Rope for a pas system?

What would be wrong with using rope as a PAS system? If you tied a couple double fishermans knots together and just used that to anchor in? Is the rope just not as durable or what would be wrong with this scenario?

You could make your own PAS with cordletee if you wanted, but having some device with a half-dozen knots in it is quite bulky, heavy and you're counting on several knots in a row needing to hold otherwise the device would fail. A better alternative would be to buy a 3' or 4' sling and just tie a few overhand knots in along it's length thereby making pockets wherever you want. If you do that, use a nylon sling instead of a Dyneema one though as girth hitching a skinny Dyneema sling through your tie in points will destroy the leg loop tie in point very quickly.

"Down with the PAS thong!"

-Hermann Buhl (OK, probably not)

-Aleks Zebastian

-Me

In all seriousness, what climbing context is this for? You probably don't even need a PAS or PAS substitute.

There's nothing wrong with using rope/cord for a PAS. There are three systems I know of for doing this (from most common to least common):

1. Purcell Prussik
2. Petzl's Connect-Adjust System
3. Kong Slyde

Bryce, you almost never need a PAS, and it's worth knowing how to do without. But there are a lot of situations where using a PAS saves time, and lots of people find that to be a good tradeoff for weight and cost. Can we just agree this is a personal preference thing and not have this argument again?

Bryce Adamson wrote:

In all seriousness, what climbing context is this for? You probably don't even need a PAS or PAS substitute.

Just mainly for anchoring and cleaning

20 kN wrote:

You could make your own PAS with cordletee if you wanted, but having some device with a half-dozen knots in it is quite bulky, heavy and you're counting on several knots in a row needing to hold otherwise the device would fail. A better alternative would be to buy a 3' or 4' sling and just tie a few overhand knots in along it's length thereby making pockets wherever you want. If you do that, use a nylon sling instead of a Dyneema one though as girth hitching a skinny Dyneema sling through your tie in points will destroy the leg loop tie in point very quickly.

Yeah I actually ended up buying 65cm nylon slings from camp USA and they seem like they would work really well for a PAS

Gunkiemike wrote:

Yeah this is basically what I meant but it does look really bulky and irritating when you'd be climbing 

Lol.  Why the hell would you use butterflies in place of just making loops by tying overhand knots?  It seems like that would be much more of a PITA to clip.

A nice property of clipping to the overhand knots is that the overhands make the system a little bit dynamic if you're using static cord, because they'll roll and tighten in the case of a fall (a video by I think DMM demonstrated this with static slings, and it seems like this would also be true for static cord).

Bryce, you almost never need a PAS, and it's worth knowing how to do without. But there are a lot of situations where using a PAS saves time, and lots of people find that to be a good tradeoff for weight and cost. Can we just agree this is a personal preference thing and not have this argument again?

Fair enough.

To the OP: if you're talking about sport climbing, I'm sure you know you can just use a quickdraw to anchor yourself in to one of the bolts. I like to bring a couple of alpine draws with me when I'm sport climbing, so that if there is a bolt that needs an extended draw I have it. If not, then you have a nice long, adjustable length draw for the anchors. If you're also climbing trad, definitely experiment with a purcell prusik or 4' sling and see if you like it. You should probably have a couple of long slings anyways.