Rapelling Rescue - How to save my partner?

This is one of those "catch 22" scenarios. If the rappeler was competent or prepared enough to do any of the tricks to get out of this situation, she would have been competent enough to stay out of this situation in the first place.

If the bottom climber is truly hanging mid-air without anyway to get back on the wall, and he has no slings/alpine draws to make prussiks, or if he doesn't know how to make a prussik, and you have no way to call for help, then you have to get to him. First have him knot the rope under him with one hand. Back up the anchor if you can.

One possible solution is this: you prussik down (with 2 prussiks) to him for the sole purpose of delivering 2 additional prussiks to him and showing him how to prussik so then he may then prussik up after you. You can overcome any weighted rope contact with the rock by tying 2 more prussiks past the contact point and then untying the top 2.

Ed Schaefer wrote:Assuming she has a belay device with a plaquette (guide mode) you could have her tie a loop below her so she can stand in it to unweight the device, add another 'biner to go into plaquette mode attached to the belay loop, and then she could ascend using her belay device.

Yeah, this works really well.

You can get a pulley effect with something like this:

• Put a biner on a friction knot above the belay device. The tail of the rope could probably be used for this if no extra slings are available and there's enough rope.
• Run the tail of the rope from the belay device through the biner.

Then you can haul yourself up :-).

To add hauling power:

• Put another friction hitch with a foot sling on the tail of the rope and stand in it. With no extra slings, you can just wrap the rope around one foot and do your best.
• Use a Bachmann knot on the top hitch to provide a handle.

You need to know your partner, and know your route and it's descent options. Research, research, research. It's much more doable now in the information age. Know the basics, of which ascending the rope is one of them - practice this skill set. Both of you, preferably together.

With an unknown, and unprepared for rappel - you should have gone first to assess the situation.

But now you're in this situation, it seems that the only option is to descent the rope and fix the problem, first ensuring that your anchor is adequate to the task. You should rappel down to where you can communicate from a newly built anchor, assess the situation and guide them from there. You probably will have to descend further. Ascend to the new anchor after you have reached the stranded climber and got them into a mode where they can ascend the rope. After both anchoring, pull the rappel line, re-anchor and continue the rappel - with you going first, or ascend to the original anchor and find an alternative way off or re-start the rappel from there with new knowledge.

Very harsh replies to the OP, which was a transparent, well-worded request for some information from veteran climbers. I love the whole "This never should have happened in the first place" vibe. Give me a break. Obviously all screw-ups were avoidable. Pointing this out is beside the point.

Mysterious rapelling scenarios are not uncommon. Maybe they were climbing at a remote place. Maybe they received faulty information. Let's not assume they were complete gumby idiots.

Sounds crappy and we would love to hear how things turned out.

Cut the rope

The original post is very similar to what happened to some noobs trying to rappel the entire nose route of el cap. They ended up being rescued, and were charged with negligence.

#1 thing is to have the more experienced person rappel first....

Russ Keane wrote: Obviously all screw-ups were avoidable. Pointing this out is beside the point.

No, it is PRECISELY the point. For further reference see Mark Hudon's thread on being unprepared. It pertains to popular aid routes, but the same concept applies. If you embark on a multipitch route, you should know what to do when: your rope gets stuck on rappel; how to ascend a rope and have the means with which to do so; how to escape a belay; etc, etc, etc. If you don't have these skills, you don't belong up there. Period. In the same vain, I've seen "new" sport climbers not know how to clean a route, boink up to the last bolt, or bail from a bolt. These are not "advanced" techniques, they are prerequisites.

Russ Keane wrote: Mysterious rapelling scenarios are not uncommon.

Yeah, no kidding. All the more reason to know wtf you're doing.

Russ Keane wrote: Maybe they were climbing at a remote place. Maybe they received faulty information.

Yeah, because ascending a rope is different in a remote location. Because you received bad beta doesn't relinquish you from the responsibility to yourself and your partner to be able to get out of a precarious situation by using necessary and required skills that are prerequisites to venturing into that terrain.

I agree. This is a problem that should never have happened, not some puzzle to be solved, and on the remote chance that it is real, the participants ought to understand that the issue is not some clever rope manipulation but the various levels of personal and interpersonal responsibility failures that are the real concern.

But speaking of clever rope manipulations, there are possible solutions given that this is the first of two raps to the ground, which means that a single rope would reach the ground. You'd have to be certain of this before trying what comes next.

In this situation, there are ways to convert the hanging rappeller into a person tied to one end of the rope and able to be lowered the full rope length. Even with redundancy precautions, such methods are dangerous in the sense that a faulty set-up or a miscommunication could result in the death of the rappeller.

