What are these?

Hi,

What are these rappel anchors called or where can one buy these? These look almost like pigtails but the design is different

anchr1

anchr2

Muggy B wrote:Hi, What are these rappel anchors called or where can one buy these? These look almost like pigtails but the design is different

Technically they are called "Widderhörner" (in the original German) which means "Rams horns" but the are commonly also called pigtails.
You can buy them from me! bolt-products.com/SinglePoi…
or AustriaAlpin austrialpin.at/klettern/bol… or kong.it/en/2-products/items…

The one shown is from AustriAlpin, the disadvantage with their design is you can´t remove it from the bolt when it´s worn and they only come made from 8mm bar so wear out earlier than the ones I and Kong make which are 10mm. They also have an open weld which is prone to cracking and corrosion.

People in Rumney are starting to put Jim ' s pigtails up. I'm looking forward to being able to clean a route without having to untie and retie to lower off.

Thank you Jim.

One question though. The whole idea of using a ramhorn or pigtail is to be able to lower oneself off without having to untie from the rope and thread it through say, a ring or an eyelet (leg bolt). But is it safe to lower off of only one ramhorn? Or should two of these be put up?

I would think that there should be two. I rather not lower off a 1 bolt anchor.

A lot of routes in BoCan have Mussy hooks at anchors. Probably more expensive but reallly nice to just clip in and lower without untying.

Downside is that they can twist the rope quite a bit and I've had issues with my new rope kinking after lowering off Mussy hooks.

Two ramshorns looks fairly nasty somehow though it has been done by the guys in Dorset because they fitted the original staples horizontally seperated, it also naturally costs more.
The normal setup is like this with two bolts:-

Inline Pigtail with chain
This is what I fit on my own routes and it works well because you can change out the ramshorn but keep the two bolts and chain, even if the ramshorn is stolen you still have a normal lower-off. At some point you have to go to one point though, whether it´s your rope or a ring or a ramshorn. Luckily they are as simple as it gets mechanically being just a piece of bent bar with no moving parts or welds so failure is very, very unlikely.

Eric LaRoche wrote:People in Rumney are starting to put Jim ' s pigtails up. I'm looking forward to being able to clean a route without having to untie and retie to lower off.

What routes at Rumney are you seeing these on, Eric? I haven't been up in a couple months and was mostly climbing elsewhere in the Fall, so I have gotten out of the loop of the latest. I am kind of mixed on the idea of the things, so would like to see how the rest of the anchor configuration is being set up.

Jim, with your set-up, how do people set their quickdraws if multiple people in a group are taking a run or TRing? It seems like the ramhorns would interfere with the top biners clipped into the bolt and chain. ..Or do you not bother about avoiding wear or use another configuration than opposing quickdraws?

I noticed in your web site that many of your anchor setups do not have easily replaceable wear parts and claim they are good for 25 years of TR wear. I find that kind of hard to believe seeing how fast heavy steel wears out on popular routes at Rumney. And, unfortunately, I have found out that 25 years goes by pretty damn quickly! What a PITA to have to chop and core drill, or at least cut off a bunch of stuff and replace with screw gates.

I'm thinking the point of these is that they are inexpensive and easily replaceable thus allowing people to lower and top rope through them without it being much of a concern. Pretty ingenious looking.

Routes in Austria are sometimes equipped with these things, also called Sauschwanz. Recently a lethal accident happened when somebody used a Sauschwanz to rappel and the rope "jumped" out of the pigtail. The Austrian mountain rescue performed some tests after that and wiggling the rope a little is enough.
Getting lowered usually does not lead to such rope movements.

See videos (sorry I could only find them on FB):

facebook.com/photo.php?v=67…
facebook.com/video.php?v=67…

Google translate of the report here: translate.google.com/transl…

These actually look pretty interesting but I've never seen any on a route.

Good article on anchor options below but doesn't discuss ramhorns...

upskillclimbing.blogspot.co…

Muggy B wrote:Thank you Jim. One question though. The whole idea of using a ramhorn or pigtail is to be able to lower oneself off without having to untie from the rope and thread it through say, a ring or an eyelet (leg bolt). But is it safe to lower off of only one ramhorn? Or should two of these be put up?

Mountaineering groups in the Alps have recently panned these "pigtails" for rappelling in their journal "bergundsteigen" as prone to unclipping. Actual piece is in German and Google translate butchers it, but this version is fairly readable.

They're warning against using them for rappelling, but Jesus, if you've ever climbed over there you know how brown your trousers can get when you first see the crazy contraptions they've come up with to get folks back down the mountain.

Edit: GroeWaZ beat me to it.

M Sprague wrote:Jim, with your set-up, how do people set their quickdraws if multiple people in a group are taking a run or TRing? It seems like the ramhorns would interfere with the top biners clipped into the bolt and chain. ..Or do you not bother about avoiding wear or use another configuration than opposing quickdraws? I noticed in your web site that many of your anchor setups do not have easily replaceable wear parts and claim they are good for 25 years of TR wear. I find that kind of hard to believe seeing how fast heavy steel wears out on popular routes at Rumney. And, unfortunately, I have found out that 25 years goes by pretty damn quickly! What a PITA to have to chop and core drill, or at least cut off a bunch of stuff and replace with screw gates.

