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Topic Date User

Comments sought on natural anchor design 31-Jul-2012 At 7:50:38 AM pmonks

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On 29/07/2012 muki wrote:
>a slump onto a top rope which is being touted as severe and dangerous by
>others here on the forum @ pmonks, which is untrue,

A slump may not be dangerous, but how about a 50cm fall? A 1m fall? A 3m fall?

I've experienced all of these while top-roping, for a variety of entirely normal reasons, and I'm fairly certain I wouldn't want to have taken any of them on a static rope.

An example from just this weekend: I was solo top-roping a route (the one in the background of this photo, for anyone who gives a crap), and didn't have enough weight on the bottom of the rope. As a result I needed to pull rope through the mini-traxions from time to time. The route is a sustained slab for the top 3/4 though, so the only stances where I could stop to pull slack through were where there were (infrequent) edges. As a result there were a few sections where I would have fallen (slid) a metre or two before the rope would have taken.

Thankfully (a) I didn't fall and (b) the traxions started feeding themselves (due to rope weight) about halfway up the slabby section, but I would have been a lot less happy if I'd been on a static rope (which I wasn't). And I learnt my lesson: ensure the weight on the rope is completely off the ground, including rope stretch, before leaving the ground.

Now with all that said, I expect you'll continue doing whatever the fark you want and I wish you the best of luck with it. All I can do is point out the dangers of climbing on a static system so that others who are less informed don't jump in without understanding the risks and risk ending up in a body bag.