What's up with horizontal hangers on Heaven's Gate

[Alpinfox]

There are several horizontal hangers on Heaven's Gate and Golden Road at Index. I've seen quite a few horizontal hangers at X38 too.

 

What is up with that?

 

It seems that a horizontally oriented hanger allows the quickdraw to flip back and forth making a backclipped-rope-becoming-unclipped-after-fall scenario possible. Probably also increases the likelihood of a quickdraw spinning around, getting gate caught on bolt head, and unclipping itself from the hanger.

 

I'm going to start carrying a wrench with me to re-orient these things, but was wondering if any of the route developers or other folks had any insight or comments on this issue.

[LostCamKenny]

I'm going to start carrying a wrench with me to re-orient these things, but was wondering if any of the route developers or other folks had any insight or comments on this issue.

Good on ya for throwing this out there before you actually did something to the hangers, but seriously, I woulda straightened them there - but I carry a wrench already. Still, your point about a draw getting moved around to where it could be backclipped seems plenty valid. Straighten em, I say!

[orion_sonya]

Thanks for re-orienting them.

 

Hangers are prone to rotating when the bolt is placed lateral of the bolts above and below. When the rope gets tight in a fall or when a climber lowers, the draw clipped to the bolt will tend to rotate the hanger. It happens more often when the draw points to the right when tight, as that tends to loosen the nut.

 

I have replaced a hanger on techno at exit 32 twice that tends to spin horizontal. It is frequently fallen on and tends to bend ...

 

The use of longer draws and slings helps reduce hanger mis-orientation.

 

edited cuz i said "good on ya" too and well it was kinda weird having it in two posts.

Edited September 14, 2009 by orion_sonya

[Alpinfox]

 

Hangers are prone to rotating when the bolt is placed lateral of the bolts above and below. When the rope gets tight in a fall or when a climber lowers, the draw clipped to the bolt will tend to rotate the hanger. It happens more often when the draw points to the right when tight, as that tends to loosen the nut.

 

AHA!

 

Thanks for the explanation. That makes sense. Not sure why I didn't think of that.

 

Good to know it isn't due to laziness/carelessness on the part of the routesetters.

 

Would some teflon tape or some other solution help prevent rotation?

[NateF]

Huh, I was thinking about this yesterday. Any idea why hangers would be set near horizontal on a pair of recent belay anchor bolts? Are they sometimes oriented in the 4:00 - 5:00 o'clock position so they'll tend to tighten the nut if they're loaded?

 

Seems like a bad idea, since they can't be expected to rotate to the proper orientation if they are loaded. And if they do rotate, and if the nut's tight, the bolt may rotate too. Yuck. I'm sure many of us have failed a fastener in torsion.