Analyze my top-rope anchor

Just kidding. I saw this while out at the local crag and thought it deserved to be preserved for posterity. I'm not sure exactly what's happening here, but it is interesting, at least.

TR Anchor 1

TR Anchor 2

TR Anchor 3

although quite odd, inefficient and needlessly complex, the way the webbing is set up is benign, provided I'm actually seeing what I think I'm seeing. Looks like two slings kinda-ish bring the gear to a power point. Then there are two different legs to extend that point that appear to be knotted into a powerpoint ending in a single biner. Weird, but probably not YGD status.

No one can analyze your anchor because it is impossible to discern the quality of the gear placements. For all I know all your cams are umbrellaed or over camed. The slings are crazy but not necessarily unsafe. Nice troll post though.

P.S. If those slings are girth hitched to the death triangle I guess that is bad but I honestly cannot tell what is going on here. I guess this is survivable as a TR anchor.

Uhh, ok. Thats a thing. 4(?) cams under the same (hopefully very large) rock, American death triangle, an ungodly number of webbing girth hitched to other webbing, and a bunch of clove hitches in webbing. Probably worked just fine, too. Kind of wonder how much tension was on the central legs of the webbing triangles, what with the clove hitches.

The weak spots are the girth hitches on rock. Every bit of movement creates friction in the stress point of the knot. It's very easy to break webbing like that.

Not safe at all in my opinion.

Impressive equilateral triangle. def earned an A in trig.

Is this not an American Death Triangle?

Additionally, it looks like the weight is on the "Teel" piece of webbing connecting the anchor to the rope. If that failed, looks like the blue piece of webbing would be shock loaded.

Brilliant piece of engineering.

A mere human could not duplicate that in a million years. Brilliant!

Crazy, when was the ADT ever taught and by what institution? It amazes me how many people are still fixated on placing their lives at a greater risk with these deceptive constructions. I'm curious as to figuring out the root of the problem.

This doesn't appear to be a true ADT. The slings appear to be clove hitched to the biners. Looks like no slack could be causing a similar effect, although the cloves should limit it, I'd expect. Currently most of the gear seems to be pulling in line with the sling strands extending down to the "master point". Unknown if this is before or after it's been weighted though.

I'm more concerned with what looks to be slings girth hitched together at the "master point" (and I use that term loosely) of the triangle.

I can't tell what's going on after that.

Cory F wrote:Is this not an American Death Triangle? Additionally, it looks like the weight is on the "Teel" piece of webbing connecting the anchor to the rope. If that failed, looks like the blue piece of webbing would be shock loaded.

Actually, it isn't an ADT. The clove hitches isolate the sling movement at the gear. This prevents the sort of creep that increases load on each piece. If the "horizontal leg" is slack (and it isn't quite, from what I can tell) then each placement is aimed straight down towards the, ahem, master point (this is evident). This produces exactly the same loading as separate slings would. There are other issues with this set-up however.

As a corollary, if the horizontal leg between clove hitches is really tight, it's possible to get loads with this setup that exceed the (no clove hitches) ADT. Somewhere I have a series of photos that illustrate this, but I'm too lazy right now to dig them up.

Gunkiemike wrote: Actually, it isn't an ADT. The clove hitches isolate the sling movement at the gear. .

Oh I see! That makes sense. There's so much to learn!

(I just got a copy of John Long's book this weekend)

Unless someone is monitoring the anchor, it might be advisable to use lockers if there is the possibility of climbers wandering side to side.

I'm assuming the green triangle was put in place first, and the blue added next. This thing needs a circle and a square in there somewhere.

All that tat knotted and wrapped down to the master point... Hell, somebody get this person some good cord or static rope.

Hard to say if that is really a ADT, it looks like there is tension pulling the webbing horizontal but there are knots at each cam so it may not be.

I would guess it is fine and you could cut the webbing going horizontal at which point it is perfectly fine (though still pointless considering you have so much webbing and could just put a loop on each side and tie a master point.

Gunkiemike wrote: Actually, it isn't an ADT. The clove hitches isolate the sling movement at the gear.

Thanks for that. I was pretty sure that it was an ADT, but I see what you mean by it isolating the movement. I still don't think it's a very good anchor though.

Ian Machen wrote: Thanks for that. I was pretty sure that it was an ADT, but I see what you mean by it isolating the movement. I still don't think it's a very good anchor though.

I still wouldn't say 100% it isn't because the pull on the horizontal could still be so tight that downward pull causes horizontal pull.

Might as well leave this beauty of an anchor, I saw sat. in Red Rock, here....

Gud ta go bruh

BigB wrote:Might as well leave this beauty of an anchor, I saw sat. in Red Rock, here....

Well, that beats mine by about a mile.

This is an improperly constructed anchor for sure but I would assume the climbers are only going to the master point in which case the pull is going to be oriented straight down most of the time and the drag of the slings on the rock will isolate the anchor from lateral movements. Hopefully the party was not climbing to the top.... yikes! I don't see imminent death here but I would definitely not swap leads with the anchor builder.

The new picture posted by Big B. I would probably say something to that party. Did you intervene Big B?

BigB wrote:Might as well leave this beauty of an anchor, I saw sat. in Red Rock, here....

Good God!