Monday April 19 Lead Rope Solo Draper Red Rock

Took the kids out to the Draper Red Rock for a bit of family fun. DW wasn't with, so I decided to lead rope solo the 5.6 at the far left side. I haven't done it in a year, so felt a little rusty and figured "what could possibly go wrong?"

First of all, I only had a minimal set of trad gear, and unlike some of the low level climbs at American Fork Canyon, there are no bottom bolts (I should take gear up and fix that if I knew no one would chop it). So with only a 3" crack to work with, and a max 2" SLCD, I decided to just tie into the first hanger.

I climbed up solo to the first bolt, set a Screamer on two lockers tied to figure 8 with a tail that reached to the ground. I had a GriGri pre-rigged on the rope, and I did a tension test and was reasonably satisfied.

I worked my way up to the 2nd hanger, and had a little trouble with the GriGri locking up, so I pulled a bunch of slack up and let it fall over the rope so it wouldn't snag on me again. I clipped into the 2nd hanger, and up to the 3rd. Where I suddenly discovered I was a moron and had the rope fed backwards into the GriGri. I clipped my daisy chain to the quickdraw and settled back to hang while I straightened my mess out.

After getting it set right, it was even worse at hanging up and locking, so I pretty much soloed the rest. If I fell I would probably go about 15' or so, and this part of the rock is probably about 85 degrees - a little less than vertical. It would hurt a bit. From not climbing outside in a year, and not climbing in the gym in about 5 months (training for mountaineering ate up all my time) I was pretty wasted when I finally set my top anchor.

I switched to a Petzl Reverso 3 (I like the green one) for rappelling off the free side of the rope. I didn't have much friction, so I put a biner on my leg loop. I probably could have wrapped it a couple times too.

I cleaned my way down to the first hanger, where I discovered one of the sources of my snagging - the free loops I'd pulled up had gotten behind the Screamer, and were wedged in tight. I upclimbed a bit to free them, and then continued to the bottom to rest for a second. Awesome. I still had rope tied up at the Screamer, so I climbed up solo to it (it's only about 12' but in a crappy place to stand), clipped in, undid the rope, set up a full rappel (both sides of the rope in the Reverso), stowed the Screamer, then rapped down feeling much better with the friction of both ropes.

I then sent up my 6 and 9 year old boys on toprope for the next two hours while the 3 year old begged for a turn. I didn't bring her harness, so no go (she'd fall out of the boys harness as she's smaller than it is).

Oh, well, first time out and all, it was great practice in rope and gear management, and I think I won't be repeating these mistakes again.

Goal0 Adventure Video Contest Finalist

Angie is a finalist with Goal0's video contest "What Powers Me?" with her "Extra-Ordinary Mom" video.

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Support Ovarian Cancer Research - Climb in Wasatch

Sept 18 and 19, HERA Climb4Life fundraiser. Ovarian Cancer is an orphan cancer, with almost no money being poured into research, since unlike breast cancer, there is no profitable cut and dried series of treatments.

Angie will be climbing, Please support her in reaching her fundraising goal for this year.

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Above is Angie on Problem 7 at the Citizen's Comp at Teva Mountain Games, 2009 in Vail Colorado

Top Rope Solo Thoughts - Part 1

Weather in Utah has been crappy with daily rain in the eve, so I can barely mow the lawn, let alone go out climbing.

I had a great epic survival story on Liberty Ridge on Rainier last week, so I'm still in catchup mode - eating like a pig and not gaining weight (for a while anyway) and suffering as I get back into working out. Went to the chiropractor yesterday and getting a massage today - yay!

So I'm sitting around thinking about my techniques for toprope solos in the past. I normally tie off the top at the middle of the rope, with two strands hanging, and use one strand as my belay strand, and the other as my backup strand.

Experimenting in Alaska during my training program with Alaska Mountaineering School, I got to wondering if maybe I should just loop the rope through the anchor rig and tie off on my harness, so I am essentially belaying myself normally.

