Ascending over a roof

How can you ascend over a roof, when your feet are free hanging in space? Some friends and I set up some aid practice stuff today on an overhang in preparation/training for Washington column, and I feel confident in everything except following the kor roof, due to the transition over the lip. This is from my attempts today, I ended up using some footholds I could find below me, which I don’t think is possible on kor. https://youtube.com/shorts/xTBqVZTm59k?feature=shared.. I initially tried to clip the alpine butterfly which you can spot on the white static line with my connect adjust and haul myself in on it, but didn’t know how to make progress after that, except to use the feet I could find.

The main issue I had was the rope is pinned against the rock, and I can’t slide the top ascender up and over it. From the research I have done, it seems the best way to get past that is to have your leader place a piece close to the lip, which you can clip an adjustable daisy to and tension in on, and then with the rope less tensioned you can slide the ascender up? If doing that, would you also connect your ladder to that piece? I find it hard to get over roof edges like this in ladders since I seem to tip back in space due to my legs catching on the roof among other issues.

What’s the best method? The tools I have are the basic aid climbing tools. Cam buckle daisies, ladders, and I have a petzl connect adjust I use as my PAS at the anchor as well as an alfifi. Not sure if either of those would be useful.

In an ideal world? Sure, leader leaves you a piece to go in on and make life easier.

But why not just pop the upper ascender and “pass” the lip, just as you would with a piece. 

Either remove the ascender and jump the lip with it like mentioned above, or you have to get some momentum and swing off the wall and quickly move the ascender past the lip. Even if you have to push off the underside of the roof with your feet. 

Passing the roof lip with the top jumar is how virtually all wall climbers will do it. I have done the route about 7 times. In 1974 I followed the Kor roof, and didn't have the skill to jumar over it while the wind blew me around in circles. So I moved my aiders to the placements and went up and over, cleaning as I went, same as the leader. My 2 jumars were my self belay. My first TRS! 

It is good to use your brain. Sometimes the standard way to do something isn't working well, or at all. So it COULD be better getting the job done a different way. Just be smart about it. 

Re daisy chains: we didn't have those things at all in the mid 1970's. They aren't neccessary,  although almost everyone finds them useful. You might Google Jeff Lowe Ron Olevsky wall climbing or aid climbing. Somewhere there is a video that IIRC has Ron demonstrating aider technique w/o daisies. I have wall climbed with Ron. He is very masterful in how he goes about every aspect of it. If you find it, you will see a different way. Even if you never practice it, you might remember enough that someday it is useful. 

Conner, after thinking a bit more about this, I think practicing moving on and off your jumars, and back on, while cleaning, would be worthwhile. As mentioned in your OP, it already has occurred to you that using natural rock holds while jumaring could be useful. That's a good indication. 

Another thing worth considering is practicing mixed free/aid climbing. How to move in and out of, and back into, your aiders while leading. There's a variety of ways to deal with your aiders, and it's very situational. There's a couple places on SFWC were that will be useful. In fact it is useful on almost all wall routes, and sometimes very entertaining and engaging!

Edit: Where was the video taken?

While ascending the haul line on a Zodiac pitch ,I was shocked to find the roof edge padded with duck tape ! I had been swinging back and forth in the wind jumaring up to it .

Eric Craig wrote:

Conner, after thinking a bit more about this, I think practicing moving on and off your jumars, and back on, while cleaning, would be worthwhile. As mentioned in your OP, it already has occurred to you that using natural rock holds while jumaring could be useful. That's a good indication. 

Another thing worth considering is practicing mixed free/aid climbing. How to move in and out of, and back into, your aiders while leading. There's a variety of ways to deal with your aiders, and it's very situational. There's a couple places on SFWC were that will be useful. In fact it is useful on almost all wall routes, and sometimes very entertaining and engaging!

Edit: Where was the video taken?

The video was taken right up by you. We went to goat rock at castle rock and set up a few fixed lines to practice on under the great roof, and one line with a bunch of alpine butterflies which we tensioned under the roof and clipped a fixed line to for practice passing gear on an overhang and lowering out from. Here’s another angle of what we were doing. 

Christian Hesch wrote:

In an ideal world? Sure, leader leaves you a piece to go in on and make life easier.

But why not just pop the upper ascender and “pass” the lip, just as you would with a piece. 

The main issue I was having with this approach was the lip was pretty rounded and low angle above, so the rope was extremely tight against the rock above the lip. I think it didn't help that the anchors were so close to the lip as well, since it gave me less rope and therefor less possible stretch to pull the rope away from the rock over the lip.

A note about the Kor roof in particular--because the crack parallels the roof lip for a bit, a real key to make it "easy" for the follower is to use/leave enough gear to let the follower pull the lip and then stay above it--I had a follower once kind of refuse to use the gear and opting instead to only hang on their jumars--as a result, the roof turned from one strenuous pull to like....7-8 pulls over the lip.

Seems obvious, but I took a rest day on dinner ledge once and watched a lot of parties make the same mistake, with rope stretch it's very easy to kind of fall back over the lip multiple times and turn it into a real shitshow.

The benevolent leader does not backclean any pieces in a roof or on a traverse, allowing the second to follow on aiders while "releading" and using the GriGri as backup.