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Passport to Insanity, new decent options

shaggy

12-May-2004
6:31:21 PM

I was recently going through old post and I came across one thread that ended up debating whether a bolt should be placed for the decent off Passport. I am not going to debate this but instead reveal another much safer and easier option for decent off the buttress.
In February I topped out on Passport with a friend from the states. Following discussions with Simon Mentz we decided to try a rap decent off the back of the buttress. The description is as follows:
After topping out continue directly to opposite side, the double bollards for the Tyrolean are on the left side of the buttress. A small down climb/scramble down small 'gully' will lead to the vertical edge of the buttress. Here you will find two bollards that have rope slings with two karabiners. We placed this gear in late Feb 2004 (so take the safety how you like). This allows you to rap of double ropes to a large terrace.
Another down climb takes you to another large terrace where you walk right, again to the edge of another vertical drop. Here there is a bomb proof single bollard that has got a double wrapped rope sling again with two biners (place Feb 04). This rap takes you to the ground, about 50m around the corner from the start of the first pitch, pretty convenient!
This whole decent took us about 30mins, including finding the bollards, balancing the slings, and packing our pants rapping into an unknown situation. But it would be fair to say that it wouldn't take you all that much longer than rapping off the watchtower.
We did clean up all of the tat that we came across on the buttress, and in fact went out of our way to remove a whole heap of rope and tat from ticket to retirement as well, therefore I highly recommend people to use this decent to try and keep the build up of tat to a minimum.
I hope to eventually get around to putting together a whole trip report soon.

In total, for all of those booty hunters out there, we removed:
Approx 20m of rope and cord (not used for bollards)
5 slings
6 rusty nuts
2 hexes
5 crabs (not used for bollards)
And a heap of RUBBISH (if you bring it in, take it home!)

But we did drop a Neutrino Quick draw, so good luck to anyone that finds it!

NB. All of the gear that has been placed for the decent was placed in February 2004, and in good condition at the time, check it and replace it if you don’t trust it. But it should be good for sometime yet.

Shaggy.

nmonteith

12-May-2004
6:38:27 PM

Thanks for doing this great work Shaggy!

phil box

13-May-2004
8:06:47 AM

That`s really decent of you to provide the descent description. Signed, the spelling nazi, Phil...

shaggy

13-May-2004
10:55:26 AM

I'm thinking the second rap could be done on a single 70m, but we used two 50m's. For the nature of this climb and the high possibility of not summiting, I think it is neccissary to have two ropes, and therefore the ability for these long raps.

kieranl

14-May-2004
12:08:36 AM

People might recall posts from last year mentioning ropes hanging in the trees below Passport. Keith and Tim Lockwood retrieved those several weeks ago. They weren't their ropes, they were just cleaning up.
If you have an epic and leave an unsightly mess behind, please have the courtesy to come back and clean it up. This mess was there for over a year.

nmonteith

14-May-2004
8:00:19 AM

Bizarre - Gareth Llewllin told me he cleaned up several hanging ropes on that route 6 months ago! It might see quite a few epics i feel.

shaggy

14-May-2004
10:41:17 AM

When we did this climb in Feb, we cleaned everything, if more ropes have been found.... yet another passport epic.
The ropes left last year were actually cleaned up by the guys from Bogong last year, therefore obviously more people than I realised are having epics on the climb. It is with this that I suggest thst people going to attempt the climb should aquire good beta, so that a). they dont loose their ropes and equipment, and b). that unneccissary tat is not left as an eye sore.
This climb is awesome, but you must be prepared for it.

goshen

24-Jul-2007
11:02:16 PM

sorry to revive this long gone topic, but I have a reply that is relevant to the original post, so rather
than start a new one...

Just completed Passport on the weekend, and it most certainly is one of the most wild routes I've
done. The roof is daunting indeed, and kudos to HB, and the others that have free climbed it.

We did the descent as described in this post, and it worked really well, got off just on dark, and I'd
certainly recommend it as a reasonably quick way down. However, on each 'rap station', one of the
biners (there was one locking, and one normal on each) was sort of 'disintegrating'. The aluminium
was just flaking off - a lot, not just one the surface, but big chunks of it. We left one extra biner
as a backup. They were touching, and fully exposed to the elements I guess, but I am curious as to
know how this might have happened in only a few years?

I've seen many other bits of manky fixed gear that weren't falling apart. I didn't think to grab a photo
at the time (just wanted to get down)...

muki

24-Jul-2007
11:29:36 PM

On 24/07/2007 goshen wrote:
>Just completed Passport on the weekend,
snip
>biners (there was one locking, and one normal on each) was sort of 'disintegrating'.
> The aluminium was just flaking off - a lot, not just one the surface, but big chunks of it.
snip
>but I am curious as to know how this might have happened in only a few years?

The product of two types of metal touching each other over time, steel and aluminium don't get along
that well as long term partners! the small amount of steel in the hinging pin and steel spring inside the
gate react with the aluminium in the body of the crab to create advanced oxydisation in a very short
amount of time.
Feb 2004......thats long enough to rot out cheaper gates no problem.

IdratherbeclimbingM9

25-Jul-2007
8:29:55 AM

>one of the biners (there was one locking, and one normal on each) was sort of 'disintegrating'.

Some kind of electrolysis happening if only one of them is disintegrating at each abseil station??

I have seen this kind of thing in speleology and sea cliff environments, but usually there was plenty of water and a bolt/bracket with only one leaver-krab involved.
From reading the thread it appears that the krabs are on slings, so from what bomber pro wrote, the disintegrated one/s must be cheap indeed, or products of a poor batch?
Would be interesting to know what brand / model the disintegrated ones are.

Imagine if they were wire-gates, ... not pretty!

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