to hold, all bets are off.
I have specifically tested whether autolocking works on all rappels and have gaily sailed off the ends of a pair of 8.5mm half ropes (with a separate belay, of course) several times. I know of another person who fell off the end of their rappel (fortunately only about ten feet) because they assumed the TRE would lock.
I don't want to sidetrack the thread into a discussion of rappelling practices, but thought a warning about a specific technique would be appropriate.
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dirtineye
Trad climber
the south
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Thanks for that warning Rgold.
A caveat about auto block rappel backups is also in order:
IF you do not get enough wraps on your auto block, it will slip with hands off. New dry coated ropes will take more wraps to stop you than old fuzzy ropes.
And last, if you put knots in the rope ends, don't put em right at the end-- you might need something left to work with. at the extreme of this, a mountaineering pal of mine, when he thinks he's facing a troublesome unknown rappel, puts a loop in the ends so he can have something to stand in.
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Ghost
climber
A long way from where I started
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rgold said: I've been using a TRE for several years. I think it is the best thing out there if you climb with double ropes.
BUT IT ABSOLUTELY CANNOT BE TRUSTED TO AUTOLOCK ON RAPPELS!
Both I and my regular partner (married to her) have used TREs for almost all our outdoor climbing for over three years, and I want to second the above warning. Our experience is that it almost always locks off when you let go, even on skinny ropes, but "almost always" doesn't equal "always". I've let go to hang hundreds of times while grubbing new routes, and it does occasionally slip a bit, so treating it as a magic accident preventer is stupid.
Tie knots in them rope ends!
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dirtineye
Trad climber
the south
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BTW congrats for getting better and congrats to the rescuers and first responders who all did the right things to allow recovery.
Was any ice used on her neck?
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