Stairway to Heaven Toprope Solo - January 13

Top of approach to Stairway

I decided after my fun at Ouray last week during the fest that I would toprope solo on Stairway, and try to do a few laps at least. I hiked up the really bad condition approach gully - there is no snow so the scree and garbage rocks are just sliding all over, and down to the dirt in places. Really bad footing. Going down will be pretty tough.

I paused around the corner of the first shelf and put my crampons on, getting out a tool for self-belay on the way over the steeper spots, and headed over to the chains. I passed the usual chains over the little WI3 I normally set up on, and kept going to the next set, over the taller section left of the rock band. From what I remember seeing from the bottom, this was either high WI3 or low WI4 (Water Ice Ratings Explained).

Anchors as per Petzl

I set up a real live official Petzl style toprope solo anchor (they sometimes have an intermittent link on the microcender page about toprope solo systems). I've messed with it some in the past, but this was the first place it just worked out (the two side by side bolts helped). I tossed the ropes down the route and rapped down. At the bottom of the route is a large sheet of ice runoff steep enough you don't want to fall, going down about 100' of trail, and I didn't want to lose my pack, so I put in a screw, hooked my pack to it, and then suspended my somewhat empty pack on the ropes to weight them so they'd feed properly in my system.

looking down on gear and pack

I had some minor issues on the way up with the ropes being pulled under my feet, but my Microcender and Shunt fed nicely. Based on the amount of rope left over from each strand, I figure the route was about 90' long. A bit longer than what I was doing in Ouray. At the top I had serious issues getting enough rope free to set up my old-school Petzl Reverso. The first 20' or so of rappel was also very tough, but once I got firmly over the edge and vertical, I managed to slide down nicely enough.

rappel rig - shunt hanging

I unclipped the pack from the rope, and instead clipped in my Nalgene and bag of anchor gear. Maybe about 4 pounds of stuff. Warmed up for a few minutes, then took off again for a second lap. This time it was much nicer. Fed well, and I could switch from ascend to descend mode in only a few minutes, and sliding down the rope was nice and smooth. I decided to do a third lap, warmed up, then up I went. Had an audience for most of my climbing. A group came up during my first lap, and an unroped soloist came up during my third lap and said "Hi" on the way past at the clifftop.

Microcender and Shunt - close enough

There's the promised gear pic from the side to more clearly show the Microcender attached to my belay loop, and the Petzl Shunt trailing on my rappel rig. You might see the Shunt hanging on my rappel pic above - faster transition to just let it hang out of the way as I descend. On my third lap I got really pumped in my left forearm. At the top as I crested the edge I actually swung with the right, matched and hung, swung with the right, etc. Really tired. Guess without the extra rest of belaying someone it's pretty intense - need more workout sessions for my arms and hands I guess.

route up the rope

At the top I freed myself from my system, then tied the two strands together with the classic Euro Death Knot, memorized a few times which rope to pull, then flew down. When I pulled the rope for some wild reason it decided to smack me in the face, knocked my glasses off, and they slid down about 30' on the ice sheet. I pulled out and put on my sunglasses, packed up, then went down to get my glasses. They were exactly where I last saw them sliding. Nice.

route just to right of belayer

On the walk out a group came around the corner (Millers Thriller?) and knocked some huge rocks down, and started yelling. I turned to look at it, and it was awesomely huge looking from my perspective. I was going to stand still and wait it out, but managed to slide down the scree and ended up on my face. Nice ending to the day. The rock stopped a ways above me.

Since I'm so slow sliding down scree that they passed me on the way down, and I talked to one of them who was in Salomon hiking boots. He recommended I try to get LaSportiva to replace my Batura with the new version, since I have a zipper tooth missing. Dunno - might do that if they still have the same last. The Evo last does not fit at all.

Anyway, tons of fun, nearly 300' of vertical in about an hour. Good day.

Petzl Shunt Vague Warning HUH?

Petzl statement on a special use of the Petzl Shunt

In the article above, you'll most likely read some very confusing double-talk about not using the Shunt for certain backup procedures, primarily in industrial situations.



My guess, without reading the whole ISO manual on it, is that it refers to a situation very similar to that used for backing up a toperope solo. I dug around in my Old Ropesolo Blog on Blogger but couldn't find a picture to show you what I'm describing. I'll see if I can take one later.



The system I've been using lately has been a Petzl Microcender as my primary self-belay on one strand of rope, and the Petzl Shunt as my backup on the second rope.

I have tried to let the shunt trail a bit lower, with some success, and there are some different schemes that you can come up with from digging around on the Petzl website, but if it doesn't make sense, then it's better to not get into it at all. Right?

Anyway, bottom line, from my own miserable understanding of the Petzl article, is if you think you're falling, you don't grab the rope, either above or below any device that auto-locks, like either of these. That could impede the locking function and cause you to fall. That could cause you to be injured severely. That could cause your heart to stop. Think about it long and hard. Please?

