A fun problem - Find the solution.

This is a fictitious problem I created years ago. I don't know why it would ever happen in real life, but let's just say it did for the fun of trying to solve it.

You have 3 - 60m ropes (let's call them all exactly 200 feet to make the math easy)
You have a 300 foot free-hanging rappel below you.
You need to rappel the 300 feet and you need to retrieve your ropes. (we are not concerned about passing any knots)

How do you do it?

Fiddlestick, used by canyoneers.

join all 3 ropes.  Fold in half.  Tie slipknot to anchor at midpoint of middle rope.  Rap the fixed side.  Pass 1 knot.  Pull other strand to undo slipknot and retrieve.  

I forget the knot but i know u can make it less sketchy than a single slip knot…. Like Successive slip knots with alternating strands so that retrieval (or catastrophic failure) requires multiple actions.

edit to add pic.  Idk if it would work from 300’ away but it works ok playing around with light loading.  Im sure there is a better knot that does this same thing.

Fiddlesticks, yeah, that would do it.
Given that you're the average every day climber and don't have a fiddlestick in your pocket, could you makeshift something?

Is "tie a slipknot" an imaginary idea or does that knot exist and would it really work after you had rapped 300 feet on it?

1- bring an oversized locker or shackle that you know you can pull a flat overhand bend through. Fix this to the anchor. Tie EDKs, rap from middle of middle rope, passing knots on your way down. Haven't tried it, but I bet a large-ish locker would work.

2- have the gear and the know-how to splice or sew a rope*. At the anchors, splice/sew 2 of the 3 ropes together. Pass 1 knot on your way down. Pull from the knotted end.

*I don't have this know-how, but I'm sure that one could make a strong enough union with a needle, tough nylon thread, and some free time. Obviously I'd want to test this out at home before trying it in the field, and I'd probably pack duct tape to prevent abrasion during the rap. I'd be willing to bet that someone did this on some big wall back when people knew how to sew by hand.

EDIT: others replied with plausible ideas while I was typing. There's probably a few more in Kirkpatrick's 'Down'.

A macramé hitch could work. I think that is what Nathan M is talking about with the successive slip knots idea.

Fiddlestick technique originally came from the dolomites and folks used pitons for it, so if you have a long pin it would totally work. A very smooth nut tool (not the hook end) might work too. Just yank the pin and run so you don't get clobbered.

You can also do a "fiddlestring" technique where instead of using the lexan fiddlestick or the aforementioned piton, you can use a series of bights in a pull cord. It's scary but it can work.

Equivocation hitch might be a real pain to pull from 300 feet away, but at least you're on the ground, presumably, and can pull real hard.

If you're a crack shot you might be able to shoot the webbing and drop your ropes with your recently calibrated rifle with a nice scope. This is called the "Olevsky" method.

EJN wrote:

If you're a crack shot you might be able to shoot the webbing and drop your ropes with your recently calibrated rifle with a nice scope. This is called the "Olevsky" method.

You made me smile! Thanks. I imagine you made Ron smile too.

Long live the Balkan Dirt Divers!

I remember reading something about using a sheepshank knot for this type of scenario some years back. You cut the middle strand (one could use webbing or non climbing rope to keep the original climbing rope intact) so that you can just shake the rope (and in theory the knot way above) once you're on the ground and the whole thing should come crashing down. It works just playing around with it but I'd never actually want to use it in a real life scenario. Anyway ever actually done this?

Logan Peterson wrote:

1- bring an oversized locker or shackle that you know you can pull a flat overhand bend through. Fix this to the anchor. Tie EDKs, rap from middle of middle rope, passing knots on your way down. Haven't tried it, but I bet a large-ish locker would work.

Flat overhand will fit through most HMS carabiners, I've had to do something similar when cleaning a tall ice climb with two ropes joined for a top rope. 

Sacrifice an HMS carabiner, tape or girth hitch or clove hitch it to the anchor so that the wide side remains on the bottom, rap and pass knots like normal, pull like normal.

