Edelrid Eddy Lead Solo Modification

David Coleywrote:

Yann, or anyone else,

Have you tried leaving a ropeman or anything else free floating on the rope brake side of an eddy or similar device. A grigri or eddy just needs a very small amount of force on the brake strand to trigger the cam, might a ropeman smashing into the body of device, or just just adding friction provide this in the rare event the device had not locked off already. And hence provide a backup. 

Just in case I didn't explain that well, the ropeman is not clipped to anything structural , just closed with a carabiner and possibly clipped to the sack or gear loop. And faces in the direction that makes it slide naturally if pushed back along the rope, or the rope pulled through it. Under most falls it plays no part, but if the main cam didn't activate, i was hoping the small additional friction it provides might stimulate the eddy or grigri to lock up. 

Anyone played with that idea? 

I have been thinking about designing a device on this principle, almost like a "moving backup knot" which could be repositioned with one hand, but provide just that little friction necessary to lock up the belay device. I used to use a Duck for my cache loop and I believe it would cause the effect you describe, but I've never fallen to the end of my cache loop. Now I primarily backpack the rock, and have been considering an intermediate device to create some resistance.

J Cwrote:

I have been thinking about designing a device on this principle, almost like a "moving backup knot" which could be repositioned with one hand, but provide just that little friction necessary to lock up the belay device. I used to use a Duck for my cache loop and I believe it would cause the effect you describe, but I've never fallen to the end of my cache loop. Now I primarily backpack the rock, and have been considering an intermediate device to create some resistance.

Back when I used LRS with an Eddy I did experiment with a Kong Slyde as a virtual third hand to guard the cache loop should the Eddy not catch. I recall having some success by threading it in a low friction way, but had it on my list to enlarge the holes. The Slyde is cheap enough so that experimenting with modifications won't break the bank. There is plenty of material to work with and the various hole lend themselves to different configurations. Just don't re-use it as a Slyde if you have moded it or removed material.
Back then I saw a Bornack Fix01 in a arborist store and played around with threading the rope. I didn't buy it, but remember being inspired by some of its design concepts and seeing some promise there. I changed my device and never pursued my experiments.

David Coleywrote:

Anyone played with that idea? 

I will play with the idea. I don't remember someone testing this! Thanks for the reply!

From 1975 until the grigri's introduction in 1991, I did a few thousand pitches of LRS with just knots, my first route in '75 was the Bastille Crack in Eldo. Then, from 1991 until the Eddy's introduction in 2005, I did many more thousands of pitches with both modded and unmodded grigris. And last, from 2005 until now, I've easily done 5000+ pitches with an Eddy (unmodified with no other added devices, components, minders, or anything else). Over the course of those decades, I've also tried every possible device for LRS and the purpose-built Silent Partner was the only contender close to the grigri or Eddy, but I discounted it because I don't like climbing with a brick in my crotch and it doesn't meet my requirement of a single device for leading, seconding, and rapping. For my purposes, an unmodified Eddy is far and away the best device for LRS, YMMV. Other people, like Jeff Constne, with a similar background and experience, prefers the grigri - to each his own. But, from my perspective, Yann doesn't have the requisite depth of experience to make any recommendations or judgments relative to LRS devices, I put zero credence in any of his testing, and true confessions, I find It somewhat galling he attempts to make money from LRS when heretofore information on the topic was freely shared amongst anyone interested.

I still love the build quality of my Eddy and won't part with it. I remain eager to make the Eddy work for me as a LRS devise. I currently use either a GriGri 2019 or a Taz Lov2. 

For my part, I have experienced and cannot solve the Eddy's high clip problem. This is the problem:

and here

I see here that this guy uses an ASAP as a backup devise which locks if pully abruptly. I'm not sure how well the ASAP has been tested as a backup LRS device, also it's heavy, expensive and complicated.

 If I use the Eddy to LRS, then I use a carabiner instead of a maillon rapid to modify it. This idea I have from Matt Skinner. I use a small plastic accessory carabiner.

