lost ropes on Yum Yum Yab Yum

Our bright blue and orange double ropes got stuck on a rappel from the top of P2 on YYYY. We were benighted and tried a lot of tricks to get them down but to no avail.

If you get them back to us we would be immensely grateful.

Can you explain the benighted part? Are you talking about the 5.4 Yum Yum Yab Yum in the Near Trapps of the Gunks? If I remember correctly once you top out, it's a pretty easy walk off.

If no one has gotten them let, let me know & I can ask my climber friend who lives in New Paltz to see if he can get them down.

TheIceManCometh wrote:Can you explain the benighted part? Are you talking about the 5.4 Yum Yum Yab Yum in the Near Trapps of the Gunks? If I remember correctly once you top out, it's a pretty easy walk off. If no one has gotten them let, let me know & I can ask my climber friend who lives in New Paltz to see if he can get them down.

No walk-off in the Near Trapps can be considered long, but this one isn't real short and would is certainly not fun in climbing shoes, especially since you then have to double it to go all the way back to the stuff you left at the base. That's why most people rap nowadays.

Benighted just means a start late enough to get benighted, whatever "late enough" means. In principle, no big deal, maybe even on purpose while trying to get in one more route.

My guess is that someone has by now retrieved those ropes, since folks would have been up there on Sunday. Check at the Preserve Headquarters and Rock and Snow and post on gunks.com as well.

This post violated Rule #1. It has been removed by Mountain Project.

good pro wrote:I got your ropes stop leaving your stuff on the walls

Elena, what's with all this pathetic trolling? You and Ryan have a spat? That van getting a little claustrophobic?

This post violated Rule #1. It has been removed by Mountain Project.

good pro wrote:Ropes are mine Mark don't try to get in on this action

What, does Ryan need some more "meticulously maintained" used ropes to sell? You guys max out on the plasmapheresis donations this month?

I hope you get your ropes back! I take it you reached the ground with a double rope rap from P2? I would love to hear more of this story... there's no great shame in getting ropes stuck on a rap, it happens to just about everyone at one time or another.

We got a late start and decided to take it easy. The actual climbing was fun and easy. Guidebook seemed to indicate a plausible rap off and the walk seemed too long to do in climbing shoes so we elected to rap.

Rapped off of the top of YYYY where I remembered rapping off last year or the year before. We put a sling since all the slings that used to be there were missing. My partner led the rappel and elected to traverse off to the left to a chossy ledge to avoid trees. When I arrived after our (newbie) third, I noted that the ropes were impossible to pull from the angle due to a crack that the ropes were in.

We elected to take the chossy, dirty traverse across right and further down to the top of P2 of YYYY to rap off the rap station we belayed near earlier. Our third did not like the traverse despite being essentially belayed on all three ropes and required a little coaxing to move along. We were able to pull the ropes then, but only with much effort (we ended up making a pulley), and the other rope ended up getting snagged 15 feet above us on a flake and a tree a little bit above. My partner ended up leading up to retrieve it and we subsequently set up and rapped off P2 of YYYY. I went down last just as the last of sunlight faded away, so rappelled in the dark.

When we got to the bottom we had passed through a fair amount of trees and were concerned that the ropes would get snagged in the trees. No luck -- we couldn't even budge the ropes from the anchor. The knot must have either gotten caught in the wide rolled aluminum rings or between the rock and the root of the tree. We made a pulley and tried pulling it down by hopefully weighting the knot and letting it squeeze through the rings but to no avail. In the end we had to give up because we weren't interested in leading the pitch in the dark.

TheIceManCometh: Yes, we could have walked off, but we figured it was a long walk versus an easy rappel. So we thought we would rappel. Next time we will walk. I appreciate the offer, though I assume someone else has taken them down by now.

rgold: Thanks for the leads on who I can contact. I will try those next.

good pro: If you do have my ropes please contact me privately. I would like to arrange to get them back.

SethG: Well, there's your story.

Just a few thoughts:
-I try to always have a headlamp if there's any chance that I may be on route in the dark
-If I'm reading you correctly, you had three ropes (you said something about your third being on three ropes), so a headlamp would've allowed you to lead back up with the third rope, or just prusik the two stuck ropes (I can't quite make out if you had both ends or not, maybe not).
-If you have only one end, that is a pretty advanced situation, definitely don't prussik it! (There IS a solution to the "one-end" problem but it's serious business, worth researching... Elements of it, along with a ton of typical mountainproject BS, are buried in this thread mountainproject.com/v/wolfs… Enjoy!)
-Trying not to be mean here, but when this happened to me, my solution was to make sure that I was the first person at the crag the next morning...

This post violated Rule #1. It has been removed by Mountain Project.

Lobster Rolls wrote: Rapped off of the top of YYYY where I remembered rapping off last year or the year before. We put a sling since all the slings that used to be there were missing.

This could be because there is a rap route on the climber's left that doesn't go back down YYY. Finding the first rap is pretty tricky. From the finish of YYY, you have to walk (more like thrash through some trees) climber's left (South) maybe 20 yards and head back towards the lip. You'll see a large tree growing from a ledge maybe fifteen feet down. You scuttle down a slab a few feet (belay needed because of the exposure here and pine needles on the slab) and reach over to and climb down the tree to the ledge. From the ledge, there's a 30 meter rappel, almost all of it free-hanging, to an extremely rotten ledge with a small rap tree climber's right. From that rap tree you need two ropes to rap to the ground.

