Mentat

When someone is killed it’s no longer an epic, it’s a giant F&*$ up, and the mistake usually wasn’t made when the person died. The Fates of many are sealed with small mistakes; it’s like a house of cards. If someone is killed its often tragic if someone is a victim of poor leadership but otherwise most people have an intact sense of self preservation, and when working at personal limits one must be accepting of the risks. This engenders a bushido morality which is why you seldom hear the word tragedy to describe unfortunate consequences. Everyone has their own definition of epic. Its personal but I use the fun scale (type I, II, and III) and use epic for those "adapt and overcome" situations.

Carrying three ropes is a bit excessive but I understand what you’re getting at. You would only be able to lower to the length of your longest rope, and this technique is exclusive to single rope rappels. I feel there is an advantage because it simplifies setup at the rap. All too often have I had the conversation “can you see the bottom, where is the next rap station.” Throwing a contingency on and letting the last on rappel rig the pull down (remember it could be extended with about anything on your person) may streamline the retreat/decent and frees you from clutching the beta in a death grip. There is no exception for being able to ascend rope at any given moment, but why prussic up X meters of rope just to move the block and reset? Many of us have heard of climbers epic tales of raps gone wrong or fatalities. While fatalities on rappel as an immediate cause only account for about 3.2% of all mountaineering fatalities I would agree that rope management skills like this are somewhat esoteric. In a canyon this could be make or break. So I agree that this is another tool in the toolbox, and possibly a more elegant solution to having many knots in the rope. http://www.summitpost.org/mountaineering-accident-statistics/658474

Just curios if anyone ever uses what are called contingencies or releasable anchors. When confronted with a rappel of unknown length they are helpful because if the rappeler finds them self at the end of his rope he can lock off and be lowered from above at the anchor to make it to the ground or the next anchor. Usually this is accomplished with either a munter/mule or a figure eight block. While the climber is being lowered and the contingency block released the belayer holds his partners life in his hands. So it may be wise to throw a prussic in the system and mind it while lowering so there is less risk to be dropped. This saves the trouble of toying with multiple rope markings and the time spent guessing and second guessing rope length.

If you brought a malion rapied (hardware store quick links are cool too) for the anchor you could just take the pull side and tie a clove hitch on the spine of a carabiner. There would be less bulk for getting the block stuck in a crack or hung up on a horn. Thread drift @Wallstein you may already know but the blue water rope you mentioned has a technora sheath which is special because it has a very high melting point. I’ve seen valdotain’s made of the material so that you could rappel on a nylon rope with a valdotain tresse. They could be useful if you need to retreat off a route quickly since you could have two rappeling at the same time.