Healyjewrote:

From 1975 until the grigri's introduction in 1991, I did a few thousand pitches of LRS with just knots, my first route in '75 was the Bastille Crack in Eldo. Then, from 1991 until the Eddy's introduction in 2005, I did many more thousands of pitches with both modded and unmodded grigris. And last, from 2005 until now, I've easily done 5000+ pitches with an Eddy (unmodified with no other added devices, components, minders, or anything else). Over the course of those decades, I've also tried every possible device for LRS and the purpose-built Silent Partner was the only contender close to the grigri or Eddy, but I discounted it because I don't like climbing with a brick in my crotch and it doesn't meet my requirement of a single device for leading, seconding, and rapping. For my purposes, an unmodified Eddy is far and away the best device for LRS, YMMV. Other people, like Jeff Constne, with a similar background and experience, prefers the grigri - to each his own. But, from my perspective, Yann doesn't have the requisite depth of experience to make any recommendations or judgments relative to LRS devices, I put zero credence in any of his testing, and true confessions, I find It somewhat galling he attempts to make money from LRS when heretofore information on the topic was freely shared amongst anyone interested.

Have you tried the Taz Love devices?

Noel Zwrote:

I still love the build quality of my Eddy and won't part with it. I remain eager to make the Eddy work for me as a LRS devise. I currently use either a GriGri 2019 or a Taz Lov2. 

For my part, I have experienced and cannot solve the Eddy's high clip problem. This is the problem:

and here

I see here that this guy uses an ASAP as a backup devise which locks if pully abruptly. I'm not sure how well the ASAP has been tested as a backup LRS device, also it's heavy, expensive and complicated.

 If I use the Eddy to LRS, then I use a carabiner instead of a maillon rapid to modify it. This idea I have from Matt Skinner. I use a small plastic accessory carabiner.

Hi Noel Z. 

Whilst maillons, and carabiner pinches can contribute friction for high clipping or seconding a route (an innovation by a guy called James Maughan), I wouldn't use them for leading. 

I have seen Yann slide to his backup knot with an Eddy in a lead (above anchor) fall and a maillon may have contributed to that failure. Whilst the maillon increases friction for high clipping or seconding routes, I suspect it decreases friction in a big lead fall because once the cache loop inverts above you, there are less sharp angles and edges available (run your finger around the almost not beveled at all inner edge of the exit side of an Eddy if you ever get bored enough) to haphazardly trigger a lock. 

The cheapest and easiest method to solve minimum friction slippage issues is not to clip high with a taught rope, understand what the minimum thresholds for a lock are with your chosen pairing and deal with that, or switch to another device (they all have their own sets of pros and cons).

Regarding the ASAP backup, you will be needing a force absorber between the Eddy and the ASAP just to ensure it doesn't eat your rope and even then, the entire cache would have to run dry before it took effect in which case you could already be heading to hospital depending on the terrain. The standard method of this type of backup is knots or hitches although there is a friendly guy in the UK called Gavin Cytlau in the UK who has been using a micro/rocker combo which seems like less of a pain.

I recommend, thinking about the value of time you would sink into trying to modify the device when you could most certainly be climbing instead. 

It's also worth thinking about that with anything new and even devices that have been around for a while there are Achilles Heels just waiting to get discovered by some poor sod. By sticking to well established solutions, you have the benefit of hundreds of people (not just one) and years of collective experience of multiple fuck ups to learn from.

Just recently a new solo specific device was released that some guy dropped a bunch of time and money on and from what I understand, it's already getting a redesign.

Leave the time and money burning for some other unfortunate soul and go for a climb instead

I value Joseph Healy's LRS knowledge and willingness to share it, but saying that Yann doesn't have sufficient experience to speak about LRS is patently absurd. 

Dude rope solos El Cap. 'Nuf said. 

Matty C Skinnerwrote:

Hi Noel Z. 

I have seen Yann slide to his backup knot with an Eddy in a lead (above anchor) fall and a maillon may have contributed to that failure. 

Ultimately, the Eddy's unreliability is my experience too. I have tested it to failure within hours of buying it. I use it rarely. I try no to high clip, but if I have to, then I trigger the cam pre-emptively before clipping the quickdraw. I have taped some sandpaper to the cam so that I can grip it to with one finger to flip.  

Regarding the ASAP backup, ... The standard method of this type of backup is knots or hitches.

I use backup knots or large loops on clove hitches. Knots provide a fail safe, but, like you say, if you run your cache loop dry, you may be on your way to hospital already.

I recommend, thinking about the value of time you would sink into trying to modify the device when you could most certainly be climbing instead. 

You're right. Which is why I LRS with my Taz Lov2. The Taz Lov2 is a flappy ol' thing. Rattly plates, jangly handle. My eye see lots of potential for problems, but so far none of the problems have materialised and it is solid. I do use a GriGri from time to time too, but feel safer with the Lov2 due to a partial drop I had with a GriGri.

