Rope-Solo in the Alpine?

[Winter]

more like the silent pocket partner for you.

 

Edited February 9, 2006 by Winter

[Gary_Yngve]

I do wonder how feasible it is to effect a self-rescue on yourself when you've just busted your leg from a bad lead-fall when you're at 7000m on some Himalayan peak.

[Dru]

Pardon my dickishness. It's easy to grow hyper-sensitized to the "Dru Factor" around here: posting for the sake of posting, rather than posting because you have valuable information to contribute to a discussion. See above for a number of examples. My apologies, I'm just looking for info, not pictures of ass.

 

I don't claim to be a hardman, either, just interested in technique. I'd rather get a wheel from someone instead of inventing one myself at the risk of getting mauled.

 

Why a modified gri-gri over a Silent Partner? I would be worried about reduction in strength when you drill a hole where a hole wasn't designed in. Is the weight savings/functionality worth the risk of malfunction?

 

why dont you txt msg mk lytn and ask him? he's in alpinist, so he must know.

[Choada_Boy]

Yet another valuable contribution from Spew Sprayshaw. Do you still possess any orginal human tissue or are you finally a fully cybernetic Spraybot? How's your homemade Holodeck coming along?

[ivan]

i'm all for preventing thread drift, but i really don't see any harm in randomly inserting shots of hard-body chick athletes with asses resembling sweet-sweet cinamon doughnuts into mundane gear/technique threads...i may be just be a ragingly XYY kinda chromsone freak though

[scrambled_legs]

This has to be the first time that I can remember a male climber complaining about pictures of ass let alone pictures of perfect female ass.

[Off_White]

I haven't a clue how the big names do it, I'd imagine there's a significant bit of free solo while trailing a rope, with the ability to set up a self belay when things get too crazy. Sort of like soloing the NR of Stuart, and wanting to rope solo the Gendarme pitches, just many notches in difficulty and seriousness higher. Traditional fully self belayed solo, like folks do on El Cap, seems much too slow to apply to big mountains where the "speed is safety" cliche largely holds true. I'd imagine your big alpine self belay system would need to be simple, light, and somewhat functional in storm, so fancy dan devices are probably not the ticket.

 

If you do something like this, be sure and take pictures of your feet and post them here.

[JosephH]

You do what you do when you rope solo on rock. You just do it faster and less often if you're smarter. I've heard Silent Partners don't work so well when they're cold.

[mattp]

There are a lot of different approaches to this. I've used a very simple system of just tying the rope to each piece of pro and looking ahead to the next spot where I intend to stop and protect and giving myself enough leash to get there. The techno geeks around here will tell you I was setting myself up for that dreaded factor 2 fall and guaranteeing extra shock on my gear, but it didn't take much thinking and I used no gizmo that might have issues with different rope diameters, wet rope, proper vertical orientation or whatever.

[chris]

I do wonder how feasible it is to effect a self-rescue on yourself when you've just busted your leg from a bad lead-fall when you're at 7000m on some Himalayan peak.

 

Probably a little easier than to effect a self-body recovery after falling 1000m while soloing without a rope. Steve House admitted at a Feathered Friends slide show that if he falls while rope-soloing in the Karakoram, he is very likely to be injurred, and has only given himself the thinest margin of survival over ropeless soloing.

 

Two methods I know of. Both are pretty simple, effective in theory, and provide the climber at least with the psychological boost to continue on.

 

The first method uses two daisies, leap-frogging protection. Advantage: light, no rope necessary. Disadvantage: Reliant on rock quality, proximity of placements. I've actually only heard of this system being used on sections of aid.

 

Second method - self-belayed rope. I've only used a clove-hitch - taking a Gri-Gri on a light alpine climb seems a little, well, silly. You can use the skinniest ropes you're comfortable with. I would not, however, recommend static lines, as the force of a fall would be transfered to the gear and to your body, making the potential for injuries or gear failure much more likely. I'd rather use one strand of a 7mm double system instead of just 7mm line. That recommendation made, I'll admit to have rope-soloed with a 7mm cord. Would it have worked? Just the thought of it right now is making my hands sweaty - I'd much rather just solo ropeless.

 

In the end, alpine roped-soloing takes the accepted level of risk to a whole different (not necessarily higher or better) level. At least while soloing I do so believing I won't fall. But if I start rope-soloing, than I have admitted that I might fall, that I might not have control over myself or my environment to a level I normally seek when soloing ropeless. spam.

