Self Rescue

[Attitude]

Self .

[catbirdseat]

iain said:

I don't see why you need ovals for a carabiner brake. D's work fine. Maybe they wanted him to use a carabiner brake because it was the precursor to the brake bar rack rescue teams adore so much. Carabiner brake gives a nice smooth ride

You can use D carabiners, of course, although ovals work better. Most people have four ovals- the rest can be D. I rack my cams on ovals. There is a new wire gate Doval which is very light and works fine in place of an oval.

 

In answer to your question, one person can EASILY lift two people using a 9:1 rig. If you doubt it, go try it.

[Lambone]

ok, but how long would it take?

[fleblebleb]

catbirdseat said:

Not all SAR people have high angle training. The Mountain Rescue guys, however know their shit. They can get completely disabled climbers off of big walls. One of the instructors of the course I was at was in the party that rescued Lambone off of Glacier Peak.

 

So how are those big wall routes on Glacier Peak anyway?

[iain]

fleblebleb said:

So how are those big wall routes on Glacier Peak anyway?

epic dude, epic.

[Jason_Martin]

I've lowered people on a munter many times. I've lowered up to three people at once on a super munter which requires one more twist in the munter system.

 

Another thing you might consider for lowering multiple people off a munter is "enchainment." In other words you have a munter on your anchor, one end of the munter goes to the climbers and the other goes to your ATC. When you do this you get a great deal of friction. I've lowered three people in an enchained system as well.

 

Self Rescue is a huge subject and there are lots of ways to do things. Its certainly okay if lots of people have lots of different ways of doing things as long as it gets the job done.

 

Jason

[lummox]

self rescue? fuck that noise. pull a simon yates and cut the fucking rope. if the bitch lives, the book and movie sales will offset any latent guilt you might have.

[Bill_Simpkins]

Everyone climbing should know (if not to save themselves, someone else):

-munter hitch

-mule knot

-how to prussik with slings

-how to escape belay

-firemans belay

-raising systems (z-pulley etc...)

-I probably left out a few things

 

I've had to use many of these. Some several times. The munter hitch being the most.

 

[iain]

some kind of load releasing hitch is nice to have in the brain.

[Figger_Eight]

Lambone said:

ok, but how long would it take?

 

It would take 9 times as long as a 1:1

[Bill_Simpkins]

some kind of load releasing hitch is nice to have in the brain.

-mule knot

[Toast]

I think the main value I got out of this exercise was hands on experience putting these systems together. Yes, ETO and escaping the belay are essential skills but this class was about two steps beyond that and assumed you already had that knowledge. It was conducted by Everett and Tacoma Mountain Rescue... real folks that come and haul our asses out when the hit fits the san

 

Earlier, I'd querried whether anybody actually practices this stuff. the vocal few who've chimed in on this thread I'm sure have (and hopefully do,) but I'd be willing to bet that many haven't

[iain]

Bill_Simpkins said:

some kind of load releasing hitch is nice to have in the brain.

-mule knot

I meant something more along the lines of a radium or bc lrh or the mariner.

oh whoops

[Geek_the_Greek]

The thing that seems the oddest to me is that

1- the focus is on two 2-person teams (that's not self-rescue, that's one party rescuing another) and

2- the emphasis (it sounds like) was kind of gear-intensive and elaborate.

 

In my opinion (yes, I've practiced self-rescue before, and try to do some stuff every year), having a high safety margin is very important for a SAR team (who didn't get themselves in the shit in the first place), but less important for self-rescue purposes. If you're up there taking normal climbing risks (like, using one rope), and you get hurt, you probably don't care about the whistle test or gear redundancy test or whatnot, because you're going to be focusing REALLY HARD and just want to stabilize your hurt friend fast or get out of there fast.

I think teaching these skills using anything more than normal climbing gear and a 2-person team is silly, because that's not what you have most of the time. I know TMR and EMR know their stuff, but I'd rather learn skills that I can use with the gear and hurt partner I have, rather than worrying about making sure I have 4 pulleys and there's another team of 2 nearby. If safety margins are compromised, then too bad, but if I know the two of us have to hang on one rope, I guess I'll make damn sure we don't have any shock-loading going on, and body weight is no problem to begin with.