By sticking to well established solutions, you have the benefit of hundreds of people (not just one) and years of collective experience of multiple fuck ups to learn from.

I'm all for being mutually beneficial. Your posts here and YouTube content undoubtedly benefit many. In fairness to Yann, he continues to share a lot of free content and does seem to care about safety. There is a balance and that can't be easy. I hope it stays that way because he has become a focal guy, things are being shared with him need to reach all in this small community.

Ricky Harlinewrote:

I value Joseph Healy's LRS knowledge and willingness to share it, but saying that Yann doesn't have sufficient experience to speak about LRS is patently absurd. 

Dude rope solos El Cap. 'Nuf said. 

Actually, aid soloing is another thing altogether and not particularly relevant to LRS. I stand by my comment.

WF WF51wrote:

Have you tried the Taz Love devices?

Looked at it, but don't care for its mechanism and orientation compared with the Eddy.

Matty C Skinnerwrote:

As I said, probably in around 5k 5.9-11 of multipitch trad pitches in on an unmodded Eddy with no shortage of falls on it. I find all of the incessant testing and fretting about using the Eddy that way patently ridiculous. In fact, I find all the social media gnashing focus on devices, systems, and testing odd if not weird, and basically think if a device or 'system' is so complex it doesn't allow you to climb a multipitch route 20-30% faster than with a partner then it's pretty much utterly worthless for my purposes. And yet again, with all due emphasis, I'm not trying or looking to replace a belaying partner with how I LRS, but rather consider it soloing with a backup. If I were trying to replace a belaying partner with an LRS device or system then I wouldn't bother doing LRS at all and would just always climb with a partner. 

Healyjewrote:

Actually, aid soloing is another thing altogether and not particularly relevant to LRS. I stand by my comment.

I haven't asked him but just based off of how incredibly quickly dude scooted up Salathe I'm guessing it wasn't just aid. My guess is that homie did quite a lot of free to blast up that wall as fast as he did. Either that or he's the world's fastest aid climber.

Healyjewrote:

As I said, probably in around 5k 5.9-11 of multipitch trad pitches in on an unmodded Eddy with no shortage of falls on it. I find all of the incessant testing and fretting about using the Eddy that way patently ridiculous. In fact, I find all the social media gnashing focus on devices, systems, and testing odd if not weird, and basically think if a device or 'system' is so complex it doesn't allow you to climb a multipitch route 20-30% faster than with a partner then it's pretty much utterly worthless for my purposes. And yet again, with all due emphasis, I'm not trying or looking to replace a belaying partner with how I LRS, but rather consider it soloing with a backup. If I were trying to replace a belaying partner with an LRS device or system then I wouldn't bother doing LRS at all and would just always climb with a partner. 

Right. You have what I call the half-free-soloing approach to rope soloing. I do not. I and many others have completely different objectives for what our systems should be and what we can expect of them. I very much enjoy rope soloing and it's one of my favorite ways to climb, but I also don't want to engage in this mindset where the device is a backup to my climbing ability-- I want a completely redundant system where the only increased risk I'm taking is being on my own but that in every other way is as safe as climbing with a partner. In reality the system only needs to be minimally more complex than yours to accomplish this, so I don't really see any downsides to adding this small amount of slowness. 

I don't think one system is objectively better than the other-- yours is better for you, and mine is better for me. But I think there should be a clear delineation between these mindsets and approaches to rope soloing. One is done by people who commonly free solo but want a backup to do harder stuff, and the other is done by punters like me and cautious people who are only willing to rope solo with a significantly safer system than the one you use. I thought the high clip failure wouldn't be a big deal but in reality I like to climb pretty close to my limit and often find myself needing to clip above my waist while rope soloing and it turns out the Eddy isn't a very good device for me, even with stopper knots. I'm aware you manually engage the cam in such situations but I hate faffing with gear when climbing at my limit, and I've found the idea that I'll fall to the stopper knot if I fuck up the cam engagement to be not exactly what I would call a good time fun party for me on lead. 

Personally I've been using just a Revo or just a Grigri for my LRS with trailing stopper knots, but I'm keen on the idea of using the Taz and the Revo together to get rid of the trailing stopper knots. For the way you that you climb this is too much faff which is fair enough, but for a lot of us such gear faff-ery is a way for us to enjoy rope soloing in the safest possible manner while being able to reduce the inconvenience of trailing stopper knots, which I find always manage to get stuck on something. 