After the first rappeller is lowered to the ground, the second rappeler would do a single-strand rappel to the ground. If the rappel ropes were knotted, the second rappeller would have to know how to pass the knot. Of course, the rope(s) have to be abandoned in this case.

I don't think it wise to post such instructions here, because they could only serve to encourage people who need to be rescued to try to extricate themselves. Folks familiar with self-rescue techniques can easily figure it all out.

Robert Hildebrand wrote: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.]

Not particularly hard or dangerous if the technique has been practiced before hand. There are a couple ways of doing it. Very commonly practiced by rope access folks. Wouldn't particularly want to learn on the fly though.

Robert Hildebrand wrote: 2. Crete a pulley system at the the top using prusiks and some biners and try to pull her up.

Depending on the situation up top (room to work, room to pull, what sort of gear you have with you, etc) also relatively easy with practice. In canyoneering rescue and rapid access rescue this is taught and practiced lots with lots of different scenarios. Double rope raps are one of the hardest to do it with, but still possible. Again, wouldn't want to try to figure out on the fly.

Suggestions: take a self rescue course, or if you're feeling spendy and want to learn tons of cool high angle tricks (not all of which are applicable to climbing, but many are) take a SPRAT course or a rescue technician course. Then practice. A lot. If you cave or canyoneer there are lots of great rescue courses out there covering both these techniques. Best rescue training I ever had for climbing was a canyoneering rescue course.

Ideally you're never in the situation though, because when doing routes where this is much of a possibility all people should be able to get themselves out the situation and ascend up themselves.

"friction knots do not work well on ropes of equal diameter."

Remember, you would be creating a friction hitch around a doubled rope used for rappel. Similar to how a purcell prusik works, which is pretty damn well.

Incidentally, I've tried to teach my wife to ascend. Ain't happening, meaning I am sure that I would personally be rapping 1st on all routes, and if anything ever happened with her, it would be up to me to ascend/descend to her and fix the problem. If, say, I got hit by rockfall or something, I would be basically waiting for someone else to show up and take care of it, 'cause she isn't capable.

That said, I've been playing with the requisite techniques in my backyard cottonwood. It is possible to learn that way.

Then again, I have students who can't answer review questions out of a text book with the book right in front of them, so...

"Folks familiar with self-rescue techniques can easily figure it all out.'

Exactly. But guess what- Not everyone who climbs knows self-rescue. Can I ask a question? When you did your first multi-pitch, were you an expert already? The climbing community needs to be less judgmental towards those who are breaking into the sport and might make a mistake here and there. It happens.

Pretty funny to say "don't go out unless you know everything that might happen and know how to get out of it" -- How exactly does one do this? You would never rope up once because guess what, you can't know it all.

Russ Keane wrote:"Folks familiar with self-rescue techniques can easily figure it all out.' Exactly. But guess what- Not everyone who climbs knows self-rescue. Can I ask a question? When you did your first multi-pitch, were you an expert already? The climbing community needs to be less judgmental towards those who are breaking into the sport and might make a mistake here and there. It happens. Pretty funny to say "don't go out unless you know everything that might happen and know how to get out of it" -- How exactly does one do this? You would never rope up once because guess what, you can't know it all.

Again, we're not talking about knowing it all; we're talking about the basic skills and knowledge of climbing. Knowing how to ascend a rope and having the necessary gear to do so is in the same category as how to belay, how to construct an anchor, how to break down an anchor in preparation for the next pitch, etc.

Russ Keane wrote:"Folks familiar with self-rescue techniques can easily figure it all out.' Exactly. But guess what- Not everyone who climbs knows self-rescue.

True enough. At that point I was simply saying that there was a "fancy" solution that "experts" would have no trouble figuring out, but it would be inappropriate for the party in question. I did not criticize them for not knowing "self-rescue technique."

Russ Keane wrote:Can I ask a question? When you did your first multi-pitch, were you an expert already? The climbing community needs to be less judgmental towards those who are breaking into the sport and might make a mistake here and there. It happens.

Of course I wasn't an expert. But even as a teenager, I had great respect for the dangers (which were more omnipresent then) and did everything I could not to get myself and my companions killed. Far less information was available when I started out in the late 1950's, but I learned as much as I could find. In particular, I certainly knew how to prussik up a rope, had practiced it, and was equipped to do so, which means that even as a rank beginner I could never have gotten into the (fictional) mess described by the OP.

