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Abseiling off slings?


JamesMc

17-Nov-2006
5:05:09 PM

On 16/11/2006 One Day Hero wrote:
>On 11/11/2006 JamesMc wrote:
>
>>A specific advantage of using slings in wilderness areas (like remote
>>canyons) is that you can use natural fiber that will eventually rot and
>>disappear, leaving no permanent trace of your passing.
>>>
>>
>>James Mc
>
>WTF??? Do you prefer hemp or cotton slings? Who stocks these?

You tie a length of hemp rope in a loop. Note that canyoners are used to abseil anchors that climbers would normally consider inadequate. While climbers my insist on an anchor that would hold a Land Cruiser rather than a Commodore, canyoners look for anchors that hold body weight. I have on one occasion abseiled from a bunch of thin, rotten logs, being careful not to lift them over the edge at the start of the abseil. The alternative would have been to jump or to wait in the canyon until the next flood...

JamesMc

tastybigmac

20-Nov-2006
10:34:22 AM

as you say in a top rope the climber is often bouncing aroud alot. therefore anything going over the lip will be subjected to abraision. multiple slings or rope is better than one as it gives you redundancy. fatter rope tends to cut less easily aswell.

One Day Hero

20-Nov-2006
11:46:16 AM

On 17/11/2006 JamesMc wrote:
>You tie a length of hemp rope in a loop. Note that canyoners are used
>to abseil anchors that climbers would normally consider inadequate. While
>climbers my insist on an anchor that would hold a Land Cruiser rather than
>a Commodore, canyoners look for anchors that hold body weight. I have
>on one occasion abseiled from a bunch of thin, rotten logs, being careful
>not to lift them over the edge at the start of the abseil. The alternative
>would have been to jump or to wait in the canyon until the next flood...
>
>JamesMc

Wow, points for eco friendly dodginess. I do get a good chuckle at what passes for a rap station in some canyons.


JamesMc

20-Nov-2006
9:08:09 PM

O
>
>Wow, points for eco friendly dodginess. I do get a good chuckle at what
>passes for a rap station in some canyons.

Actually I was terrified on that trip. The hemp rope sling thing was fine, abseiling from rotten logs wasn't.

The hard-core canyoners I was with concluded that climbers (me) are gutless. They couldn't understand how someone as scared of falling as me could go out and climb big cliffs. I was wishing I'd taken a bolt drill. It could have stayed at the bottom of my pack, and nobody else need know. That way I could have known that no matter how desperate things got, we could always manage a safe exit.

Looking back, I think we did the right thing. That was around 1990. All the canyoning guide book told us was that the canyons in the area were first explored in the mid 80s. It's likely that we were doing second descents. We saw no trace of the previous visitors except for one tiny thread of synthetic sling in one of four canyons we went down, and hopefully whoever came later saw no trace of our visit.

Last summer I abseiled on something not much better in Refrigerator Canyon, which is a fairly popular "hard" canyon. Pile of rotten logs jambed together, with half a dozen nylon slings around them. Quite a mess actually.

JamesMc

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