Ascenders on Fixed lines

Clint Cummins wrote: Mark, the original Petzl Ascension ascender had a design flaw -
when you moved the upper ascender up the rope, the cam could move too far away from the rope.
So when you weight it with your foot, it just slipped down the rope!!  Very scary when it happened.
I never owned a pair of these, but I had it happen a couple of times when I borrowed them.
Clipping a biner in that biner hole solved this problem, because it prevented the rope above the cam from pushing the cam too far from the rope,
when the ascender body was not parallel to the rope (as shown in the posted diagram from the manual).

The newer Petzl Ascension models do not seem to have this problem, but my solution is to use a better pair of ascenders - I prefer the grey Jumars.

The older black diamond nforce ascenders (the ones I use and love) have a similar issue  where if you don't hold the jugs from the bottom of the handle then they will slip down the line. 

The new BD ascenders suffer from the same problem. They need to be held nice and parallel to the rope, lift the bottom of the handle away from the rope and the cam will be held down and they will slip.

These jugs, btw, will never come off the rope regardless off a biner on top. 

Mark Hudon wrote: The new BD ascenders suffer from the same problem. They need to be held nice and parallel to the rope, lift the bottom of the handle away from the rope and the cam will be held down and they will slip.

I’ve always chalked it up to beginners having an irrational fear and lack of understanding of ascender failure modes and scenarios.  I also don’t think a lot of climbers know techniques to avoid oblique loading of their ascenders, which seems like the root cause of failure.  I generally attempt to address the root cause of a problem not the outcome of the problem.  

kevin deweese wrote: Why is bdel so bad at making climbing gear?

It’s sort of a mandatory design flaw. 

kevin deweese wrote: Why is bdel so bad at making climbing gear?

That is the most vexing question

Biners that dont close
Cams that break too often (not c4s duh)
Seemingly soft for spec alloy
Soft goods that fit basically no one
The heaviest portoledge ever
 The list goes on

Rob warden The space lizard wrote:

That is the most vexing question

Biners that dont close
Cams that break too often (not c4s duh)
Seemingly soft for spec alloy
Soft goods that fit basically no one
The heaviest portoledge ever
 The list goes on

And when they make something  good they discontinue it   

BillS wrote: I don’t agree with this connection - that the problem of rope popping out was somehow fixed at some point.  I’ve had a few pair of these, the oldest according to that website is model G, where the knurled screw was introduced for gloved hands, they don’t say dates, maybe 1991 ish, so G is no newer than that?  The others are ancient - I’ve never even seen a pair before the knurled thumb screw.
Point is - ropes pop out of all these ascenders, even jumars, it’s just a matter of the force required.  It doesn’t look like it could, the gap is too small, you might think you’re safe and it will never happen - but the rope will neck down and the metal bends a bit and it happens.

My point was not about the rope "popping out", but simply the problem of the ascender sliding down the rope (unintentionally).

This is simply unacceptable for an ascender.

I agree that the rope can "pop out" of many types of ascenders if there is a breakage failure (like a spring failure on a Jumar).
This is part of the reason that we never want the other ascender to slip down the rope unintentionally.

P.S. I once witnessed my partner slide down our fixed lead rope with Petzl Ascension ascenders.
He went 100' and off the end of the rope (he wasn't tied in to the end) - I thought for sure I was witnessing his death.
He got lucky that day and managed to land on a 5' x 10' ledge just below the end of the rope and not bounce off it - would have been a 600' drop below that.
He did wear the meat of his fingers down to the bone, trying to stop himself by grabbing the rope as he slid - it probably saved him because it slowed him down just enough.
We are not sure, but I think his adjustable daisies got in between the cam and the rope on at least one of his ascenders.
After this, he tossed his Petzls and bought my backup pair of yellow Jumars and used them.
No more sliding down the rope - it's not good for your chances of staying alive.

