Is Texas rope trick safe?

Chad Miller wrote:

Dang it amarius, ya beat me to it!   

Smell my chalk dust!   

If you're going to jump through hoops to have a retrievable anchor then why not use an equivocation hitch?  

Kristian Solem wrote:

Texas rope trick is stupid if you're bailing off bomber gear, for example a solid bolt on a modern sport climb.

 But, if you're bailing on less than perfect gear, the TRT can make sense. Rappelling puts your own weight on the top piece of gear. Lowering loads the gear with your weight plus the force of the belayer holding your weight (roughly doubling the load).

Still, it's situational. For example if you're bailing off a weak piece, but the next one down is not far and is bomber, your still best off lowering.

Won’t that next piece down get removed pretty quickly if you’re bailing?

The rather popular Mammut Contact sling costs about the same as a biner - looks like this method would likely burn it.

Andrew Child wrote:

Why would you do this when you can just rig a carabiner block and rappel on one strand?

Do you know this guy Mark Pilate?  Sounds like you two could get along really well.

i think this is the system that my uncle fell on... be careful you're grabbing the right strand...

It's safe enough. Can be a little tricky to rig because the rope has to be divided into thirds, not halves, which increases the potential of rapping off the end.

Practically, it's a technique to recover a sling that is compromised by having the rope dragged over it. I relegate such slings to non-climbing uses, such as hanging bird houses. I have seen people jam the sling. Taking into account the limited value of the recovered sling and the possibility of a clusterfuck, it is not a very useful technique.

The only time I recall employing the Texas rope trick was to avoid leaving a sling on a protection bolt. I didn't want the next climber to have to deal with tat on a difficult clip. Or maybe I didn't want to advertise that I couldn't do the moves above the bolt.

I have used this technique before. I like to call it the Texas Turntail Technique cause ya put yer tail between yer legs, turn around in shame, and do not want others to know. It is technique to know when you need to preserve gear. As in the sling might be needed later because there are many more raps to go that will require leaving gear.

Ok I'm getting the sense that I have the most experience with the TRT of anyone on this thread, so I'm gonna weigh in on a few things.

You can use an ABD to "self belay" backup a TRT rap on a single sketchy piece of gear. It gets complicated, but I've done it more than once.

The only benefit of TRT is retrieving the sling, nothing else. Might be nice if you have 10' of tat left for the next ten raps and you otherwise have to leave it all on one tree. 

To the person who asked about blocked rappels: blocked rap can be used with TRT, but they are not substitutes for each other, just two tools that can be used alone or together.

Equivocation hitch: might accomplish the same thing on a tree; not gonna happen on a bolt hanger. 

I'd suggest TRT is less likely to rap off the end, or even impossible (without stopper knots). Unless the sling melts, I believe there would be enough friction to stop the rope after the one free end leaves your rap device. Hopefully this is only a theoretical benefit.

Not sure if I've ever used dyneema, probably not. However, with 9/16" webbing the "damaged" sling has always been good to go for a long time after. Make sure to rotate it if you use the same sling a lot. Pulling an unweighted rope through a sling could damage it, but I've never seen it happen.

Mark Twight says, "know every rope trick in the book."

Hypothetically, this may be "safe enough," but there are easier, faster and safer ways to bail, if you must bail, that don't limit you to only bailing from 1/3 rope length from the ground.  If you use a carabiner and a friction hitch backup, it's as safe as down-leading, whereas with the TRT you must trust your life to one bolt.  Add in that you end up trashing a sling, instead of leaving a perfectly good carabiner that can be used again (maybe by you if you come back tomorrow and clean it yourself!), and I just can't see the point, unless it's to prove that you can do it.  Some of the recent posts on this thread detail all the other ways to avoid bailing off of sport routes in the first place, which is arguably what you should be planning on doing most of the time.  

TLDR:  The Texas Rope Trick is not the safest way to bail.  It is not the most versatile way to bail.  And it's not the quickest, most efficient way to bail.  It does leave the bolt hangar free of any obstruction, unless your sling gets jammed, in which case you've screwed over the next climber in your efforts to not do exactly that.  

Edit:  The previous two posts came in while I was typing this, and give some better arguments for the (I'd say limited) best use cases for this technique.  I certainly agree with the idea that it's a good trick to know just in case.  

Why can't you just girth hitch your sling to a [choose your knot] on a bight, thread the sling through the hanger, feed the rope through the sling, and then you do a normal rappel? That way you only have to fold your rope in 1/2 instead of 1/3. Am I missing something here?

Yoda Jedi Knight wrote:

Why can't you just girth hitch your sling to a [choose your knot] on a bight, thread the sling through the hanger, feed the rope through the sling, and then you do a normal rappel? That way you only have to fold your rope in 1/2 instead of 1/3. Am I missing something here?

You could do that, but you won't retrieve your sling.

Edit: As said above, it's quite amazing what people will do to save the cost of a sling, when they could just leave a carabiner.

FrankPS wrote:

You could do that, but you won't retrieve your sling.

I had to draw this out to understand. I don't think you'd retrieve your rope either lol. I have an escaper for these types of emergencies.

Andrew Child wrote:

Why would you do this when you can just rig a carabiner block and rappel on one strand?

Or just rig a biner and do a double strand wrap.  Why complicate things with a block if you're going to already leave a biner behind?

Andrew Child wrote:

Why would you do this when you can just rig a carabiner block and rappel on one strand?

You'd be rapping directly on the bolt hanger

Mark Pilate wrote:

If it helps your psychology, Don’t think of it in terms of a precious biner, just acknowledge you now have to skip tomorrow’s Starbucks. Done. 

My psychology problem is different - it bugs me to know there is a "better way" and not use it.  It's not rational - I doubt that the excess probability of dying with TRT is actually smaller than 10^-6 (cost of carabiner / cost of life).  Maybe a career in non-life-critical engineering has conditioned me to think I need justification for doing things sub-optimally, which is the wrong mentality for climbing.

Definitely would not use it when tired / in a hurry.

J C wrote:

OP, what makes you question the safety of the Texas rope trick? What is your own analysis?

Generally a lot of work to save $.50 worth of tat, but you can feel better about the "ghosting" bail I guess.

Are we all talking about the same thing?

Actually you're right. We're not. I was thinking of an entirely different scenario. Carry on.

I've done it, like twice.  It was fine - but TBH, I never really trusted the sling the same way after pulling the rope through it while it was set like that. It's really hard on soft goods to have a running line across them.

I decided that it better to leave a biner than put an untrustworthy sling back on my rack. 

Serious question, why is rapping off hangers so bad? Anecdotally I've done it a few times. Yes I understand the hanger can be sharp, abrasive, etc but there's no way it's sawing your rope in half rapping this way one time in a hundred. I also understand rope can damage the hanger, but assuming again one time in a hundred, am I missing something here?

Travis Haussener wrote:

 I also understand rope can damage the hanger, 

How can a rope damage a hanger?