This requires a little extra gear but here is the best solution that I could come up with:

Tie ropes one and two together and rap 200 feet using a carabiner block. We will call rope one the rap side and rope two the pull side. At the bottom of ropes one and two loop a prussik around rope one ( i.e. on the hitch end) and tie the middle of rope three to the end of rope two. Clip the middle of rope three to the prusik on rope one and rappel the last hundred feet on both strands keeping track of which side is attached to the rope two pull strand. Once you are on the ground pull rope three on the rope two pull side. If everything goes right you should pull rope three through the prussik loop on the end of rope one leaving all of the knots on the pull side of the anchor. Once the end of rope one gets pulled into the anchor it will pull the prusik off of it and all of your gear will fall to the ground.

Two edits: 1 a kliemheist might work better than a prusik for this since it is more directional. 2 if the hitch at the end of rope one gets unloaded at any point it could slide off the end of the rope and you will die so maybe not the best solution, not sure how to hedge against this in a reliable way.

Mark Hudon wrote:

Fiddlesticks, yeah, that would do it.
Given that you're the average every day climber and don't have a fiddlestick in your pocket, could you makeshift something?

Sure use a locking carabiner. Note the rope is going over the locking mechanism. 

Mark Hudon wrote:

This is a fictitious problem I created years ago. I don't know why it would ever happen in real life, but let's just say it did for the fun of trying to solve it.

You have 3 - 60m ropes (let's call them all exactly 200 feet to make the math easy)
You have a 300 foot free-hanging rappel below you.
You need to rappel the 300 feet and you need to retrieve your ropes. (we are not concerned about passing any knots)

How do you do it?

Hang an HMS locker through the chains. Pass one 60m through the HMS and tie a flat overhand into one of the other 60Ms. Tie both tails into the ends of the final 60m with flat overhand. Throw the ropes and rappel 200ft to pass the knots. Rappel another 100ft to the deck. Pull one side of the rope down 100ft to untie an overhand. Pull the other side of the rope. 

Assume a perfectly free-hanging and frictionless rappel,

Lower your available ropes 300' to the ground, fix a single strand rappel, and attach your rack and extra gear to the fixed end. 

Rap down, let go of the rope, and dodge the falling rack as it pulls the rope down to the ground.

I like that solution, Patrick--although I'd rather tie a rock to the end of the rope rather than my rack!  A 300-foot fall will probably destroy some cams!

Matthew, I like your solution too . . . but I don't know if I can spare an HMS carabiner--plus, there is always the possibility that a knot gets stuck in the HMS somehow (you'd be down safely, but you might not be able to retrieve the rope).  Passing the knots also adds some additional complexity.  I think Patrick's solution wins via Ockham's Razor.

Hopefully Mark will chime in with the "correct" answer.  Great puzzle, Mark!

For something similar, an old 14ers.com post: https://mail.14ers.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=54040

The only "correct" answer is the one that works.
I haven't taken the time to think accurately through everyone's solutions. I suspect some would work and some wouldn't.

I'd like to see some drawings of the various methods. I can't envision Partick's or Andrew's methods.

My solution would be to run the rope through a sling at the rap point and then when both climbers are down, each weight a side, pull out the slack, and saw through the sling. (a buddy and I actually did this on a single rope rap with a 1" sling years and years ago just to see if we could do it. The sawing didn't take long at all.)

HMS biners, flat knots and fiddlesticks weren't a thing back then.

Mark Hudon wrote:
My solution would be to run the rope through a sling at the rap point and then when both climbers are down, each weight a side, pull out the slack, and saw through the sling. (a buddy and I actually did this on a single rope rap with a 1" sling years and years ago just to see if we could do it. The sawing didn't take long at all.)

Love it!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WDWMObPOKHk&t=26s  The first two minutes is the relevant failure mode of a macrame/equivocation hitch with all the bights. If you're weighting the rap strand and for whatever reason the pull strand is pulled, it unties pretty damn fast. I suppose with a long enough final bight it could ease the mind, but with 300 feet of rope weight on it I'm hesitant. This seems like a great situation for passing the knots and pulling it through an HMS. Or saw the sling, That one's clever. I wonder how tough it would be with all that bounce in the rope. 

I love the sling-sawing idea! Has anyone tried this with a brand new rope?

Logan Peterson wrote:

I love the sling-sawing idea! Has anyone tried this with a brand new rope?

We were sawing through a 1" tubular webbing sling. The rope sheath was a hair bit melted but not bad at all.

Mark Hudon wrote: 

We were sawing through a 1" tubular webbing sling. The rope sheath was a hair bit melted but not bad at all.

Got that. I was just thinking than a fuzzy rope might make a better saw than a slick one.