Then there's also two Revo man which he claims is actually faster than one rope with stopper knots, but two ropes seems like a lot of faff to even me, so I think I'll stick with one rope solutions and work my way to getting redundancy through two devices and ditching the knots. 

Healyjewrote:

As I said, probably in around 5k 5.9-11 of multipitch trad pitches in on an unmodded Eddy with no shortage of falls on it. I find all of the incessant testing and fretting about using the Eddy that way patently ridiculous. In fact, I find all the social media gnashing focus on devices, systems, and testing odd if not weird, and basically think if a device or 'system' is so complex it doesn't allow you to climb a multipitch route 20-30% faster than with a partner then it's pretty much utterly worthless for my purposes. And yet again, with all due emphasis, I'm not trying or looking to replace a belaying partner with how I LRS, but rather consider it soloing with a backup. If I were trying to replace a belaying partner with an LRS device or system then I wouldn't bother doing LRS at all and would just always climb with a partner. 

Definitely if you have a full awareness of a devices pros and cons whatever floats your boat. 

Might be falsely assuming but I figure most people here have climbed unroped on at least one occasion. Risk is risk. Its just it is nice when the risk is framed properly. 

I don't know whether there has been any incessant testing of an Eddy in the last three years. My personal motivation for testing was when I purchased one under your recommendation (on social media) and noticed that it didn't catch falls in particular circumstances (with little slack side rope in the system, clipping high with a taught device). A strong spring comes with pros and cons, I accept this.

Basically, if I want to go climbing, my go to will be a human. If I want to go cragging at awkward times after popping the kids to bed, LRS makes sense but then the extra time it takes for me to kit up and fluff around isn't a problem. I bust the clip stick out, ANSI rated kit and all sorts of chaos. Cut some laps then go home not dead - works well.

Can fully appreciate that if you are knocking out 12 pitches by yourself, it's a different game.

Ricky Harlinewrote:

You have what I call the half-free-soloing approach to rope soloing. 

Actually, I don’t consider it that at all and just find the Eddy totally reliable for both climbing and falling and have nineteen years of mileage with both to back that statement up.

Healyjewrote:

Actually, I don’t consider it that at all and just find the Eddy totally reliable for both climbing and falling and have nineteen years of mileage with both to back that statement up.

Curious. I find it strange that you say that, but fair enough. However, your system objectively is not redundant. Even if you don't think of your system as a half free soloing approach, I think your system would have to be that for me and likely for many others as well. I have only used the Eddy without stopper knots on routes I could conceivably free solo and I would only use the Eddy on such routes-- it's failure modes are that significant of a problem for me. I think you can understand at least why many rope soloists would be uninterested in a system that has no redundancy. The trade off of speed isn't worth it to you, but many of us are only willing to rope solo at all with that trade off made. 

Ricky Harlinewrote:

Curious. I find it strange that you say that, but fair enough. However, your system objectively is not redundant. Even if you don't think of your system as a half free soloing approach, I think your system would have to be that for me and likely for many others as well. I have only used the Eddy without stopper knots on routes I could conceivably free solo and I would only use the Eddy on such routes-- it's failure modes are that significant of a problem for me. I think you can understand at least why many rope soloists would be uninterested in a system that has no redundancy. The trade off of speed isn't worth it to you, but many of us are only willing to rope solo at all with that trade off made. 

I just don't find that the system needs any redundancy and have never experienced a 'failure mode' of any kind in falls.

The fact that if you don't manually activate the cam when clipping above your waist that you'll get seriously hurt or die is a pretty intense failure mode my dude. I understand the system works for you but you seem to have this thing where since it works well for you you're incapable of understanding why others would think it's a shitty system/not at all appropriate for them.

I'm usually not "that guy" but hearing people talking about soloing with the eddy with no backup knots makes me uncomfortable.  I use the eddy with a cache loop device hanging on a gear loop and it works well.  I let the slack hang free and tie (more or less) one handed slip knots as backups.  I untie and tie these backup knots while climbing (at stances).  Before leaving the ground, I'll tie at least a couple backup knots just for ease of getting started.  Please tie the backup knots.  I've never taken a fall where one of the knots had to engage, but that's not the point.  Tie backup knots.  One old dude doesn't use backup knots and that's his decision, much like someone who doesn't wear a helmet.  There are very real risks involved in going without a helmet or going without backup knots.