When I had to learn these things, chasing down hard-to-find books was sometimes a challenge, nowadays anyone can look at the internet for ten minutes and learn that you don't send a totally inexperienced person down first and that everyone ought to be able to extricate themselves from a difficulty by prussiking. In today's world, you almost have to consciously avoid finding such things out.

So I think there are times for holding back on judgements and times for making them, and the fact that mistakes happen doesn't come close to distinguishing between the inevitable failings of inexperience and downright irresponsible behavior. In my view it is irresponsible to blunder mindlessly into situations with known dangers, situations in which the safeguards are well-known and simple, and when this happens criticism is called for, not only to protect the people involved (if they are still alive) but also those who might be similarly inclined and those who may have to risk their lives to rescue them.

Russ Keane wrote:Pretty funny to say "don't go out unless you know everything that might happen and know how to get out of it" -- How exactly does one do this? You would never rope up once because guess what, you can't know it all.

Here you have confused knowing an absolute bare minimum of appropriate skills with "knowing everything."

Allen Sanderson wrote:friction knots do not work well on ropes of equal diameter.

The bearbreeder thread rgold linked to on the first page describes the use of the Penberthy Hitch, which is precisely the sort of friction hitch you'd want to use with equal-diameter ropes. It's worth a skim.

johnnyrig wrote:"friction knots do not work well on ropes of equal diameter." Remember, you would be creating a friction hitch around a doubled rope used for rappel. Similar to how a purcell prusik works, which is pretty damn well. Incidentally, I've tried to teach my wife to ascend. Ain't happening, meaning I am sure that I would personally be rapping 1st on all routes, and if anything ever happened with her, it would be up to me to ascend/descend to her and fix the problem. If, say, I got hit by rockfall or something, I would be basically waiting for someone else to show up and take care of it, 'cause she isn't capable. That said, I've been playing with the requisite techniques in my backyard cottonwood. It is possible to learn that way. Then again, I have students who can't answer review questions out of a text book with the book right in front of them, so...

Hey, maybe give her the basic stuff to do this, the basic instructions, and let her work on it on her own. It might be she just needs to be able to process this her own way.

Ascending with tied-from-cord Purcell's is literally my first experience climbing. My son was practicing from the garage rafters, with a ladder right there, and, I believe, a crash pad. Looked "fun", so I tried. Really simple, simple concepts, a fast understanding of the elegance of ropes and knots, and, most important, concepts that can apply to a ton of stuff.

Changing over at an anchor, both to lower or rappel, I worked on and practiced sitting in our living room. I need to understand this stuff in my own way, which happens to be a radically different learning style than my partner. Hope this helps your wife. Tell her an ancient old lady is cheering her on!

Everyone else, my (I thought) obvious first question in my mind, is how did the op expect anyone to get to an anchor that is out of reach if you rap to it (with an overhang)??? Doesn't sound like a rap route at all.

Best, Helen

Someone mentioned a pulley system earlier. Climbing magazine described two ways the belayer above can help a climber below "ascend" a difficult section. Might be a good idea to look at those techniques to see if they might have helped. One of them involved escaping the belay, which should also be a skill a climber is familiar with, if the follower was not be directly belayed off the anchor, and creating a z shaped pulley system so you can decrease the force it takes to pull the climber below up to the point at which she has contact with the rock again (or past the difficult section).

My partner and I usually spend some of the time driving to and from a day of climbing discussing different techniques for different situations and how we could have done things better. He has his preferences and I have mine but we constantly share thoughts and ideas so we both have more solutions available for different situations.

Thanks for the question, this thread has given me a couple of things to think about.

Ok, so you obviously forgot your bolt gun and grappling hooks.

You can't just let your partner hang there and die from starvation or exposure.

Calmly pull out your knife....... you know what to do.

Rick Blair wrote:Ok, so you obviously forgot your bolt gun and grappling hooks. You can't just let your partner hang there and die from starvation or exposure. Calmly pull out your knife....... you know what to do.

Okay, in fairness, my first mean response was that, if she did get to the anchor, to pull the rope, finish rapping to the bottom, and call in for HIS rescue over a nice glass of Chablis and dinner for one. Equal opportunity, ya know, Rick!

Lol, Helen

Alex Rogers wrote: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.

Great story! What's the point of being young, if ya don't get to be...

No, I have not had any epics in my short climbing career, knock on wood. I have, however, self rescued several times when setting routes in the gym. Having that nifty bit of tied cord with me on my harness has at least saved me from near fatal embarassment, and is just plain useful, especially on overhanging routes.

How do you know you are hopelessly hooked on climbing?

When you enjoy "what if" threads like these, and actually want to go try stuff out!

Best, Helen