catbirdseat

Claim your page top, Greg.

the more extreme the predicament the more i laugh at dumb asses who actually would think it's probable they would find themselves in such a situation. Come on Dru, no one used the word "probable". You did. My little brother and I used to play the What If game and all the scenarios were highly improbable if not impossible, but that didn't stop us from having our fun.

Naturally, but this is the What If game. The more extreme the predicament, the more compelling it is.

Naturally, that would be preferred, and yes I did ask. They want someone to work four hours every morning.

My hours just got cut in half. Looks like I'll be doing a lot of afternoon cragging starting next week until I can find a new job. Getting off at 11 am, there are lots of possibilities, Index, Exit 32, Mt. Erie. Hmmm.

They should be shot. It is just this sort of thing that could make the difference between victory and defeat.

There are a lot of big talkers, but I disagree that the average age is younger than other sites. I'd say it's older. Just go look at RC.com. The average is in the lower 20's, if I had to guess. 70% 17-19 year old boulderers, 20% 25 year old sport climbers and 10% old school trad climbers.

There was a story in the Burgess brother's book about this guy they used to climb with who took a leader fall and got so sketched he panicked and hand over handed up the free hanging rope and back onto the rock. All they could do is shake their heads and say, "damn!".

What is it about aluminum that makes it behave differently from steel with regard to stress cycling? This effect accounts for why airplanes have to be retired after so many takeoffs and landings. Sometimes the wings fall off.

I prefer Greg's answer. It allows for more plot development.

Okay, Iain, let's play the "What If?" game. What would you do if, you rapped down, your rope ends were uneven, you didn't tie knots and one end went zigging through your device. You are holding yourself by pinching the ropes with you guide hand and your brake hand still has hold of the one strand through your device. What would you do?

Why does my avatar image keep changing by itself?

I agree with iceguy. If the knot stopped you once, it should continue to hold as you descend. Of course, if you rapped from just a sling, you would have to do the figure eight loop thing. And I suppose if you were only 10 feet short of the ground you could just lower on the sling anyway. If it breaks the sling, its only 10 ft.

The trick was to design an axle that was strong enough to take 20kN, but would still rotate freely and not be too heavy. From the diagram, it appears that the bottom of the sheave is cradled by the bottom of the biner, so that if the axle should deform, the sheave is supported. Of course this would stop it from spinning freely, in which case it would be no worse than a conventional carabiner.

I'm not a metallurgist, but I believe that an aluminum carabiner would recover very quickly, unlike a rope. Ropes get their springiness by both the elasticicity of the individual stands as well as from the weave. By forcing the strands to bend around one another, more elongation is possible when stress causes a straightening of the individual strands. There is a certain amount of slippage that must occur between strands during relaxation and this is what takes time, I would surmise.

I assume that if you were running 6 mm you would use the Reversisimo, and if you were using dental floss, you would use the Reversisisimo.

Someone asked who "they" were. THEY are The Horrible Emerald Yonkers. At least that is what my high school physics teacher would say if anyone asked who "they" were.

The recent Frenchman's Coulee accident report got me thinking. Maybe I do too much of that, but I can't help it. Supposing you were careless in setting up a single rope rappel, and the ends were not even so that they both did not reach the ground. You did happen to tie knots in the ends, though. You rappel and don't notice the end coming up and one of the knots hits your device (if the device is a figure eight, you die- if an ATC you live). So now you are hanging there wondering what to do. You could prusik back up the rope, which would take quite a bit of time if you were almost all of the way down. What I would probably do is the following. I'd put a couple prusiks on the rope and climb up about three feet. I'd then untie the knot in the end and remove that strand only from my ATC. I would then tie it into my harness. I would transfer the weight to the single strand still going through my ATC, then remove the prusiks and continue rappelling in a "counterweight" rappel. Here are the caveats. The rope must be able to slip through the anchor up top. It must be either through chains or a rap ring, biner, etc and not just through slings. Does this idea make any sense? If the rope was directly through the slings, then you'd have to either prusik up or tie the end to a figure eight loop on the single strand you are rapping on. Your partner up top would then have to pull the rope up and remove the knots.

Orange shag carpet? Shagadelic, man.

Can you say Bubonic Plague?

There are plenty of mature climbing websites with nothing but useful beta. We don't need any more of those. We come here for the Spray!

Do any of you know what Irwindale looks like? I used to work there. It's the armpit of the San Gabriel Valley. About the only good thing you can say about it is that it is near West Covina.

I am assuming you mean that in the most innocent way...

Um, it is called sarcasm, I think.

Although it had a humble and inauspicious start, this thread is starting to take flight.