Pick-off with a small child on top-rope

The AMGA SPI class includes a technique, the "pick-off," for dealing with the situation where you're belaying for a newbie and they freeze at the top of a route and aren't willing to lean back and be lowered. The AMGA single pitch manual describes it on p. 221. They tell you to ascend the rope with the climber as a counterbalance, and then convert to a counterbalance rappel. In a personal note in the book, Bob Gaines says, "In over thirty years of professionally guiding thousands of clients in toprope situations, I (BG) have only had a few instances where I actually had to go up on the rock and bring a climber down--all of them being young kids who were overcome by fear and mentally lost control, afraid to lean back and weight the rope so they could be lowered back down."

What if the kid is small enough so that their body weight, aided by the friction in the system, won't be sufficient to hold your weight? You can presumably climb the route rather than ascending the tope, and most likely you're not going to fall on a route that such a small kid can get up. Well, OK, and then if they're right at the very top of the route, and you do fall, they'll just get somewhat forcefully jammed up into the anchor, which would be scary and not fun for them, but probably neither of you would be injured. Seems much worse if they are frozen in a position quite a bit below the anchor.

Options?

I guess you could go to some totally different method. If there are other people around, then maybe someone can climb a neighboring route. Or if there's access to the anchor from the back, then they could go up and rap down to the kid.

In my my eyes you don't need to worry about rope weight because if they're weighting the rope, unless they're physically stuck on something, you can just lower them.

If your climber is, as Bob stated, simply paralyzed with fear, they won't be willing to let go of the rock or move up. You will have to climb the route. So, yes it should be within your ability to climb any route you're sending total beginners up with no problem. 

If your climber is physically stuck (e.g. foot entrapment) this situation becomes worse and the best option for you is the same. Climb the route. 

references: i've done it, in my SPI and in the real world

Hi Daniel -- thanks for your reply.

take TAKEwrote:

In my my eyes you don't need to worry about rope weight because if they're weighting the rope, unless they're physically stuck on something, you can just lower them.

Sorry, I guess I don't understand what you mean here. We're talking about the situation where the climber won't lean back.

If your climber is, as Bob stated, simply paralyzed with fear, they won't be willing to let go of the rock or move up. You will have to climb the route. So, yes it should be within your ability to climb any route you're sending total beginners up with no problem.

I'm not sure if we're visualizing the same situation. To be specific, say I have some tiny kid who weighs 60 pounds. He happily climbs half-way up the route, then gets freaked out and freezes in fear, and won't lean back and weight the rope. I can climb the route, and as I go, I can take in slack below my grigri and keep tying backup knots underneath the grigri. I should be able to climb the route without falling, but that doesn't mean that it's OK for the consequences of a fall to be serious injury or death. In this situation, if I fall, the kid's body weight, combined with friction in the system, isn't enough to hold my weight. He goes scooting up, and I have a ground fall.

If you're unsure about a child's willingness to return to the ground, you can tie them in on both ends of the rope. Then you could attach an adult on the ground to the rope and counter-balance off them if you fall while climbing. The kid may get pulled around a bit, but at least they're not getting pulled through a carabiner and you're not tumbling down the route and possibly hitting the ground. 

You could also probably pull the kid down without going up, but being face to face with a scared kid is always better than yelling from the ground in my experience.

This method is also great for very small kids climbing slabs. The friction and low angle often means they don't weigh enough to lower without some assistance from the ground. Just have someone pull on the rope while you lower them. Though for this, connecting the ropes together above the climber (alpine butterfly or overhand on climber strand, whatever through the bight on the tagline, no carabiner) can be more comfortable as long as the tagline is out of the way. If everything is attached to the harness, the climber can't square up to the wall and is instead forced sideways. 

Ben Crowellwrote:

To be specific, say I have some tiny kid who weighs 60 pounds. He happily climbs half-way up the route, then gets freaked out and freezes in fear, and won't lean back and weight the rope. I can climb the route, and as I go, I can take in slack below my grigri and keep tying backup knots underneath the grigri. I should be able to climb the route without falling, but that doesn't mean that it's OK for the consequences of a fall to be serious injury or death. In this situation, if I fall, the kid's body weight, combined with friction in the system, isn't enough to hold my weight. He goes scooting up, and I have a ground fall.

In this scenario, my suggestions would be to fix a second rope from the same anchor when you set up the top rope. If the kid freezes, then you can ascend or TR solo the second rope, while taking in slack and tying backup knots on the first rope. This would require you to have extra gear to ascend the second rope, but you don't need to use the kid as counterweight so how much they weigh is no longer a limiting factor. If the route is no taller than 1/3 of your rope, then everything can be set up with one rope.

I’ve picked off dozens of kids. I’ve never had an issue. One girl literally weighed about 40lbs and she was a solid enough counter weight for me. 

Ben Crowellwrote:

I'm not sure if we're visualizing the same situation. To be specific, say I have some tiny kid who weighs 60 pounds. He happily climbs half-way up the route, then gets freaked out and freezes in fear, and won't lean back and weight the rope. 

He doesn’t have to lean back to weight the rope… apply tension to the rope until it’s tight, it will stay tight unless he tries to climb upwards…and 60lbs is definitely enough to counter balance your own weight. 

Richard is correct I will say from experience.

R Gwrote:

He doesn’t have to lean back to weight the rope… apply tension to the rope until it’s tight, it will stay tight unless he tries to climb upwards…and 60lbs is definitely enough to counter balance your own weight. 

