Practice Anchors
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I messed around with some anchors last night and wanted to see if people could critique them. The anchors I would be building are going to be for sport routes for top roping my friends on. Some pictures dont show a opposing double locking carabiner on the master point but that is what I would be doing every time. |
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Yer gonna die! |
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Chris D wrote:Yer gonna die!I was waiting for this. You should be fine, have fun. Dave |
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DBarton wrote: I was waiting for this.Thanks to my dumb ass, you only had to wait seven minutes! The only thing that's wrong with those anchors (aside from being built on a chair with wheels) is that at least one includes a single non-locker joining two pieces of webbing. As for building an anchor that someone else can break down, I don't know how often you're going to come across a situation where you can build an anchor that lets you run through your pair of lockers and the rap rings and only have the rope load your gear. Just climb it again. Getting a second lap in on a sport route is one of the reasons I like sport climbs. That's why you sport climb, right? |
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John Wilder wrote:The anchors you have pictured are all fine, but way overkill for a pair of bolts on sport routes.This. If it's bolted you don't need to build an anchor, just use quickdraws. If you're feeling adventurous you could use two alpine draws with lockers. |
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This makes my anchors look sketch. |
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I made anchors that we only use when sport climbing and although very basic, we find them very handy and my other climbing partners seem to prefer them now. I took some 12" long, thick Petzl dog bones (quickdraw webbing) and put lockers on them. I used some smaller lockers for the bolt/chain and bigger lockers for the rope end. They live on the back of my harness when sport climbing and go on quick and easy at the anchors. It's a little over kill but keeps me free from worry and works well for "most" sport anchors. It's simple and that seems to work best for us, especialy when climbing with poeple of different skill levels. |
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There's no way those chairs are gonna hold a fall brah, I agree, YER GUNNA DIE!!! |
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For heavy TR activity a set of steel lockers for the master point will save wear and tear on the fancy aluminum ones. It does add another 4oz to your redpoint attempt though. |
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Wow. So many lockers, so little time............ |
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Does your boss know what you're doing while you're supposed to be working? |
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can't believe no one has posted to just use the rope ;) |
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Mike Lane wrote:Try not to tie knots in the runners to make up slack; instead loop them through the upper biner.I'm with you on this Mike, but it looks like to me that the posters knots are load limiting knots, allowing multiple directions of pull but limiting massive extension and subsequent loading if one piece were to blow. At least that's what I'm seeing. If this is the case, I love the forethought if you might have multiple directions of pull. If not, I too am a fan of just looping the slack through the upper biners one more time to avoid weakening the integrity of the runners with superfluous knots. Nice work man. |
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The material is not redundant in the 2nd and 3rd pictures. Add some material or clove the rope to your strongest point as a backup. |
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The second, third and last ones all lack redundancy where the lockers for the rope are. In the second one if the webbing were to get cut anywhere the whole anchor would fail, in the third one if the blue webbing going to either of the left two points got cut the whole anchor would fail and in the last one if any strand of the blue webbing to the left of the knot got cut the anchor would fail. I know these scenarios are rather unlikely at the top of single pitch sport climbs, but redundancy is your friend. You don't really need dynamic equalization to toprope off of 3 bolts anyway, especially if it means sacrificing redundancy to achieve it. I usually use a quad off of 2 bolts, and a cordelette off of 3 (as in picture 6). |
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The last one, at least to me, isn't ideal. You have roughly a quarter of the total weight on the left two legs and roughly half on the far right leg. Usually not a big deal, but sometimes it is. |
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I never use this many lockers, my rule of thumb is if the anchor points are redundant they are not needed. I also never pair up lockers. Some things dont need redundancy ( ie harness, rope and lockers ). I know, someday .....I'm going to die. |
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Mostafa wrote: Also which picture is the one with the non-locker you were referring to?Oh snap! I couldn't tell in the third picture down, but I guess that's a locker on the extended right leg of the system. Nevermind! Carrying around a quad like iamjester posted is a super-convenient way to do a lot of sport climbs safely and easily. |
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I second the advice to have someone more experienced with you, but barring that... |
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Good points above about redundancy. Always make sure to ask yourself what will happen if a strand is cut/fails. In a couple of cases, failure at the masterpoint means failure of the entire system. I would also like to third the "quad". It's a really quick, simple solution that can be pre-tied before heading up a route. Clip it, and you're virtually done. |