The rappel from the tree to the ground has a very hard pull. The tree is small, so the slings necessarily have to be right at the base, and that base is a bit back from the lip, so the ropes make a sharp bend over the lip and there is a lot of friction there. This is a place where using an EDK might be critical to pulling, but even more important is for the last person down to get the knot over the lip so it doesn't have to be dragged over; that is what will obstruct the pull the most. However, doing this requires some expertise in rappelling tactics, since you can't adjust the ropes when they are weighted. Once down, walk as far away from the cliffs as the ropes allow to decrease the bending angle over the lip.

In general, it is a sad fact of life that EDK's can get wedged in rap rings. Rappels with EDK's should always be set up so that the knot is not directly up against the rings.

Lobster Rolls wrote: ...we couldn't even budge the ropes from the anchor. The knot must have either gotten caught in the wide rolled aluminum rings or between the rock and the root of the tree. We made a pulley and tried pulling it down by hopefully weighting the knot and letting it squeeze through the rings but to no avail.

In addition to the advice mentioned above, an important but often-skipped step in the rappelling process is to test pulling before the last person rappels. If indeed the knot was wedging somewhere, this could have been discovered and fixed and a whole lotta grief saved. Not doing this check is probably the single biggest contributor to what happened, which could have been more serious if you were not on the ground and able to just walk away.

I also think the idea that the knot could be dragged through the rings was doomed to failure. It is true that, with a small tag line, such knots have gone though the rap rings (with fatal consequences since the knot was anchoring the rappel), but with two half-ropes (or something bigger) the knot will never go through the rings, and most especially not when friction has so severely restricted pulling power.

I think you should have put all your resources into pulling the ropes the correct way, after getting as far away as possible from the cliff edge and trying to continually flick the unweighted strand in the hopes of momentarily unweighting it enough to decrease pulling resistance. You could rig a 3:1 pulley with a progress capture prussik at the ground (although with carabiner friction the mechanical advantage will be less than 2:1 and quite possibly less than 1.5:1), but before I tried that I'd put some prussiks on the rope and try some body-weight bouncing. Just make sure that the bouncers are not in a position to get hurt if the rope suddenly comes free.

Lobster Rolls wrote:good pro: If you do have my ropes please contact me privately.

She doesn't. She is nowhere near New York. She's just someone that gets her kicks jerking people around.

Hope you get your ropes back.

This post violated Rule #1. It has been removed by Mountain Project.

How's about $100 bucks and an 1/8th of some PRIMO weed, that's all i have left ATM.

Optimistic:

Agreed that we could have lead up, and we did have headlamps but everybody in my party was too tired to entertain the thought of leading up the first two pitches again.

Since I live about 2 hours south of the Gunks and had Sunday commitments coming up the next day wasn't in the cards.

rgold:

I did think about the test pull on the way back to the car, but I am normally accustomed to simply doing many single-rope rappels where there is no knot to get stuck in the middle, so it didn't occur to me when we were on rappel. It's not a mistake I'll make again.

I also noted that the knot was not in a great place while coming down but figured it should still be able to make it over the edge. We definitely were pulling on the correct side to pull the rope as far as we knew, but like I said there was a possibility that the knot passed through the rings during my rappel. In any case, neither rope budged. We tried a 3-to-1 pulley to pull down the rope when we got to the ground and even gave a shot at doubling and tripling the pulley. By the time we gave up the rope was bow-string taut.

Lobster Rolls wrote:Optimistic: Agreed that we could have lead up, and we did have headlamps but everybody in my party was too tired to entertain the thought of leading up the first two pitches again. Since I live about 2 hours south of the Gunks and had Sunday commitments coming up the next day wasn't in the cards.

I watched this great documentary last night called 180 South. In it, Yvon Chouinard was saying, "The word 'adventure' gets tossed around a lot these days...to me, when everything goes wrong, THAT'S when the adventure starts!"

Anyway, no worries, glad everyone's ok and hope you get your ropes back. :)

Lobster Rolls wrote:We tried a 3-to-1 pulley to pull down the rope when we got to the ground and even gave a shot at doubling and tripling the pulley. By the time we gave up the rope was bow-string taut.

I'd avoid going for a lot of force as it often makes things worse. There is a difference between a lot of friction while pulling (but the rope is still moving) and not budging it. In the latter case pulling harder seems only to make the situation worse - really jamming the knot or crossed ropes in a crack/constriction. Working with the ropes is a better strategy. Trying to get back to reduce friction was a good suggestion, as was flicking the ropes.

MojoMonkey wrote: I'd avoid going for a lot of force as it often makes things worse. There is a difference between a lot of friction while pulling (but the rope is still moving) and not budging it. In the latter case pulling harder seems only to make the situation worse - really jamming the knot or crossed ropes in a crack/constriction. Working with the ropes is a better strategy. Trying to get back to reduce friction was a good suggestion, as was flicking the ropes.

Yes, this is true; it is impossible to know whether you are just trying to break through a lot of static friction or are making a wedged situation worse. I've never used the pulley option but have bounced on ropes with a prussik knot. But I always try all the manipulation tricks first. Flicking the rope seems ineffectual but has worked for me in a number of cases. It really helps to do it as a team with a flicker and a puller, because the puller has to wait and pull just at the moment when the wave created by the flicker rides over the lip.

Once in the Bugaboos two of us pulling on a stuck rap pulled down the entire rap anchor, a huge block which only just missed us. Fortunately, the sling on the block came off as the block fell, otherwise it probably would have taken our ropes with it.

In this situation would it be a good idea to walk back up to the top, rap again with a prussik backup, and clear the ropes while on rappel?

What 's going on