Totally agree with this regarding tension. Leaving secure ledges causes this a lot. I would never ascend the rope. It takes too long and involves adding risk for everyone. If you are belaying with a GriGri, just attach a Traxion, a Tibloc or frcition hitch above it and and haul them a bit with a 3:1. Once they physically feel you are in control again, manifested by the pull upwards, the panic will change to action or resignation. Now you have options. I'd haul them a few feet, then tell them you will lower them. They will be under tension all the time. Tension fill feel secure. Provide instructions and support "feet wide apart, legs straight, walk the wall... you got this, almost down...", be assertive, never tentative. If panic re-appears, either ignore it and continue to lower or haul again and lower.  

I've thought about this exact question for years and never come up with a satisfactory answer. I've read most of the self rescue books and have been teaching self rescue classes since 2005. My experience differs from Richard and BigCountry... I weigh 180lbs and anyone under 80lbs will go up when I weight the rope (not in a gym with a double wrapped belay bar, but in a typical outdoor toprope anchor of two biners). A 40lb child would go upward at a dangerous speed if I fell while we were counterbalanced.

Assuming no help available, no magic second rope dangling nearby, no magic harness full of gear that I never carry, etc. I think there are two possible solutions:

1) As mentioned above, climb counterbalanced taking up slack in the belay and tying backup knots. The consequences of a fall are probably not fatal, but expect to injure myself and a child if I slip.

2) Also as mentioned above, give lots of tension. Without a ground anchor, it isn't possible to rig a useful 3:1, but we've established that I'm heavy enough to make that irrelevant. Lift the child off the ledge where they are standing. Once they are fully on the rope, it might be possible to lower them all the way to the ground.

It's worth being aware of the potential for this scenario if you are climbing with a small child and have no way to get assistance from other adults. Attaching a retrieval line to the child's tie-in point (not the back of the harness, being squeezed like that hurts) before they start climbing would be a prudent choice.

One incident along these lines that I'll never forget. A pre-teen child reaches a ledge about 30' up and takes off his harness. I don't think Fasulo covers that one, even in the second edition. We convinced him to sit on the ledge until someone could go up and safely bring him down.

Ben Crowellwrote:

The AMGA SPI class includes a technique, the "pick-off," for dealing with the situation where you're belaying for a newbie and they freeze at the top of a route and aren't willing to lean back and be lowered. The AMGA single pitch manual describes it on p. 221. They tell you to ascend the rope with the climber as a counterbalance, and then convert to a counterbalance rappel. In a personal note in the book, Bob Gaines says, "In over thirty years of professionally guiding thousands of clients in toprope situations, I (BG) have only had a few instances where I actually had to go up on the rock and bring a climber down--all of them being young kids who were overcome by fear and mentally lost control, afraid to lean back and weight the rope so they could be lowered back down."

What if the kid is small enough so that their body weight, aided by the friction in the system, won't be sufficient to hold your weight? You can presumably climb the route rather than ascending the tope, and most likely you're not going to fall on a route that such a small kid can get up. Well, OK, and then if they're right at the very top of the route, and you do fall, they'll just get somewhat forcefully jammed up into the anchor, which would be scary and not fun for them, but probably neither of you would be injured. Seems much worse if they are frozen in a position quite a bit below the anchor.

Options?

I guess you could go to some totally different method. If there are other people around, then maybe someone can climb a neighboring route. Or if there's access to the anchor from the back, then they could go up and rap down to the kid.

Any time I have had to do a pick off it has always been a kid on a very easy climb so I solo or lead up and pull them off.

Seems like a waste of time to include this in the SPI. Every situation will be different and basic skills will probably solve the problem. With it being a kid, using them as a counter balance probably wouldn't work well and likely freak them out even more.

If you can't get to them directly, just give some slack, eventually they will tire out and you can lower. Tie 'em off if you don't want to wait on belay.

My sole experience with a situation like this was with my oldest a long time ago. About 3/4 of the way up a route, she got to a small ledge but couldn't climb any higher. In order to come back down, she would have had to let herself "fall backwards" to get in lowering position and she just couldn't. Kids will tend to believe what their senses tell them more so than any reasoning or logical explanation. And in that "falling backwards" situation, you transition from feeling your weight 100% on your feet to feeling it 100% in your harness. Both of those feel perfectly secure but in between, your weight is held only partly by each and feels like it's held by neither. You're clearly too far off the vertical for your feet to hold you up but don't yet feel any significant tug from the harness. No amount of explanations made any difference. She would freak out every time she felt that her weight was no longer on her feet and claw her way back to vertical.

The way I solved it was not by climbing up to her but by simply hauling her up and off the ledge. Once I did that, she felt again that her weight was 100% in the harness and she was able to get her feet on the wall in front of her, like she had done many times before, and, with strong admonition to bypass the ledge on the way back down by stepping backwards over it, she was able to get lowered.

After that, whenever we took beginners toproping, we'd make a point of making them practice lowering a few times from 3-4 feet off the ground first.

Of course, if the kid is really close to the anchor you wouldn't have the runway to do the haul-then-lower trick. I can also imagine that there may be situations where the climber might grab the rock or the top anchor and refuse to let go; so in these situations, you might require the kind of pick-off technique described, but the examples given with kids freaking out seemed to be closer to the situation I had with my daughter and I thought I'd mention that there may be a simpler solution than the pick-off.