Pros and cons of simul-rappelling

rgold wrote:

These interesting observations lead me to up my estimate and now think that simul-rapping is more than twice as dangerous as ordinary rapping (how much more I wouldn't pretend to guess), as there are failure modes that are unique to simul-rapping I hadn't accounted for.  This also illuminates another critical aspect of the discussion: when you embrace a complex procedure, it might have failure modes you are unaware of.  I've done some simul-rapping, not a lot, and have never encountered the situation Serge describes.  So there's a lurking liability I don't know about and which is absent from my estimations of risk.  

I agree with you that simul-rapping is more than twice as dangerous and will propose a fourth reason.

1. It has all the same failure mechanisms as regular rapping.

2. If one partner messes up, both can suffer the consequences.

3. It has some unique failure mechanisms that are non-intuitive and go against "normal" rappel habits, like the fact that you absolutely cannot stand on a feature on your way down.

4. It is not as easy to execute as a normal rap because it has more variables to manage and pay attention to....and attention suffers when climbers are distracted, hungry, cold, tired, in a hurry, etc. I doubt it's a straight line function between number of variables that you have to execute perfectly and increasing risk. I'd bet it's more exponentially curved. 

rgold wrote: [...]  But a new and I think genuine issue arises: how do we stay properly afraid of consequences now rendered somewhat remote?

This is a divergent thread unto itself, but:

I think climbers can learn much from progress that has been made in recreational avalanche management, and backcountry skiing regarding how to manage the risks. I think Steve House adequately summarized this new approach for climbing with his Alpine Principles. While these are aimed at alpine climbing, they are just as applicable to any climbing discipline or mountain sport. In particular, the debrief is a useful discussion to be had, whether with the systematic approach advocated by House, or a more casual approach.

C. limbnski wrote:

Why don't you pre-rig the third's device? That will block the ropes so you can each rap one strand, then as soon as both of your weight is off the system climber 3 can zip straight down.

... ahh - actually, i do and i mentioned that scenario "can ‘fix’ two independent strands in the three person scenario i mentioned earlier." (first page in thread, second of my posts).  the reality is that sometimes 'pre-rigging' is not the best, fastest way to go.  it's really situation dependent.

Maybe I didn't catch anyone else mentioning this because I skimmed over a lot of shit in this thread - but does no one else tether a long sling between yourself and your partner to help maintain distance and speed consistency? I'm sure most find it unnecessary

Pooch, of course its about weight. length of tails =grams per  meter = weight.  if you understand what an autoblock actually does you know that its simply a brake hand pulling down on the rope.  If the wraps are too loose they will work gust fine with 8lbs of weight pulling down on them. Twords the bottom of the rappel there will no longer be that 8 lbs of downward pull and that loose wrap will not engage, if it partially engages and you grab it, it may disengage......

There are a lot of things I'd like to comment on, but re-reading the whole thread and quoting everything would be a pain. Several have added some real words of wisdom I don't need to repeat.

In a group of 3, pre-rigging, where one person puts an extended ATC guide / Reverso on the rope with a backup below or even just a hand gripping the rope creates so much friction through the device and rings to basically isolate the strands of rope. 2 people can now rap rap on GriGri or ATCs in single strand configuration at the same time on these now isolated strands. Please do not refer to this as simulrapping. Yes, they are rapping simultaneously, but some dangers are gone, the counter balance and all the issues that go with it is gone, one rapping off the end does not mean death to the other two people, etc... I have often set up a rap like this when its a nice ledge for people to walk to the anchors and do a single rap down allowing two people to rap at once. The person with the extended ATC pre-rigged on the rope with backup below is another set of eyes to double check that everyone is rigging their devices correctly, locking carabiners, etc... (The rap station to get from the base area of Chrysler Crack back to the ground for instance.)

Pre-rigging and all people doing double strand ATC raps is the safest aside from the possibility of the 2nd, 3rd, etc... person raining down rocks, and the last person down is at the mercy of the rock gods should they choose to rain down rocks and cut the rope above their device while they are rapping... If doing it like this, if the first person down raps off the end of a rope, say due to only knotting one end or rockfall cutting one strand above or below their device, they are still alive since they are on the other strand and the people above who are yet to rap are also still alive. Now that it is known that the rope has been cut or not knotted somewhere, that first person can knot it then if they can reach or yell up to their partners that they need to pull the rope up and knot / re-knot that end. First rappeller continues to the anchor, tethers in, then gives slack so the next person can come down. While the first is on rap, no one else can go down, as they are basically held on a firemans belay. Not the fastest, but should be the safest.

One issue with simulrapping that I have seen mentioned elsewhere and witnessed an accident involving is a party simulrapping on a rap where you need to traverse to the left or right to an extreme degree to reach the anchors. This introduces a huge swing potential. The thought is it would be like a top rope swing, no biggie, but if either person unweights the rope / steps up the other person falls unexpectedly, loses their footing and takes a big swing where they are not in the proper body position and expectation to prevent slamming into the wall and starting to barrel roll. (This was what I witnessed. It was enough of a barrel roll swing across the wall to injure the person and throw them into compensated shock.) So yeah, even knots in the end and backups you can still get hurt without either person falling to their death. With a huge swing rope cutting could also be an issue.

