Rapelling Rescue - How to save my partner?
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Okay, I'm here to ask how I could have fixed a tricky situation without outside help. Please let me know if you have any ideas. |
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Robert Hildebrand wrote:Okay, I'm here to ask how I could have fixed a tricky situation without outside help. Please let me know if you have any ideas. My partner and I just finished a multi-pitch climb and started the first rappel of two. My partner went down over the edge such that I could no longer see her. Then she called up to me and was in trouble. She was hanging in free space and could not each the next set of anchors. [Note, this was a bad rappel route, but these things happen.] She did not have a prusik backup or the know-how to rescue her self, for instance, by ascending the rope with prusiks (that she didn't even have). What should I do to save her? I'm at the top of the rappel, and I can't even see her. Ideas [probably bad ideas]: 1. Try to descend the rope on prusiks to get her a prusik to then try to both ascend the rope on. [Is this even possible while the rope is taught? This also sounds very dangerous.] 2. Crete a pulley system at the the top using prusiks and some biners and try to pull her up. [I'm not sure the prusiks would catch properly and this would be very hard since the rope was running over an edge.] 3. ??? Thank you in advance for your responses.Did this actually happen? If so, how did you remedy it? First, do your research. I would say this should have never happened in the first place. Why do you say this was a "bad rappel route"? Maybe you were just unprepared. Second, make sure you have knots in the end of your rope if you are doing a rappel you've never done before. Last, have prusiks or some sort of ascending device on your harness and know how to use them. Also, carry a cell phone in areas where you can get a signal. There's nothing wrong with calling for outside help to save your lives. Those are my initial thoughts. Edit: If you're lucky, other climbers in the area can drop a rope to her, she can tie in to it, then be lowered to the ground. |
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I'm a little skeptical this actually happened. If it did are you sure you were rappelling down the right route? |
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Given a few feet of rope below the "stuck" rappeller, I would think that person could tie off, pull a few feet of rope up, use bights of both strands to create prusiks, or some other friction hitch wrapped around the double rappel strand, and head back on up. Since I haven't tried it myself, I suppose that's all theoretical and such until I duplicate it and experiment in the back yard on the cottonwood. |
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First mess-up is not knowing what you are rappelling into. |
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I don't believe for even a second that this is a real scenario. But speaking hypothetically, with a leader incompetent enough to make the mistakes described, the only even remotely safe option is a rescue by another party that knows what they are doing. |
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Discussed at length in some other thread, it is very difficult to impossible to get friction hitches past rope pulled taut against the rock. |
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This actually happened to me & my partner when we were young climbers: Natal Table Mountain - South Africa 1987 or so. It was a pretty remote spot, and we were intending to clean the awesome crack running up that face (full of birdshit) - but it was steeper than we thought and he ended up hanging in space 3 or 4m from the cliff - maybe 75m above the forest. It was 2 hours or so from the nearest person, and well before cellphones were invented. Lady H have you ever been in this situation? It is not possible to generate enough swing to get in to the rock - he tried hard! Luckily I had read in a book how to prussik.... :-) So I lowered another rope to him to tie onto (he was feeling very insecure) along with a couple of slings, and "instructed" him on how to use them to make a couple of prussiks. It worked! Although it took him an hour or more, and he got very sunburned. We decided we were a bit out of our depth attempting new routes in remote locations with our level of experience, and called it quits after he got up. |
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If you had enough gear you could set up a haul, which seems like the extremely laborious, time-consuming option.* The benefit of hauling is that eventually you will have enough spare rope hauled up that you can rappel down to your partner and fix her up with ascension gear. If she's at the end of the rope you should only have to haul a bit over halfway before you have the other half of the rope to rappel down, apologize profusely, and see your chance getting laid at the end of the day fade away in real time, bummer!
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OK, I am just going to assume you are in this situation and not concern myself with how you got there, although if this account is remotely true, bouldering may be better suited for you. Further I will assume the situation is as in your picture: hanging well away from the wall and not at the end of the rope and no chance of outside help. |
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Just as you shouldn't start a climb without knowing how you'll get back down, you shouldn't start a rappel, particularly an unfamiliar one, without the ability to reascend should you need to. The person on rappel is far better situated to get themselves out of the situation than the person above - which is one of the reasons that the party's experienced leader should lead the raps. If neither partner has the experience necessary to ascend rope (or build intermediate anchors, or other basic skills), then they probably shouldn't be on that climb quite yet. |
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All that descending shenanigans - pfft. drop them a couple of slings and teach them to prussik. |
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^^ this is what I was thinking, but Alex beat me to it. |
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3. Do nothing. Your partner is to: |
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I'm imagining watching this on a weekend, 2 gumbies trying to ascend the rope together. One telling the other how to do it and 3 dozen people giving unsolicited advice to anyone within ear shot |
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Robert Hildebrand wrote:Okay, I'm here to ask how I could have fixed a tricky situation without outside help.Well, you could have been knowledgeable and prepared for the environment in which you chose to climb. That's the best way. Clearly that was not the case as evidenced here: She did not have a prusik backup or the know-how to rescue her self, for instance, by ascending the rope with prusiks (that she didn't even have). Robert Hildebrand wrote: Please let me know if you have any ideas. Uuhhh, you mean other than being knowledgeable enough to assess the risk and potential things that can go wrong in a multi pitch environment and equip yourself with the tools and techniques to solve such problems? No. None. |
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So you say this actually happened, and it seems you've lived to tell the tale, yet you have no idea how to solve it. So how did you solve it? |
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Hey Robert. Since this event was in the past, how did you get out of the situation? What route was it? |
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A method for ascending a rope with no equipment other than the rope itself was posted by bearbreeder at mountainproject.com/v/pruss… . |
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Agree with pretty much every other comment on here, but one idea that wasn't mentioned: |
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Pavel Burov wrote:3. Do nothing. Your partner is to: A. Tie clove hitch below her ATC and stand in it. Now she has both hands free. B. Pull the rest of the rope and attach herself to the rope leaving about 7 feet tail. C. Tie Blake's hitch and butterfly in beetwen harness and Blake's hitch. D. Ascend the rope. The most important. Learn basics before.For the most part, I am going to go with this one. However, if they have rapped to the end of the rope it is going to be difficult for them to get started. Further, friction knots do not work well on ropes of equal diameter. As such, if they have lace up shoes one can make a prusik from the laces. In fact, I have known several alpine climbers who have replaced the laces on their boots with perlon specifically for ah shit moments. I should also note that more than once I have ascended a rope while on rappel simply by pulling myself up the rope while pulling the stack back through my rappel device. However, I was not free hanging in space but with feet against the rock |