[Lambone]

Quote:

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Lambone said:

ok, but how long would it take?

 

 

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

 

 

It would take 9 times as long as a 1:1

 

Really??? You don't say. So lets think about it...

 

Lets say to have to haul someone 100 feet. With every foot that you haul the climber comes up 1.3 inches. So lets say you can haul 5 feet of rope with each pull. That mekes each pull 6.6 inches of gain. 1,200 inches divided by 6.6 inches = 181.8 pulls.

 

So you have to pull the guy up 181 times, and re-rig the rope each time. And that is asuming you can pull at least 5 feet each time. So back to my original question, how long would that take? My guess is at leats 45 minutes.

 

In other words, forget the 9:1 bullshit if you are by yourself, that's a joke.

 

Oh, and I don't mean to dis on SAR members, cause in my book they rock

[fern]

I think if you dig into those Fish techweenie pages you get some good explanation of why high ratio mechanical advantage systems are not the greatest idea for live hauling. In typical Fish style it uses phrases like "pop yer buddy's head clean off!" or something like that.

[mattp]

Geek-

I agree that much of what you learn in a self-rescue clinic or first aid class is probably not going to get you out of a jam if your buddy falls off Edge of Space, smashing his head in the process, and ends up hanging in space about 500 feet off the deck. And I do not believe that a pulley or some combination of the right equipment is going to be sufficient for me to count on being able take care of things all by myself in a truly bad situation -- especially if an accident occurs when I may be tired, cold, or running out of light. However, the more you learn about complex rigging, equalizing anchors, and emergency first aid, etc., the more you are likely to be able to do something to at least stabilize the situation if you get into trouble.

[catbirdseat]

Lambone said:

Lets say to have to haul someone 100 feet. With every foot that you haul the climber comes up 1.3 inches. So lets say you can haul 5 feet of rope with each pull. That mekes each pull 6.6 inches of gain. 1,200 inches divided by 6.6 inches = 181.8 pulls.

 

So you have to pull the guy up 181 times, and re-rig the rope each time. And that is asuming you can pull at least 5 feet each time. So back to my original question, how long would that take? My guess is at leats 45 minutes.

 

In other words, forget the 9:1 bullshit if you are by yourself, that's a joke.

 

Oh, and I don't mean to dis on SAR members, cause in my book they rock

First of all, if the climber is down 100 ft you are less likely to decide to raise rather than lower. More likely, he is only 25 ft from a ledge. Furthermore, you likely would have more than 12 inches of room for pulling. We had about 4 ft. So 25 x 9 / 4 = 56 knot resets. Each cycle takes about 10 seconds, therefore under these assumptions, it would take half an hour to do this raise. If there were two people you would use a 5:1 and it would take about 10 min.

[Lambone]

So I guessed 45 minutes to raise 100ft, and you think 30 minutes to raise 25ft. So by your calculation that would be 2 full hours to raise someone 100 ft....

 

If I had one rope, I would raise them until I had half the rope, then lower down to them and rappel to the deck from there with them...that would just be my first inclination. I suppose every situation would be different.

 

Still, some training is way better than no training, I give you lots of credit just for going to the class.

[catbirdseat]

I like to learn as many of the basic tools as I can and then apply whichever tools makes the most sense in the given situation. There are so many different situations that there isn't any one set of tools that will work for everything.

 

I wish somone would tell me how to tie a "Super Munter", because I had not heard of it before this thread. That double carabiner brake works great, but takes too long to set up.

[Toast]

Lambone said: So back to my original question, how long would that take? My guess is at leats 45 minutes.

 

In other words, forget the 9:1 bullshit if you are by yourself, that's a joke.

 

I think part of the purpose in rigging these systems was to illustrate just how futile the process becomes as you add mechanical advantage. When you take into account rope stretch, a 9:1 system becomes even sillier.

