Ice Climbing Stairway to Heaven Toprope Solo

Ice Climbing season is finally here in Utah. I climbed some in Utah before Christmas with some friends. I climbed in Colorado at Lincoln Falls with another friend during the Holiday. Since I'm going to Ouray for the Ice Fest next week I decided I needed to get in some more ice climbing practice.

View from the Nunn's Park parking area approach to Stairway to Heaven in Provo

It's been really cold this past week, with temperatures around 5-10 degrees F. I was told by a friend that Stairway to Heaven was in good condition. Stairway is a classic route that sometimes is over 5 pitches tall. It's near the Bridalveil Falls climb in Provo Canyon. I was working a half-day and had the afternoon off. I decided that I could do some toprope solo ice climbing. I took a bag of my clothes and gear to work and changed when my shift was over. I drove up the canyon to the Nunn's Park parking area where there were a half dozen cars already. I could see it being pretty busy on a sunny but cold day. I used to be a lot more shy about rope solo ice climbing, but now not so much.

Stairway to Heaven Ice Climbing in Provo Canyon

Ice Climbing Stairway Approach

I walked up the snow and ice covered road for nearly a half mile to the ascent up the gully to the ice climbing area. I saw crampon tracks the whole way, and stopped to put my crampons on before going up the gully. It is a steep climb of about 400' to the foot of the frozen falls. Last time there was hardly any snow on it. This time it was a very good thick packed snow ramp and easy in crampons. Well, easy footing but steep. As I hiked up I rested a bit to keep my heart rate down. I moved slowly and scoped out a line a little to the right of where we had climbed over two weeks ago. The ice looked very thick there.

Ascending the gully to the base of Stairway to Heaven

I stopped at the foot of the falls and put in a screw to attach my water bottles to the ice climbing wall so I wouldn't have to haul them up with me. I had two water bottles, one with electrolyte mix [my favorite right now is Camelbak Elixir 12 Tablet Tube], and the other with water. I also had a shaker bottle of protein mix, since I hadn't eaten in a while. I put on my insulated jacket, holstered an ice tool and using the other as a pole, hiked up around the right to the first shelf.

Fat ice climbing conditions at Stairwaybr/>
There was a pretty good flow of water at the far right side. I stepped carefully over the ice and gravel bridges t hen onto the ice and snow shelf. On the way up I had eyeballed a landmark to tell me where to set the anchor on the chains over the route. Sometimes they're buried in the ice and hard to find. Sure enough they were buried in the ice, but the pipes marking them were sticking out. I used my ice tool to chip them out. Water was loudly gurgling behind and around the chains, and dripping down the surface of the ice. It seemed weird to me to have running water at 5 degrees Fahrenheit. I guess it's sunny enough to melt the snow and ice up higher in the sun, even though the ice climbing down here is cold in the shade.

Toprope Solo Anchor System based on Petzl System

Ice Climbing Solo Anchor Setup

I clipped into the anchor to protect myself in the unlikely event of a slip and fall. The edge of the world here is about 8' from the anchors. Not really much time to self-arrest. I took off my pack and clipped it in, stowed my tool in a deep slot in the ice someone else had used and made an anchor. I usually use two short ropes in a system I learned from the Petzl website. It's pretty well doubled up and redundant and all the important things. I flipped the ropes over the edge of the world.

Ready to rap down over the first pitch of Stairway to Heaven

I set up my rappel using my handy-dandy Petzl Reverso 3, then unclipped my tether from the anchor. The locker was covered in a thin layer of ice. The webbing of my tether was totally stiff. Water had soaked into it and turned into ice in the webbing. I bent it around my neck without thinking too much about it, then rappelled over the edge and to the bottom of the route I'd selected. Sometime while I was up setting my anchor a couple of other climbers had started lead ice climbing about a hundred feet to my left. No biggie. I straightened up the ends of the rope and tied in knots about 2' off the ground. I clipped the water bottles to them for weight to help the system feed. I set up the most recent toprope self-belay version on the Petzl website using a GriGri and an ascender, but the GriGri wouldn't feed with just the water bottle weight.

Toprope Solo Rig based on Petzl Instructions with some modification YMMV

Ice Climbing Solo System Failure

I switched to the Shunt trailing about 18" off my harness. I doubt I'll reach for it in the middle of a fall and disable the cam [see article about Petzl Vague Shunt Warning]. I'll try hard not to anyway. Just a quick aside. This is actually very dangerous in spite of any light I might make of it. Please don't ever do this. I started up the route then. The ice was very plastic to the right side, and a bit brittle to the left. Weird. The ropes fed really nicely. It was awesome fun climbing. Suddenly the rope seemed a bit tight and heavy. I looked down to see the pink rope from the Shunt looping and the water bottle coming up after me. The Shunt was coated in ice. I reached down to shake it free, but it was down between my knees courtesy of the 18" of webbing. I was about 25' up the 60' route. The ascender was feeding nicely though.

At the top. Whew! That was a tough solo. (note frozen rope loops under feet)

For a while. For about 10' actually. By then I had a frozen loop of stiff pink rope maybe 20' long. The Shunt rope. Now I had a loop forming of the yellow rope. I pulled on the ascender and fed some rope in. I decided that I only had about 20' of ice climbing to go. If I were leading I would probably just top out without any more pro. That was the logic of the moment anyway. In fact, a few years ago I was leading a little to the right where the cliff was 50' tall and had set only two screws. I was sinking my right tool perfect on every swing. My left was off the mark a bit and took a few swings. In the interest of safety I began switching. I stuck it with my right hand, grabbed it with my left, then took the other tool in my right and stuck that. I did that for the last 10' of ice climbing. As I crested the bulge my feet came off the ice and I did a pullup over the lip. I made it to the top. And I was really wasted.

Water soaked and frozen ropes

I clipped in and pulled up the frozen ropes. They were stiff and the ice climbing self-belay system was frozen up. I unclipped the gear and stowed it on my harness. Both ropes, yellow and pink, were frozen for most of their lengths. I realized then that if I had fallen going over the bulge at the top I would probably have taken a 40' whipper. Maybe more with rope stretch. I did have really good sticks with the tools though. I set up my rappel. It was difficult getting the rope to fold into the belay device. As I passed over the edge of the world, the rope began to slide through my hands. It was covered in an icy layer all the way down. Fortunately the ice had to peel off passing through the Reverso, so that slowed me down a lot.

Ice on the rope, my glove, and the Reverso while rappelling

Partway down I decided that one lap was good enough for ice climbing under these conditions. I put on my insulated jacket and drank my protein shake. About that time another solo climber came up and I chatted with him a bit. I went to the top to retrieve my ropes and pro, taking my backpack to load it in. I walked around the far right again. I had to chip out my stuff and bang the ice from it. I had to dig out my ice screw. The ropes were really stiff and wouldn't go into my backpack very well. They took up about half again as much space.

Frozen Ropes after ice climbing solo on Stairway to Heaven

I managed to squeeze everything into the bag and exchanged information with the other solo guy, in case we decide to do any ice climbing together in the future. I hiked down the gully and left my crampons on all the way to the road.

Hiking back to the car after my ice climbing adventure on Stairway

Ice Climbing Aftermath

At home I dumped out my pack to start thawing and drying out my gear. Overall it was an amazing and educational ice climbing experience. From now on I'll have to carry an extra screw, sling, and set of lockers as an emergency measure. If my rope and system get junked up with ice again I can just quick set a screw, clip in, and hang while straightening everything out. I can also go old school and tie in to the rope with a sliding clove hitch rig.

Stiff rope after ice climbing in running water on a freezing day

Toprope Solo Anchor

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.