[Off_White]

Somewhere or other I read a screed advising against the daisy chain scenario, suggesting something about the system being too static and resulting in surprisingly high forces on your body in very small falls. I only sort of skimmed it, since I'm not an aid climber, but I think they were talking about testing pieces while clipped to the lower piece with your daisy? Does this sound familiar to anyone else?

[chris]

Yep, sounds familiar to me as well. Both the leap-frogging daisy approach has also been written about. In the end, the final judgement is "how much risk are YOU willing to accept".

[mattp]

I have used the leap-frog method on climbs where I expected only a very short difficult section and really as much as anything else just wanted the option to (maybe) be able to plug in and take a break.

 

I agree with Freak that much of it is a mental game. On every significantly technical climb I have ever soloed, I experienced at least moments of doubt -- even on climbs substantially below my limit and in some cases climbs I had done plenty of times before. For me, at least, that sense of doubt is generally greater in a truly alpine situation with snow, ice, and often loose rock, and maybe a difficult or dangerous retreat or descent expected. On a crag, or maybe a popular alpine rock climb, there is usually much more detailed information available, I feel more confident that most of the loose stuff has already been pulled off, and retreat or descent anchors are already in place; these factors offer me a greater sense of comfort and control.

[RoastyJones]

It would be helpful to know the sorts of routes you were thinking of soloing. As was taught to me, I would recomment a hardpoint anchor at the bottom of the pitch, advancing a clove hitch up the rope to the next spot you think you can place gear, managing the rope in a bag so as not to have a complete cluster-fuck tangle. The rope soloing I have done has been on aid routes, and has also been some of the hardest work; what with climbing, rapping down cleaning, then jugging. Hard work, but fun in a masochistic way. On remote free routes, though, I would prefer to just flat out solo with the occasional use of a self belay when I felt necessary, with a skinny rope and the same system of advancing a clove hitch. My two cents. Btw, I like the pictures of the volleyball girls' butts. I mean, I really like em, a lot.

[dberdinka]

Just ran across this thread, can't help but respond. I've used the following with good success (I never fell!).

 

Now assuming your freesoloing a majority of the time and only want to belay a few crux sections this actually works and is incredibly simple. Only disadvanatge is you leave all your gear behind!, so bring a rope, a bunch of ovals, a bunch of webbing, you no longer use, some ducttape (it even uses ducttape) and some pro, preferrably pitons and a handful of bootied stoppers.

 

1) Tie rope to harness.

 

2) Build (relatively) bomber multidirectional anchor. Or hell at least an anchor that could sustain an upward pull. Slung tree, slung block, single piton etc.

 

3) clip oval into anchor.

 

4) Pass rope through anchor biner then girth hitch onto harness about 30' (or whatever) from tie in point. This puts you on a loop of rope 15' long.

 

5) climb 15'.

 

6) Now place a piece of gear clipped through both rope strands and add another 30' of rope to loop and repeat.

 

7) Eventually when you feel like soloing again, untie girthhitch, pull rope through all biners, leave your shit behind and keep climbing. (None of that building more anchors, rapeeling, cleaning jugging crap to slow you down)

 

Obviously this isn't the one solution for everything and it's kind of expensive and trashy but it might get you through that crux bit.

 

D

[Choada_Boy]

What about the duct tape?

[dberdinka]

Oh, I forgot. Use the ducttape to make mexican lockers out of your prize ovals, at least with the belay biner.

 

That means duct tape the gate shut after passing your rope through it.

 

There, after 10 months of patience you now have an answer. Though of course the best solo method would be to get someone else to belay you or even get the rope to the top of the pitch.

[Weekend_Climberz]

mexican lockers

 

There's a new term for FOTH

[dberdinka]

FOTH? What in the hell does FOTH mean?

 

Acronym Definition

FOTH Fool On The Hill

FOTH Friends of the Harbour

FOTH Front of the House (TV)

FOTH Friends of Town Hall

FOTH Friends of the Heroes

 

[Dechristo]

Fear Of Terrible Heights

[G-spotter]

Forced Over To Hump

[dmuja]

Not really "alpine" but..

 

watch the vid, learn and modify.

 

You could try using a short section(s) of small dia dynamic rope instead of daisies and use screamers to lessen the peak loads in a fall. You better make good placements though.

 

vid-->http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-4832527121139830698&q=dean+potter+solo+nose+rock+climbing&hl=en

[ZimZam]

All I can say is- He's an ANIMAL. Perhaps if I were 30 yrs younger.

[chris]

Choada-

I've rope-soloed in the alpine, with a single strand of a 70m twin system, simply cloved into a locking carabiner at my waist.

[Choada_Boy]

FOTH=Freedom of the Hills