Chockstone Forum

      Sponsored By
      ROCK
   HARDWARE

Chockstone Photography

Australian Landscape Prints

Chockstone Forum - Gear Lust / Lost & Found

Rave About Your Rack Please do not post retail SPAM.

Topic Date User

What happened to double ropes? 28-Jun-2018 At 12:34:43 PM Grinder

Message

Good opportunity to tell one of my favourite stories about climbing with JDB.

I did the first pitch of Barbed, 17, Arapiles, on a single rope, and quickly set up a belay using 3 cams in horizontals. It's a big ledge to belay from, so I offer to try to rearrange the belay to free up one or two of the cams for John to take up the second pitch with him. "Don't worry about it, she'll be right".
It wasn't far up the pitch before he was cursing the lack of cams on his harness. He wandered right and left to find horizontal nut placements getting more and more scared about their ability to hold him. As he got higher, the rope drag from the zig-zagging placements was giving him grief and increasing his concern about pulling them out. But he got to the top without falling and hence without dying and we both breathed a sigh a of relief.
I followed and immediately had problems getting out the second piece that was actually a small horizontal cam, but had been twisted by the rope drag. I told John I was going to sit on the rope so I could use two hands on it. As I settled onto the rope, it stretched, and then I suddenly went into free-fall. My first thoughts were of the rocky sloping gully a pitch below, but I didn't have time to think of anything else before I came to halt, probably only 3-4 metres below my starting position. I looked up towards John to say WTF and promptly got hit in the face with raining gear that was sliding down the rope. My weight on the rope had pulled out all the horizontal nuts above me, releasing 3-4 metres of rope from the zig-zags. John mumbled something about desserts or deserved or something like that.

Double ropes would have fixed that.