As well, even some experienced climbers don't know how to use a friction hitch backup correctly. I was going to post this before I even read through the thread, seeing it mentioned here is further confirmation beyond witnessing it personally many times. You do not grab the whole hitch. You have a hand above the hitch and a hand below it. The hand below is your main brake hand. The hand above is on the rope and butts up against the hitch pushing it down so it stays disengaged. The outside edge of your top hand's pinkie should be the only part of either hand which is touching the friction it. It is not grabbing the whole hitch it to disengage and it is not grabbing it to brake. Ask some arborists if hitches work well when they are grabbed. As to how many raps of cord or hollow block of which diameter around which diameter single or double strand of climbing rope, that is up to you to figure out, preferably on the ground. It should not be hard to find one that you could ascend a fixed line with and also use as a rap backup. Also, extend your ATC/Reverso if you are using a friction hitch backup. Best to use a guide style device as well since its a quick changeover from rappel to ascending should you pass your rap anchor, so long as its extended slightly. Kind of a PITA to ascend with a tuber that isn't in guide mode.

Counter balance rappel is not the same as a simulrappel, at least in the guide world. A counter balance rappel is common when top roping a client who gets scared / stuck part way or all the way up a climb and you need to ascend, clip into them or more comfortably put a prusik above their tie in knot that is then attached to your belay loop and then physically pull them off and down. The guide, who usually has a GriGri for ease of accomplishing this is fully in control of lowering them both. This is also called a pickoff. Deliberately starting a rappel like this in a multipitch context is pretty uncommon.

Tandem rappel is also not the same as a simulrappel. Picture a standard double strand ATC rappel setup, extended, with friction hitch backup... Now the second climber takes their tether and clips it into the two strands of rope inside the ATC + wire basket just as the first person did. Two people going down at the same speed on one device. This is uncommon outside guiding and rescue context, and even then its best to use a "rescue spider" setup and tether both people on the spider to the next anchor in a releasable under load way such as a munter-mule-overhand. In AMGA rescue practice its common to pretend you are doing multiple rappels, the first as a counter balance and the rest as tandem.

As far as legitimate dangers beyond knots, user(s) error, etc... This is: rockfall, weather. People keep mentioning darkness. Carry a good headlamp with strong batteries that is on lock-out mode, don't be scared of the dark. Don't worry about getting down in the dark or hiking out in the dark.

Simul-rapping has always seemed insane to me.  Take the most dangerous aspect of climbing (by statistics) and make it even more risky.  My impression of it is that it became popular because it "looks cool."  I wish the helmet Nazis would turn their efforts toward ostracizing simul-rappers.

the best thing you can do to enshure that you both get home safely is to be methodical. Slow is smooth, smooth is fast. be methodical, stay calm in the storm.  I have been in dozens of situations where folks were getting panicy about darkness, storms, lightning etc.  I just talk calmly  and try to get them to calm down and function without panic..  Rushing won't me any faster than methodical smoothness in the long run. It will be much more dangerous.  That is not to say you should be slower than snail shit, just that exaggerated rushing causes mistakes that take longer to sort out than simply staying calm and being smooth and methodical. . 

L Kap wrote:

 one of their big take-aways was "don't use an autoblock or you'll get reliant on it - just train yourself to never let go of the rope".

 "don't use a rope or you'll get reliant on it - just train yourself to never fall ..."

We will never know exactly what happened with Brad G. He was too experienced to just rap off the end of the rope blindly. One potential scenario is something that happened to me once. We know he was near the end of the rope. There was no backup knot. He stopped to pull his end of the rope out of a bush and during this work it is possible that the handle of the gri gri caught on a gear loop or his jacket or a piece of gear and got stuck in the open position. I have had this happen to me. After clearing the snag he leaned back expecting the gri gri to engage and it did not. Being so close to the end of the rope did not leave him enough time to catch the problem and recover control. A knot in the end of the rope would have saved him. It is nothing but luck that his partner lived. This is a brutal accident all the way around. RIP
      The main lesson in this case is to tie the knots. Close the system. If your rope gets stuck because of the knot at least you are still alive to deal with it. I don't have an issue with people taking extra risk. We are free to do what we want. When someone of Brad's skill dies it is natural to see what might be learned. None of us wants to die but we all want to climb. It's a fine line that each of us has to decide on what is right. In my forty years of climbing the weight of statistical evidence has clarified which behaviors are more risky than others. I highly recommend reading Accidents in North American Mountaineering that is published once a year. All major accidents are studied in depth and fine analysis is offered. Reading these accounts over the years I have been surprised how many times I discovered that I was doing the exact behaviors that killed someone else. Each time I read something that caught my attention in this way, I changed my patterns.

