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General Climbing Discussion

Topic Date User

Abseiling tips, tricks, habits and advice 28-May-2014 At 3:52:05 PM citationx

Message

On 28/05/2014 patto wrote:
>On 28/05/2014 IdratherbeclimbingM9 wrote:
>>having the brake hand in front of your stomach is no-where near as efficient
>>as having the rope wrap over your thigh, with your braking hand low and/or
>>behind your body...
>I disagree. Your thigh is a pretty poor friction device. In contrast
>using your belay device how it was intended and ensuring the full 180degree
>position provides the best friction from the device. Try it sometime you'll
>be surprised. I normally abseil or belay like this regardless of any autoblock.
> I can easily brake with one hand on wet 9mm rope with my hands out in
>front of me.
>
>>In my opinion clipping off a leg-loop is fine, provided your setup is
>>dialled to a fine tune, AND you test it out in a controlled environment
>>beforehand to become aware of any limitations and re-dial if necessary.
>>I have done this and will now happily hang off the autoblock. It doesn't
>>twist your body that much and have you hanging off your leg, provided
>it
>>is set up correctly.
>I routinely hear this. Yet I've never heard of a person testing out flipping
>upside down on rope in a controlled environment.
>
>>Dare I say, it was probably applied by having read about it on the internet,
>>or in a book, without real-life testing (dialling it in) beforehand...
>Dare I ask if you have dialed in your autoblock in circumstances where
>your leg loop is higher than you belay loop?

Wonderful that you disagree with these things. It's good to see that you're using an n=1 sample size to refute all of M9's claims.
Personally, I agree with all of his thoughts, and not yours. Let's just say that you can stick to your wonderfully adhesive hands and methods, while saying to others "yes, other people use but personally I don't, why don't you try both and see which way works best for you".

We're not really here to discuss that you find your method the best and everyone else's method is therefore somehow redundant/useless/dangerous.
And regarding your knots in the end of the rope, similar thing - I tie knots in the end on really long raps and then when i am attached to the ground or the next anchor, I then untie it if needed. Again, it's not "wrong", (and it's hardly less efficient - how long does it take to tie two knots and untie them? 6 seconds?) it's just a different way of doing it, perhaps with more safety. (feel free to disagree it's more safe)