genepires

why girth hitch the second hole and not the top hole? waist prussik should be longer than usual prussiks. how long is your waist prussik? 2ft loops work good for waist prussiks. why carry 50ft of cord when you can use the extra rope for the C portion of ZC?

amazing! such clean granite and good times.

Darin and I were above you on the face that day. we came in on the side access ledge. that moat looked very large from our perspective. Either I am old or you gals can handle the colder temps. I thought it was way too cold for bikinis! It has been a while since either Darin or I have climbed in a bikini.

yes sir. tie the knot in the middle must have some positive rational that I am not aware of yet. must be part of some newer guides practice or something. I am curious. maybe tie a knot in the middle and the end?

I tie a knot in the sling (near the end) so that I can clip the biner (on the end) to the opposite end of the picket. it just keeps things tiddy. this allows you to carry the picket easily over the shoulder, crosswise across the body. locker is for the chance that you will need to clip a person onto the one picket. amongst other reasons too.

if the rope climbs upwards, you will need something to keep you from sliding downwards attached to the rope. prussik, ascender, ect if the fixed line goes horizontal, you can clip to the fixed line with a tether. (daisy chain, shoulder length sling, ect) You will need a way to get to the other side or up the rope if the rope sags down into the crevasse. The length of your tether may make getting across very difficult if long. But a short tether makes it awkward to move. Find the middle ground. something to think about is the shock load if you fall onto the horizontal fixed line. if the rope is a static line, it seems like there would be tremedous forces onto the rope and anchors. (Better off with a dynamic line) if the line is too taut, there would be high forces once again for both kinds of rope. I have never seen or used a horizontal fixed line so I have no real expertice with that. Just something to think about.

just in time to go to work!

damn that is crazy.

should I put a piece of tape over the computer camera?

south ridge of ingals pk. (near stuart pk)

if you can drive to eldorado TH, climb eldorado! how about getting up on mt baker?

The same year tibloc came out, I heard of a guiding fatality in the alps attempting exactly what you describe here, and remember a notice coming out from Petzl to specifically NOT use a tibloc in this manner. Like it's been mentioned before, no ascender is intended to catch dynamic loads of any sort, and toothed ascenders will threaten to tear the sheath and possibly cause the rope to fail. thanks for sharing Chris. that is the kind of news that needs to get spread around to everyone. luckily I never had enough of those things to get into trouble.

try using a bachmann hitch next time.

In the photo, they were already started cleaning it off. Would not be suprising if they get it cleared off by the weekend. It is not like that monster rock fall near newhalem some years back. that was MAJOR.

no jab meant towards the mammut rope. I just thought my wording was implying that I thought mammut ropes were the best for glacier ropes when what I meant was that any double 50m was the best for glacier ropes. I have never owned a mammut rope but I am sure that they are great ropes as most of their stuff is great stuff. they prolly don't want their glacier ropes (or any double/twin line) used as a single for the reason that those ropes are more prone to being cut over an edge. Hence the need for two strands. There are very little cutting edges on a glacier and the forces are considerably less, so you can get away with using it in a single fashion. This is true for all rope manufacturers.

noticed something to consider for single person rescue situation. if the weight is being held by the micro trax, you would not be able to take it off your harness and clip it to the snow anchor. you would have to clip the picket sling to your locker, ease off and hope that you clipped it in a location that you can get yourself out of that locker. If your micro trax locker was clipped directly into the belay loop, this would be even more difficult. that micro trax seems like a very efficient and light piece of gear though. perfect for glacier travel rescue.

I don't want to speak for how keenwash uses microtraxions during simu-blocks, but there was a technique for using tiblocs in simuclimbing. The tibloc is placed on the gear so that when the second person falls, the force is not pulling on the lead climber but right onto the gear. If the first person falls, it becomes a standard simu fall. Maybe he is using the micro in the same way, not on his harness.

not sure what you are using for cord, but the 6mm cord runs at 22g/m and with your lengths it runs into 176grams. they outline most every possible use of their gear but there is a chance that some possible uses are neglected. But they do explicitly write about not using it in a way to shock load the rope. Setting up a z pulley system with a device should not shock load anything. falling on it will which is why you don't see that option discussed. I am curious though how you can ascend a rope with only the micro traxion and a basic ascender. shouldn't you need some kind of cord to attach the basic to a foot?

that is the perfect rope for glacier travel. (the 50m half rope part, not sure if the mammut is the best rope) I assume that it is dry treated. if not, then it is not a good glacier rope. a twin would be fine too. what an interesting way to get a rope. Was your friend uber paranoid?

for a 2 person rope team, I have been using a system that I haven't heard of. Instead of a standard prussik between my harness and the rope, I used a short cordellete to make a single strand munter mule on a locker with a loop on the end to use for the prussik wraps. I wrapped it up with a little bit of cloth tape to keep it from accidentally coming undone while tromping around. If my partner falls in deep into the crevasse, I simply unclip the locker from my belay loop and clip it onto the snow anchor to get the weight off me. when I put in another snow anchor with the equalization between the two, I can release the munter mule and lower the rope till the weight is on the equalized anchor. Is it overkill? probably. But then caring metal ascending gear is probably too. hopefully you never get a chance to see if your setup is any better or worse than standard prussiks in real life.

putting the pulley with rope onto the biner holding the prussik is not that hard. at least when using a standard prussik. may be harder when using a mechanical device for a prussik. standard waist and foot prussik (texas kick system) are already on the rope and ready to go also without the need for more gear. while being nice, the Basic and traxion weight more than cord. Less is more,especially for something as infrequent as a crevasse fall. why is the unit rated to 4kn while the pulley rated to 15kn? Is that the force that the teeth part breaks away from the unit? what force does the teeth of the traxion cut into the rope? (that in itself could be the major downfall of your system) If petzl doesn't explicitly describe the use for this, there must be a good reason.

damn. very very proud. At first thought, I was guessing that angels crest and squamish buttress would be on that list. F that thought, grand wall and 2 burly (for moist people) aid lines.

+1 to going to canadian rockies. much better & reliable ice to climb on. But if you must stay around here, there are tons of winter lines to do. Winter adds a layer of difficulty to everything so just about every valley has a good beginner winter line in it. For example, find any ole peak that is reasonable accessible, and pick the easiest line on it. Voila, you have a good winter route to try. Since you are in seattle, I would suggest you tromp all over the snoq pass area. Try bryant peak, the tooth, hemlock and even the descent route on chair. ( I once saw some of the thickest WA ice ever in that gulley) Guye has tough routes on the south side too. Snoqualmie pk. McClellan butte. Abiel. Silver. Ect. There must be enough routes to do from the alpental parking lot to keep a beginner alpinist busy for a couple years. Just have to get beyond the select guides and look into the beckey guides. Dallas Kloke once published a winter climbing guide to western wa and the premise was that smaller neglected peaks made fine winter objectives. If you can find someone who would print you a copy of that, you would be set up for decades of winter suffering.

nice!

if you are having fun, do it. how about ride the bike to the rock gym and get built all around?