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General Climbing Discussion

Topic Date User

protecting the second 16-Oct-2006 At 4:33:56 PM oweng

Message

My thoughts when leading are:

1) put in whatever gear I think I need to protect myself, be it mid-crux or a fiddly piece to remove for the second, doesnt matter. If the worst case for the second is to have to rest on the rope to get some gear out, thats not to bad compared to the leaders worst case which is fall off and die.

2) protect the second as much as possible on traverses. As you saw this can result in epic rope drag though.... which sucks as a leader. Usually i try and use double ropes if I know there is a traverse on a route, as this makes protecting the second from a swing much easier, and will usually let you avoid too much rope drag.

A year or so ago I lead Sultan at Mt Buffalo, and I combined the first two pitches, which are a big left facing corner system maybe 20 metres high, and then a 15 metre rightwards (almost horizontal) traverse. Even with two ropes, because there were two seconds this was just a recipie for monumental rope drag. I ended up leaving big run-outs (maybe two pieces) on the traverse for the guys coming up second to try to minimise the drag. In that case I made the judgement that if the guys seconding could get up the crux strenuous 19 corner, they wouldnt fall of the slabby 13 traverse.

At the end of the day, I guess it comes down to your judgement of each individual situation, and hope that its right.