Red Rock - The Wild - 8-11-2011

Didn't get this up when I did it - a whole month has gone by. Alas ...

Took the boys up Rock Canyon to "The Wild" to meet Ryan for an evening of climbing. Loading a new harness into his new backpack, there was a glitch and Ryan ended up at the cliff with no harness. Since the boys had put a lot of effort into the hike in, I decided to Lead Solo the 5.6, so I set up a couple cams at the bottom and equalized them.

I started up, and tied off the first draw, partially to keep the anchors pointing upward. I had forgotten to put in a third piece to hold the anchor up, and had to hold them up as I climbed the first few feet, and have Ryan untangle me.

Below: note the Grigri at the junction of my legs. This isn't optimal, and it had some drag, and fed like crap later in the climb, but it's what I had with me in the pack at the time. Not sure if the Eddy would have been better or not. One of these days I'm going to opt for a Soloist or whatever it is now.

 Below I'm having trouble getting the Grigri to feed, so I'm going to go ahead and clip off on the bolt. I'm using a rappel rig that Dawn Glanc taught me in Ouray last winter. I like it pretty good, and have started leaving it rigged for just such an occasion.

As I came down I cleaned, and then set it as a toprope for the boys, and let them climb for a bit. When they were done I reset the cams, added a third anchor point above the locker the rope was tied to so it wouldn't droop while I climbed, then set up a Petzl Microcender and used that without a backup. I had read recently on the Petzl website how they want us to do it now (which is quite nice of them) but haven't gotten around to testing it yet, and didn't want to do anything new this time. My son took the pics above, and didn't take any of my toprope solo, but you've seen it all before.

I'm probably going to do some more routes in the next few weeks, so stay tuned for a test of the new Petzl system.

July 17, Swan Mountain Road Toprope

It's been a very long time since I have done any ropesolo, and I keep trying to get out in Utah to climb, but every time I plan it there's either thunderstorms or like Saturday morning, the crag looked like flies on poop, the climbers were that thick.

I got up early this morning and decided to try to get in a lap at the toprope cliff near the Swan Mountain Road Traverse Wall near Frisco, CO. This was actually one of my first toprope solo adventures a couple years back, when there used to be bolts, but they've either been chopped or in the case of the loose block at the top with bolts, the block is gone. There is a very strong local group of Highball Boulderers, and it's possible they're reclaiming it, though it's like a V-minus-4 and I didn't see any chalk today on any microflakes or microcrimpers to give me any clue they're doing a hidden V1 route on it. On the hike in I surprised a fox, about 50' away on the trail, but my camera was in my backpack, so I didn't capture it for you.

I was up here a few weeks ago with the kids, and discovered that it might be possible to run a very long rope down from two trees, as shown in the pic below.

I made two figure-8-on-bights with a loop between them (thanks Dawn Glanc for showing me that). I wiggled the knots around to equalize it, and guessed about how much stretch there would be once I weighted it for the rappel so it would sit over the edge. I managed to not have two extra lockers (used one on one of the trees), so I used a couple opposed biners with the one locker. Good enough. Anchor rope brown, climbing rope pink. Note knot in climbing rope.

This is post-climb. Note my Microcender. I've grown to like it. At the bottom I make a coil of rope and use a quickdraw to clip it into an overhand-on-a-bight just below the level that rappelling down would put me if I were doing laps. This weights the rope a bit and helps the Microcender feed better. A few feet up I did a sit test and it locked just fine.

And this is my smiling face after the climb. Did it a lot easier this time than last, from what I remember. Must be all those "impossible" 8's and 9's I've been working in Rock Canyon in Utah. Not enough time this morning to do laps, but it might be on the agenda this week. Talus below feet is bottom of route. There's another route about 10' to my left that I haven't done. That could be interesting too.

Thursday August 12, Draper Red Rock 5.10a

Yes, I worked a 10a. Awesome. I was planning on trying the 5.9 that starts over the boulder, but ended up on the 10a in the cave. I drove up at 7:00 AM this morning, and hiked up, then set my rope up on the anchor that covers a couple of 10's and the 9.

I rapped down, and looking up, this is what I saw - into the 10a cave. I've done this 10a before on toprope, and while I was working the 9, decided to step over to the 10 and work it for a bit.

I'm using a Petzl Microcender now, having used it Tuesday Night on a new 5.8, one I've never done before. I gained a lot of confidence in it, and trusted it enough to let go and drop on it, important for working a route.

Notice in the photo above that I have the rope flaked in a stuff sack, which is what I toss down after anchoring at the top. For a top anchor I'm using three lockers on a sliding-x in a nylon sling. It works, and hopefully will never take a real fall. It's what I usually use for most toproping. I tie a butterfly about 5' up and clip the stuff sack to the butterfly knot, so the rest of the rope is in the bag out of trouble, but hanging to weight the rope to help it feed smoothly.

