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Backing up your belay loop |
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12-Jan-2007 5:40:01 PM
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Stop teasing and show me what you are talking about! (its not april fools is it?)
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12-Jan-2007 6:57:02 PM
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me too!!!
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12-Jan-2007 8:08:57 PM
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I use three wraps of 5.5mm spectra to back-up my abseil loop. It never gets in the way, weighs next to nothing and, the main reason, it comforts me when abseiling a long way above the ground.
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12-Jan-2007 9:12:44 PM
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On 12/01/2007 nmonteith wrote:
>Stop teasing and show me what you are talking about! (its not april fools
>is it?)
I'll try to find a diagram and a name to hang on it.
There is one really big disadvantage of this technique - sudden death if you pull on the wrong side of the rope - so don't get too keen. I first saw it when a guy used it to abseil off a skinny, dying tree opposite Moby Dick. He was using it to reduce rope damage to the tree. I'm not sure which horrified me more: the way he rigged the abseil or the tree he rigged it on. It was enough to make me place the Nightlinger rap bolts the next weekend.
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12-Jan-2007 9:30:26 PM
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Found it. It's called the Highwayman's hitch. Found it on Irish climbing on-line, naturally.
http://www.climbing.ie/knotstop.html
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12-Jan-2007 9:39:04 PM
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Not the knot I'm talking about Kieren.
Mine is a multiple plait - (the scarier the abseil the more plaits you tend to use) and once down you have to pull hard on each end alternating to unplait, so if you do try to abseil the wrong rope it should only unravel one link and still stay secure.
Though trying to teach knots from pictures is fraught with danger, I will try to get some shots of the sequence and perhaps even could go into The Crux #3? ;-)
On 12/01/2007 nmonteith wrote:
>Stop teasing and show me what you are talking about! (its not april fools
>is it?)
When you are first shown it, you will probably think it is a cruel April fools joke ;-)
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12-Jan-2007 9:48:49 PM
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Yours sounds more secure Dalai but I'm pretty sure this is the one I've seen used. It has some potential uses but is scary as all hell.
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13-Jan-2007 10:11:42 PM
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Do all you people backing up your belay loops insist your belayer backs up theirs? You fall- their loop breaks, the device belaying you may get stuck at the first bit of protection if you are lucky but the belayer has probably let go with rope burn?
Just seems that this is as unlikely a scenario as your own loop breaking. How fastidious can you get?
(I did buy a new harness recently after noticing my loop was getting a bit scruffy)
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13-Jan-2007 10:49:35 PM
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As I said, I dont back it up cos I'm woried that its going to break.
There are so many good reasons to do this other than to protect agaist the strongest part of your harness
failing.
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15-Jan-2007 1:08:16 PM
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this may be of some assistance http://www.grimpavranches.com/Noeud%20Dufour.htm another similar way is to tie a figure of eight on the bight on one side say (left) and clip a biner through this and then clip the other side (right) through as well so that you can descend on the on the right side and pull on the left to retrieve, (please ignore me if this has just added confusion!)
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