Far end hauling really heavy loads

The original detailed write up and discussion of that broken microtrax was in one of the FB rope soloing groups. It was not posted by Andy.

Saw it at the time but can’t find it now. It broke in a TRS fall and the climber was caught by a microscender on a separate line. Probably not very relevant to a discussion of hauling. 

When it comes to pulleys, size does matter. I don’t think that was your issue here.  I am guessing you were defeated by rope stretch. I am confident that if you had attempted the same with very little rope in the system you would have managed the haul easily. I’m sure you have hauled with a dynamic rope at some point and remember how futile it feels until the rope is good and stretched. In this case you couldn’t quite get all the stretch out. Your rope stretched statically when it was loaded, but you didn’t have the strength to overcome the dynamic stretch that the rope had when you load the tail.  If you are redirecting that tail through your upper jumar then attempting to haul, you were fighting this stretch with every stroke.

I think you could have short fixed your haul bag with a jumar on an intermediate bomber piece you could have decreased that stretch and made the haul. I think using a jumar or traxion would be preferred so you do not need to knot your haul rope. You might be able to do this with a bunch of prussics if you were planning to far end haul an entire pitch. Curious what the experts think.

Regarding traxions, biner selection is critical. I only use ovals or HMS biners on any I might haul from. I know petzl markets the SMD as suitable, but it’s not. I too have blown up traxions with the wrong carabiner, I have a nice bent mini to prove it.