When I was done hanging around and falling in the cave (ran out of time, since I also had to run 5+ miles and drop by the house for a shower before work) I discovered one minor problem with the Microcender. It only goes up.

Luckily I have a basic knowledge of ropecraft and rescue, so I rigged my Reverso, put on a prussic and footloop and scooched up on the rope to unweight the Microcender, de-rigged that, then lowered myself onto the Reverso and undid the prussic. Was pretty fun doing it on the fly hanging in a cave. Last time I did it was on relatively low angle granite in Alaska during a guide course. I also keep a Petzl Tibloc handy, in case I need to rig a waist loop like I'm in totally deep doo.

When I was on the ground I decided I didn't feel like hiking around to the top in my Acopa Aztec, totally the best trad shoe I have ever used, so I free soloed a 5.6 I've done a handful of times. My DW was a bit "surprised" when I called later to tell her. ;)

Two climbs ago I experimented with a butterfly backup, with butterfly knots about 4 meters apart. It was so totally annoying I just skipped it these past two times. I don't know how I feel about it. I think if I were spending more time working an inverted route, like the bottom of this one, I might consider it again. Not sure yet.

Friday August 6 2010 - Flatirons, Boulder Colorado

Well, it's not rope solo, but it was a ton of fun. My wife and I met up with a friend at Flatiron parking area. In between the typical late afternoon thunder/rain we booked it up the trail to the Second Flatiron and we solo climbed the first pitch then ducked off to the ravine and hiked down. It was my wife's first solo that couldn't be considered a "highball". It was slab climbing, which is very different from the quartzite/sandstone or limestone that I've been climbing. Tons of fun.

Saturday July 31 - Draper Red Rock

My wife is on vacation this summer, and I've been going out there off and on, so haven't climbed here in months. Decided to get my butt up early on Saturday before anyone else and get on Draper Red Rock.

I wanted to experiment with a new system, so I set a toprope on the 5.7 that I've done a dozen or so times before.

I put a figure-8 in the middle of a 30 meter rope and then butterfly knots on one side of it about every 4 meters. Then I slid the figure-8 down to recenter it.

I put a couple short nylon slings on the anchors, one with biners, the other with lockers, and connected the 8 to them. I rapped down the unknotted side, swapped my Petzl Reverso3 for a Petzl Grigri. Then I girth-hitched a single and double sling on my belay loop and clipped them with lockers to my harness out of the way.

I climbed up about 15' and clipped the double sling to the first butterfly, then downclimbed to test it. All the way to the ground! So much stretch. I went back up and tested the single sling, and that was a lot better, but by this time I was feeling a bit sketched, so I shook out at the bottom and got it together. I'd done this a dozen times, it should be easy, I just need to trust the system, and work it.

I climbed back up to the butterfly, then dropped onto the Grigri and it locked and held, so now I felt much better. I had a short coil of rope at the bottom for resistance on the trailing (hand) side of the Grigri, but it wasn't quite enough so I still had to feed the rope.

In this pic, you can see the tied-off coil of both sides of the rope, the Grigri threaded, and the slings girth hitched to my harness. The biner on my leg loop was there as I took this during one of my fall tests, and I had it there to help control my lower. I didn't use it during climbing

While I was climbing an older gentleman with a large walking stick came by, saw me, and got out of there quickly. There's a local joke about the Red Rock - if you get there and see someone about to die you leave so you don't have to feel any guilt later.

While climbing I made the following few discoveries:

1) 4 meters seems to be a bit far for a single sling - you clip and drag the butterfly up to the next butterfly, drop that and clip the next one - a bit of weight between clips - don't know - I'll mess with that some more
2) I had tied the ends of the rope together, and dragging both the rope and the coil up while clipping the backup knots was annoying until I hooked a stump, then it was impossible
3) I think the Grigri needs about 5 lb or so of weight at the bottom, and the small coil at the end of the 30 meter rope wasn't enough, and when I got to dragging the coil up between backup knot clips, it took all the tension out of the system, so manual feeding was just the icing on the cake, until I hooked the stump, then it fed great ;)

Anyway, I topped out just as the sun hit the face of the crag fully. I had left my shoes at the top in my pack, so I dropped the rope, changed out of my Acopa Aztec, my favorite shoe ever for outside climbing. I feel really good standing on small stuff and cracks alike. I am using a pair of TNF Hedgehog BOA that I've been using for my speed hiking training in Colorado. The BOA is awesome as it allows me to pop them on and off in a few seconds and I can crank the knob without stopping if I need it tighter in a gnarly section.

Anyway, I made it, had a great time, and the plan at the moment is to combine it with some running training a few times a week. We'll see how that goes. Also, I think I'm going to experiment with the Petzl Microcender next time. That might be pretty wild.