Hubbard wrote: We will never know exactly what happened with Brad G. He was too experienced to just rap off the end of the rope blindly. One potential scenario is something that happened to me once. We know he was near the end of the rope. There was no backup knot. He stopped to pull his end of the rope out of a bush and during this work it is possible that the handle of the gri gri caught on a gear loop or his jacket or a piece of gear and got stuck in the open position. I have had this happen to me. After clearing the snag he leaned back expecting the gri gri to engage and it did not. Being so close to the end of the rope did not leave him enough time to catch the problem and recover control. A knot in the end of the rope would have saved him. It is nothing but luck that his partner lived. This is a brutal accident all the way around. RIP

What?! Good reason never to use a Gri.

Hubbard wrote: One potential scenario is something that happened to me once. We know he was near the end of the rope. There was no backup knot. He stopped to pull his end of the rope out of a bush and during this work it is possible that the handle of the gri gri caught on a gear loop or his jacket or a piece of gear and got stuck in the open position. I have had this happen to me. After clearing the snag he leaned back expecting the gri gri to engage and it did not. Being so close to the end of the rope did not leave him enough time to catch the problem and recover control. 

Are you suggesting he might have stopped and stood on a ledge to clear his rope out of the bush? He was simul-rapping. Taking his weight off the rope would have dropped his partner immediately. 

Tradiban wrote: What?! Good reason never to use a Gri.

One of the reasons for the anti-panic function of the grigri+

Nick Goldsmith wrote: the best thing you can do to enshure that you both get home safely is to be methodical. Slow is smooth, smooth is fast. be methodical, stay calm in the storm.  I have been in dozens of situations where folks were getting panicy about darkness, storms, lightning etc.  I just talk calmly  and try to get them to calm down and function without panic..  Rushing won't me any faster than methodical smoothness in the long run. It will be much more dangerous.  That is not to say you should be slower than snail shit, just that exaggerated rushing causes mistakes that take longer to sort out than simply staying calm and being smooth and methodical. . 

"Hurry up and fuck up" is something a Brit told me more than once

Hubbard wrote: We will never know exactly what happened with Brad G. He was too experienced to just rap off the end of the rope blindly. 

Nope, nobody is too experienced to make a mistake, sometimes it’s a contributing factor.  His partner that day said he was trying to pull rope to the center mark when Brad stopped him and said that it was enough.    If you think you have enough rope on your end and you are distracted, maybe talking and looking at your partner it’s easy to see how you can rap off the end of your rope.   

I feel like there's a mentality thing here. It's true that you can do things like tie knots in the ends and use auto-locking rappel devices to make simul-rappelling safer. But in my experience, the people who tend to reach for simul-rappelling as their first choice, are also the ones who tend to think knots in the ends are just an opportunity for your rope to get stuck, and auto-locking rappel devices aren't safer. If you approach things from the mentality of "I'm a self-reliant climber and nothing is dangerous when you do it right," then that doesn't just cause you to take one risk, it causes you to take ALL the risks.

David K wrote: I feel like there's a mentality thing here. It's true that you can do things like tie knots in the ends and use auto-locking rappel devices to make simul-rappelling safer. But in my experience, the people who tend to reach for simul-rappelling as their first choice, are also the ones who tend to think knots in the ends are just an opportunity for your rope to get stuck, and auto-locking rappel devices aren't safer. If you approach things from the idea that "I'm a self-reliant climber and nothing is dangerous when you do it right," then that doesn't just cause you to take one risk, it causes you to take ALL the risks.

The perfect summation of this entire argument.

rgold wrote:

These interesting observations lead me to up my estimate and now think that simul-rapping is more than twice as dangerous as ordinary rapping (how much more I wouldn't pretend to guess), as there are failure modes that are unique to simul-rapping I hadn't accounted for.  This also illuminates another critical aspect of the discussion: when you embrace a complex procedure, it might have failure modes you are unaware of.  I've done some simul-rapping, not a lot, and have never encountered the situation Serge describes.  So there's a lurking liability I don't know about and which is absent from my estimations of risk.  

Great posts by Serge and rgold. 

Good discussion here. I recently did a lot of research on rappelling and wrote a book, titled Rappelling (available at amazon). From 1951 to 2010 there were 7,714 reported rock climbing and mountaineering accidents detailed in Accidents in North American Mountaineering, and 362  (5 percent) were rappelling accidents. The number one rappelling accident statistically was rappelling off the end of the rope.

My book includes a discussion of the most common rappelling accidents and how to prevent them, and also includes the simul rappel, tandem rappel, pre-rigging, dealing with stuck ropes, rappel backups, passing a knot, how to rig the reepschnur, etc.

David K wrote: I feel like there's a mentality thing here. It's true that you can do things like tie knots in the ends and use auto-locking rappel devices to make simul-rappelling safer. But in my experience, the people who tend to reach for simul-rappelling as their first choice, are also the ones who tend to think knots in the ends are just an opportunity for your rope to get stuck, and auto-locking rappel devices aren't safer. If you approach things from the mentality of "I'm a self-reliant climber and nothing is dangerous when you do it right," then that doesn't just cause you to take one risk, it causes you to take ALL the risks.

This is not the case in Potrero, most people simul rappelling are tying knots and using grigris or a tuber and autoblock. I would say a very small percentage are not tieing knots while simul-rapping.