It varies a bit since there are different bolts used, we make a large-eye bolt or a standard size. you can get one draw into the standard bolt along with the ramshorn but not two. The Kong ones are really the pits since you can´t get anything into the bolt at all.
I´m not really an expert, I rarely watch people top-roping! Working routes I just put a draw into the chain and clip a lower bolt as back-up, since my home area normally only has one bolt at the top I´m used to doing it that way. Most people just run the rope through the ramshorn and a draw into the higher bolt for redundancy and so it takes the wear or just clip two draws into the chain. You can clip direct into the ramshorn as well.

Wear depends on the area and traffic, I know of 60 year old bolts which are good and 2 year old ones which are finished. Honeypot routes which are obviously going to get hammered by the top-ropers I fit ramshorns first-off, obscure 5.13´s I don´t bother.

Crisco Jackass wrote: Mountaineering groups in the Alps have recently panned these "pigtails" for rappelling in their journal "bergundsteigen" as prone to unclipping. Actual piece is in German and Google translate butchers it, but this version is fairly readable. They're warning against using them for rappelling, but Jesus, if you've ever climbed over there you know how brown your trousers can get when you first see the crazy contraptions they've come up with to get folks back down the mountain. Edit: GroeWaZ beat me to it.

That´s one reason there are different ideas about how to make them, if you use a one-piece curved top bar like the AustriAlpin ones (the ones shown in the article)and the rope comes out of one side it slides completely off, the design I and Kong use (and originally Salewa) the rope only comes half way out before falling into the centre slot between the two legs. That´s the theory anyway!

The AustriaAlpin design has a couple of advantages though. Normally you pay for a lot of metal with the thicker designs which does nothing really (there are 15" of bar in one of mine) but you need the thickness to stop them bending open (and naturally for wear resistance). the welded top bar holds the rope better if the ramshorn bends open so AustriAlpin can get 25kN using 8mm material whereas we use 10mm and get 15kN or 12mm and get 30kN.
They use the AA ones in my local wall but personally I think they aren´t the way to go, they can get cracks at the weld after a lot of use though they have changed the welding pattern nowadays which should help. The main hassle is it is impossible to completely seal the weld between the two legs which is a no-no when it comes to corrosion resistance for outdoor use. Welding is expensive anyway so theirs costs more than mine as well!

This is another Austrian idea that didn´t take off thank God!
Ultimate Pigtail

I think I'll stick with my usual two horizontally placed 1/2" SS Rawls or glue-ins with two honking quicklinks or link and SS ring per bolt: simple, strong, replaceable and gives you options. It is not perfect, but works well. If you can't manage to drill the procedures into yourself of communicating with your belayer and threading an anchor quickly and safely without killing yourself, I don't think you should be climbing. It is about like not sticking your hand in the mower to clean it while it is running.

M Sprague wrote: What routes at Rumney are you seeing these on, Eric? I haven't been up in a couple months and was mostly climbing elsewhere in the Fall, so I have gotten out of the loop of the latest. I am kind of mixed on the idea of the things, so would like to see how the rest of the anchor configuration is being set up.

I saw an announcement somewhere that they were going to start, i can't find it at the moment. I haven't actually seen them, just that they were going to.

Jim I am a big fan of your bolts, lower offs ect. however I think Americans will always be afraid of something new.

Well, I'm certainly not afraid of these. I like them an awful lot. You've seen me spout about doing anchors right IE, quick lower and don't twist the rope. These work.

11 Euro equals 12.43 merican plus shipping. Considering it takes the place of two quicklinks, it's almost a wash. When you consider you need a quicklink to attach a mussy hook to, Jim's setup is almost half the price.

(I'm assuming $4 per quicklink and 5.75 homo depot winch hooks X2 = $19.50, not including price of chain, bolts, or hangers).

I'm not developing anything these days, otherwise, I'd order a whole mess of them.

Crisco Jackass wrote: Mountaineering groups in the Alps have recently panned these "pigtails" for rappelling in their journal "bergundsteigen" as prone to unclipping. Actual piece is in German and Google translate butchers it, but this version is fairly readable. They're warning against using them for rappelling, but Jesus, if you've ever climbed over there you know how brown your trousers can get when you first see the crazy contraptions they've come up with to get folks back down the mountain. Edit: GroeWaZ beat me to it.

Were they these exact pig tails? The ones Jim have look like it'd be just about impossible for the rope to jump out of it. Looking at this side shot the ends go behind the spine a good distance so it makes a complete circle. The rope would have to do something pretty funky to make that bend by itself. It'd have to make the same looping action as it would if it were to loop the gate on a biner and unclip itself, though with the pig tail it looks like it'd have to make an even weirder loop.

Eric LaRoche wrote: I saw an announcement somewhere that they were going to start, i can't find it at the moment. I haven't actually seen them, just that they were going to.

I found where Dave mentioned them on the Team Tough site