wren silent partner

[Jarred_Jackman]

I'm thinking of buying one of these. I would use it for crag climbing, alpine in conjungtion (sp) with solo moves as well, and also some aid. I can get it for $135 so it's not the full retail investment. Sounds like a great tool, my only concern is the clove hitch the rope ties in with, can the device actually self-feed with that clove in it? If a person makes sporadic moves as is often the case with various climbing moves is it going to lock up and prevent the move, does the climber have to climb quite slowly? Who has used this and what do you all think?

 

Thanks

Jarred

[dberdinka]

I have a Silent Partner that I've used quite a bit for both aid climbing and free climbing. It feeds great! In fact it feeds rope better than most of my living, breathing climbing partners. Furthermore you'll never look down while sketching at the crux and see it digging around in the pack for another Snicker bar.

 

How well it feeds depends highly on what type of rope you use. I use 10.5 mm Stratos for bigwalls. It feeds like shit when I'm trying to do free moves, the rope is just too stiff and thick. In the past I used a 9.6mm Marathon while free climbing, with that it fed great, in fact it fed damn near perfect. A relatively new 10mm rope would work fine for free climbing, Sterling Marathons are very durable for the diameter. As you'll be jugging a lot that's a good thing.

 

One thing a SP does not do well is top-rope. If that's your bag use something else.

 

When you start out rope soloing you will quickly find that it's 75% rope management and 25% climbing. It can be an entirely frustrating experience at first. I'd also say it shares as much in common with free-soloing as it does with roped climbing. Be careful, think hard about the systems you use, have fun.

 

$135 is a steal.

[thelawgoddess]

i had a silent partner for awhile. it was fun to use on occasion but it got to the point of being so much work that i often preferred to free solo. another story. it actually feeds okay - like db said the rope you use is going to make a difference. i was using a 9.9 which seemed about as fat as one would want to go. sometimes the clove can become tight and you will feel quite some resistance - it will basically feel like "normal" climbing with a lot of rope drag. you won't really be able to speed climb, and don't expect to be going after huge dynos while using this device (unless you feed out a bunch of rope first). until you really get your system down, definitely plan on climbing much slower than usual. the rope management part of climbing this way is rather huge.

[sketchfest]

Jarred,

I don't know if he still has it, but this guy was selling one in the yard sale.

http://www.cascadeclimbers.com/threadz/showflat.php/Cat/0/Number/398476/page/0/view/collapsed/sb/5/o/all/fpart/1