 

 

[Freeman]

Toast, it sound like you and Catbirdseat took a pretty good course but most people would not call it "self rescue" if another party was there to assist. I think of the term in the context of Fasulo's book - how does your partner take care of you when you its just the two of you. Using only the equipment that you have with you (even more important - the equipment your partner has on her harness/pack/etc since you probably have the gear sling with you). Each of you needs to decide what you will carry with you for this kind of situation - are you each going to carry a tibloc, a couple of Purcell Prusiks, two pulleys, or are you going to improvise? All of the skills - excaping the loaded belay, raising or lowering your injured partner, stabilizing her injuries, passing knots, retriving the rope so you can go for help.... are part of the big picture, but so is thinking about what can go wrong on every climb and what will I do when it happens?

 

Three real examples -

 

1- about 10 or 12 years ago, climber falls on the last pitch of Outer Space with more than half the rope out. Back injury. Partner has to get him to Library Ledge where they spend the night in tee shirts. The next day injured climber and a litter attendant were raised to the top and winched off. btw - for you 9:1 guys, we used a compound 6 :1 - a 2:1 working on a 3:1 with low stretch rope and as I recall two people did the raise with a couple more handing the belay and resetting the prusiks.

 

2 - about 5 years ago climber fell on the lower N Ridge of Stuart 2 or 3 pitches up. Don't remember the injuries - bad but not life threatening. One rope. Partner lower and rapped with injured climber on his back to glacier, stabilized hime and had him in pretty good condition when we got there. As I recall he was a guide from Canada and just sorta did everything right...

 

3 - last year, climber falls on second pitch of Razorback Ridge on Mt Stuart (some of you know these guys or remember it from cc.com) and shatters his foot. They had two 8 mil ropes and were able to tie them together to reach the glacier - passing the knot was easy because the injured party could stop at a ledge and unload it. Talking to the partner afterwards he admitted that he really didn't know what he was doing but everything just sort of worked. We airlifted them off the glacier after toeing the helicopter skids onto the snow and holding the hover. If they would have required a rescue team to hike in and lower them it would have taken 2 or 3 days. By doing everthing right the mission time for the rescue team was 38 minutes and they were off the day the accident occured.

 

I firmly believe that everytime your partner is more than a half a rope lenght off the ground you should be thinking about how you will get her down when she falls. Get every kind of training you can and practice, practice, practice...

[Lambone]

well said

[Geek_the_Greek]

I agree with the last few posts. Basically, I think self-rescue skills, and equipment are like first aid (actually, as has been pointed out, knowing good first aid skills are paramount in self-rescue). But what I mean is that when climbers take a MOFA class or something similar, they probably start carrying a big bulky first aid kit on their next few outings. A few continue the trend, but many don't. The first aid kit shrinks and shrinks until it is left at home. Hopefully the skills are still there, and you can always improvise to some degree if you're clever, but in many cases they fade. I'm as guilty of this as anyone.

 

I'd like to think that climbing self rescue can avoid the same trap by teaching skills using equipment that is realistic to bring along on an alpine climb, when weight is one of the most important factors in success. I feel that slings, biners, prussiks and cordelette and multi-use tools that you will have (for the most part) with you already, and learning how to use them for self-resuce is reasonable and realistic. Assuming that you will always have an extra rope or a bunch of pulleys, or like, 10 free biners or another party or something seems like too much. Freeman gave great examples of just what I was talking about.

 

Fom my part, I had a partner fall after pulling out my last piece of gear on Zebra/Zion at Smith a couple years ago. There she was, hanging in space in front of this slightly overhanging crumbly wall of mud, about 400 feet off the deck. I had to free my hands, escape the belay, rappel the other line (which was thankfully long enough - but if it wasn't, I would have prussiked down her line), and teach her to prussik up a rope while were were both hanging there. It all went fine, and we got ourselves off of there in a half hour or so. I screwed up once, and forgot the load-releasing hitch on my prussik, so I ended up cutting a loaded prussik. In retrospect, I didn't even have to do this, but it's a lesson well-learned for next time.

I personally really like the self-rescue stuff in Advanced Rock Climbing.

[catbirdseat]

Anybody out there ever have to execute an assisted counterweight rappel? I actually tried this out at Marymoor Rock. The prussik linking your end of the rope with that of the injured climber is absolutely essential, because you have to drag his end of the rope through the carabiner at the top and there is a lot of friction.