PRO: tied in, more rope in the system for more dynamic fall catching

CON: rope management, 2:1 disadvantage in pulling rope through the belay device, rope management

Additionally, I got to thinking about experimenting with a weight on the end of the belay side of the rope to keep it semi-tight for better BRD feeding - maybe I'll try that soon to see how I feel about that - of course, that would only work with the top tied off.

Well, more later. Maybe I'll get out sometime this week.

Tinker Toys Trad Rope Solo

A break in the rain inspired me to hike Rock Canyon as a break from work, and try a trad lead rope solo.

The pack weighed a ton with all the trad gear. Well, actually only about 45 lb. I had issues before with my Edilrid Eddy being a bit "grabby" on the rope, and I ended up accidentally fixing it twice - more in a second.

I got to Tinker Toys in a record 15 minutes and had it all to myself. I quick set up an anchor at the bottom of "Tinker Toys" 5.6 trad crack on the far right side of the crag. Only about 35', it would be a good first trad solo lead.



Above shows the whole mess, from a 3" cam at the top (finally set a top anchor to hold all the gear pointing upright), to a .25 tricam at the bottom.



Top part - in the middle is a #6 nut slotted in really good (bottom) and a .5 tricam used as a chock (top).



And that's the .25 tricam at the bottom. The first time I pulled it multi-directional it popped, so I really yanked on it to set it. With the top SLCD it shouldn't pull.

I took all of 10 minutes to unpack, flake the rope and set the bomber anchor. Good timing. One of the main differences between pro and anchor is that pro only needs to hold a fall, normally in only one primary direction. An anchor must survive through a potential of multiple angles of force, and in addition, could (in a normal belay situation) be the one main point of failure that two or more lives depend on. In a rope solo situation, the bottom anchor must hold an upward pull during a fall, but must resist downward (gravity) and outward (climbing past initially) forces as well. So it's really important to be totally bomber, as your life probably depends on it holding just about anything that happens.

I tied into the locker near the SLCD and threaded my GriGri (fix number one) with my blue rope. It's a short (30 Meter) thin (9.8MM) rope I got off GearExpress. I climbed up about 5' and drop tested myself. It held. Good. BUT when I wiggled at all, it fed rope. Wild. I repeated it. And it did the same thing. I downclimbed and tried it a bunch of different ways on the ground. Same thing.

Two fixes to one problem, that caused another problem. GriGri's are not rated for rope under 10MM. 9.8MM is too small. It catches, but releases itself with any change in tension. I could be hanging and just bump the wall to unweight just a little bit, and it would feed rope. Drat.

So I packed up and headed for the car. Ran into two guys coming up looking for Tinker Toys, so I gave them beta, and they asked about setting a top rope, so I gave them some "advice" and continued down.

SO: future concepts - when I take the GriGri I take a 10.2MM rope (like the yellow or pink) and when I take the Eddy take the 9.8MM rope (blue). That should fix the problems. And get me climbing.

(P.S. - it wasn't worth risking a fall that may not catch - rope solo is about safely belaying yourself, not being macho)

Raining in Utah

sucks!

Was going to go outside tonight to get my climb on.

Oh, well.

Swan Mountain Road - Toprope Crag

Got into Keystone about 5PM and decided to head out quick to toprope solo the crag at Swan Mountain Road. Tossed on the backpack at the trailhead and peeled out. Got to the Traverse Wall in 4 minutes (far out) and top of the little cliff at 12 minutes (with a small delay as someone with a lot of cheap beer was camping in the middle of the trail and I did a little scouting to make sure I wasn't crashing someone's hot tent session before I went down the trail. At the top I saw that the bolted anchors were in fact all gone but one. I tested the one remaining and it spun. I found a pulled-out hole from an old anchor right next to it (looked at my beta photos on Mountainproject.com to see what they used to look like).

I didn't see any suitable trustworthy anchoring options on top (that didn't require like 30' of rope to tie into and drape over the edge - for the most part it's loose microwave-size blocks up there). I went down to the bottom to check out the existing stuff and found some interesting future-worthy trad leads, but ran out of time so headed back to the condo by going down to the main campground road (closed for logging).

Wonder if I should call this blog "Thinking about rope solo while hiking" instead?

lol