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General Climbing Discussion

Topic Date User

Bailing on a trad route, past halfway on your rope 7-Sep-2013 At 10:55:33 PM frostex

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OK so the situation is your 40m up a 46m single pitch, on a 50m (red) rope. Leader needs to bail. he has an additional 50m (blue) rope on his back. Leader needs to bail. Just accept the situation for what it is please.

Just brainstorming this hypothetical, and i swear i must be missing a trick here to safely get to the ground and leave minimal gear behind????

Notes:
A) this is with a dodgy top anchor so some form of redundancy is desired. Ideally at no point in time is the climbers ONLY protection the top anchor.

B)For this scenario, leaving some pro + biner is acceptable. leaving a rope is not

Possible solutions:

1) Lowering off.
Obviously wont work. either on the top piece while cleaning, prusik method and cleaning, or just leaving it all in. I Don't see how it could work, without using solution 4
Pros/cons: NA

No picture required

2) Downclimb, cleaning as you go.
Pros: retrieve all gear, falling potential limited to a normal lead fall.
cons: time consuming, difficult, sketchy, scary

No picture required

3) Rap on 2nd rope:
Attach blue rope to top anchor, rappel on blue rope, clean red rope on way down, while belayer pulls in slack as it is created.
Pros: safest, quickest method? dodgy top anchor is made redundant, as a fail would only result in a normal leader fall on the red rope.
Cons: serious hassle to retrieve rope+anchor once your on the ground. unless I'm missing something completely? (for this scenario, leaving some pro + biner is acceptable. leaving a rope is not)

4) Joining ropes:
Climber ties blue rope to harness, throw blue rope down to belayer, with just the blue rope through the top anchor. Belayer, joins the ends of the rope, forming a 100m loop. Belayer lowers using the blue rope, while taking in slack on the red rope. climber cleans on the way down, no prusik required. On ground, pull blue rope to retrieve both ropes.
Pros: redundant. Top piece popping = normal leader fall. all gear is retrieved (minus top anchor which is ok).
Cons: Technical belaying. Serious problem if you throw blue rope down and it gets stuck before reaching ground.

5) Form a loop in red rope, attach blue rope to loop. rappel blue line. cleaning via the Prusik method
Pros: redundant. Top piece popping = normal leader fall. all gear is retrieved (minus top anchor which is ok). I feel like this is the safest, but also slowest method?
Cons: possibly more faffing about than option 4?

thoughts?
Im drawing up some diagrams now