Clint Cummins wrote:

P.S. I once witnessed my partner slide down our fixed lead rope with Petzl Ascension ascenders.
He went 100' and off the end of the rope (he wasn't tied in to the end) - I thought for sure I was witnessing his death.
He got lucky that day and managed to land on a 5' x 10' ledge just below the end of the rope and not bounce off it - would have been a 600' drop below that.

!

If you are working on a rope, say developing/cleaning where you might be going down a few times, the biner on top allows one to keep the ascender on the rope while disengaged. One little thumb push and its back in action.

for the experts here, are you folks jugging with a gri-gri backup?  tying knots?  or do you throw a gri gri or knot on only when needed like when lowering out or doing other maneuvers?  i'm at the 'learning skills' level and would be curious to hear your best practices.  thanks! 

^^ all of that is because BD is the Walmart / dollar store of climbing gear. 

brian burke wrote: for the experts here, are you folks jugging with a gri-gri backup?  tying knots?  or do you throw a gri gri or knot on only when needed like when lowering out or doing other maneuvers?  i'm at the 'learning skills' level and would be curious to hear your best practices.  thanks! 

I jug without a backup (though tied into the end of the line) and put my grigri on the line for longer traversing stuff (more because it's easier to lower out, etc than for the safety aspect.) 

Using a grigri backup when jugging straight up is cumbersome as it never really feeds well until there's a lot of rope weight under the device and by that time you've tied off a loop to yourself to prevent a super long loop of slack from getting caught on things or blowing around a corner etc.

If I feel like I need a fourth backup (the first three being two juggs, plus one tied into the end of the line) then I'll use a microtrax on the line (I pretty much only do this if I'm going to be jugging a lot of fixed lines with  a lot of intermediary belay stations, something that most climbers are not going to be doing unless they're working a route or sieging an FA. 

thanks kevin, makes sense. 

brian burke wrote: for the experts here, are you folks jugging with a gri-gri backup?  tying knots?  or do you throw a gri gri or knot on only when needed like when lowering out or doing other maneuvers?  i'm at the 'learning skills' level and would be curious to hear your best practices.  thanks! 

I'm old and weak. I often jug steep fixed lines, or clean complex steep stuff with one jug and a one grigri, with the rope redirected through a carabiner on the jumar. Slower for the fit, but I can go 200ft of fixed over hanging without stopping by switching arms every 20 strokes.

On fixed ropes one ascender backs up the other. On a route I tie back up knots every now and then.  

thanks mark! 

BillS wrote:

Do you mean just like in the 2 accidents cited above?

Neither of those accidents were on fixed lines.

Today I learned

BillS wrote:

Wouldn’t root cause here be more about the daisies and not the ascender - and that a Jumar could in fact be worse for this mode of failure - doesn’t it have a wider “throat” around the cam?  Just sayin.  Also, per the thread - biner in the top?

I have a Petzl Speed(?) daisy and stirrup setup.  Once fit to me the tails were crazy long and got tangled into everything - trimmed and now muy bueno.

Yes, the daisies would be a cause if we were sure they got in between the rope and the ascender cam.  But it all happened so fast we were not sure if the daisy(s) went there.

I don't know how to judge the relative likelihood of this mode of failure for Petzl Ascensions vs. Jumars.
It has never happened to me with Jumars - they always have a clear path up the rope.
Although I do not use adjustable daisies - the Yates that he used did have tails.

> biner in the top?
My partner was cleaning a traverse at the time.  So he would have had to unclip and reclip the biner in the top of the upper Ascension at every piece.
Could be good in the lower Ascension, though?
Still, it was his fault for not tying into the rope as a backup.
I try to do that every time I am about to take one ascender off the rope, if my last backup knot is "too far" below.
We had been ascending our (very long) fixed rope a lot during this trip, with it being fixed at several stations, so backup knots were not an option on the fixed line.
So I think he just got too much in that mode of thinking.
Plus he was not that experienced on aid - he was struggling to clean the traverse, and he had only done El Cap once.

I like your solution of trimming the tails on those Speed stirrups!