Luebben's new anchor book is out. There is a fair amount of overlap with his basic skills book. With the anchors presented there are various applications to work the No Extension & Limited Extension using: cord, slings, &/or climbing rope(s) and sometimes combining methods to get good angles and really hit that true equalization. (didn't see an application involving the Alpine Equalizer)

It looks to me that whatever the anchor rigging chosen; they all depend on the situation at hand.

One thing that really stuck out to me is the impact force generated from a static line - don't take a lead fall on one!!! Another thing was using a dynamic rope & a dynamic belay setup - that absorbs a large amount of the energy.

Neptune's (Boulder, CO) had it just under 20 bucks - similar to Mountaineers Books if you wanted to get it online:

ROCK CLIMBING ANCHORS: A Comprehensive Guide

I think The Bent Gate in Golden, CO will have the next show.


(I still don't want to test a trad anchor while climbing)

That's pretty much the tone of Long's new book as well. He offers up the same basic principles of anchor construction he did in his previous two books, but it has been updated with much discussion of direction of pull, fall forces (very enlightening!), and the most informative part--the results of his real world drop tests of several anchor constructs.

He concludes (as does Luebben) that a properly rigged belay anchor should be a dynamic system--able to distribute the load across all anchor points as evenly as possible, although he states that true equalization in anchors consisting of more than 2 placements is somewhat of a pipe dream. Regarding redundancy in the anchor tests performed and analyzed, Long states:

"In terms of a belay anchor, a redundant anchor is different than an anchor that is merely backed up. A redundant belay anchor implies that the forces generated in a leader fall will never fall on one piece of gear. With a backed up anchor, the force falls on a single primary anchor placement, and if that fails, the force then falls on the second placement, and if that fails, the force impacts the third placement--the dreaded 'cascade' anchor failure. To avoid this cascade scenario and enjoy functional redundancy in a belay anchor, impact forces must be spread or equalized over at least two primary placements."

What I find most useful in his new book is the analysis of the drop tests performed on real anchors using the following combinations:

- Cordelette equal length
- Sliding X equal length
- Cordelette unequal length
- Sliding X unequal length
- Equalette unequal length

In a nutshell, the sliding X equal length was the superior rig, while the equalette unequal was about as effective as the sliding X unequal...which yielded excellent results. The cordelette equal performed OK but not as well as the sliding X/equalette rigs. The cordelette unequal performed poorly for the reasons quoted above.

For details on the parameters applied to the tests, check out the book.

It's hard to believe, but if you review this entire topic thread from last year, we have come up and posted some really good anchor thoughts from our own experiences that kinda emulate what is also being published.


ps - Craig's shots from China & elsewhere were pretty cool.

The loss of Tom and Monika was indeed sad -- Tom was a friend. I never did try to find out what the final analysis was, but consensus at the time was pretty much like Ron said: nothing or at least nothing solid above the belay anchor with a leader fall of some indeterminate distance. Tom was very experienced, extremely safety conscious, detailed, and thorough. It is likely that what they had was perhaps the best available for that part of the climb which, I've heard from others, is hard to protect or build a decent anchor. A lot of folks on the many threads related to anchor equalization, etc. have said basically "what I've been using for years has never failed so why change to something different?" Why change is because something different may better prepare you for the unexpected which is pretty much the de facto definition of an accident. Nobody expects or wants a serious failure, but we can always try to be prepared for it.

There's an interesting new Supertopo thread on belay anchors.

Here are some comments from John Long, aka Largo:

"Probably the two most important things about the entire safety chain are A), do anything possible to safeguard against falling straight onto the belay anchors, and B), develop the skill to know, and to know for sure, what constitutes a bomber placement or primary anchor (single anchor point).

So long as you get good enough pro/primary anchors and never fall directly onto the belay anchor, you're almost certainly going to be fine. But climbing will never be without some risks. The ideal is to limit the risks. The pipe dream is to eliminate all risk, which turns the science and art of building anchors into a hellish, long-winded saga accomplishing nothing whatsoever."