Post up pictures of you big wall bivy set up

Want to see how others organize all the gear and ledge at your belay station.

My typical set up is to have the ledge on the right and the haul bags on the left (the door to my rain fly is on the left). Also, for my ledge, a Metolius Double, the wall side sleeper has his feet on the left. If the bags overhang the ledge a bit, they will be hanging over his feet and not his face.

Cheyne on Shortest Straw. We spent the night right there.

Cheyne on Native Son last fall. Notice how it's the exact same set up.

On Native Son

Thanks Mark. Got any pics of your bags and ledge attached to anchor?

if there's a 3 bolt anchor would you advise clipping each bolt with a locker and cloving all the bolts together with the rope. hanging your ledge off the rightmost bolt and hauling/hanging the bags off the leftmost bolt, and organizing gear on the rope "clotheslines" in between each bolt? I'm talking traderoutes here, so each bolt is bomber. seems like clusterfuckage could be minimized with the disadvantage of less strength on your anchor setup.

I don't worry too much about equalizing three 3/8" bolts. Really, when was the last time you heard of one failing? Never.

I also don't load up the rope as a clothes line, it just makes a mess to clean up later. I'll tie up the anchor, hang each bag from the furthest left and middle bolt and hang my ledge on the right most bolt and stuff the ropes into their rope bags. I like my anchors neat!

My gear slings, the Yates Big Walls slings, have an 18" long piece of 5mil tied to the shoulder loops. I'll clip on to each bolt so that the sling lies nice and open and flat against the wall. My partner will also do the same. That way, the gear is nicely laid out so that whoever is leading in the morning can pick and choose from one rack to the other.

A bivy anchor on Iron Hawk.

The anchor and bivy at El Cap Tree.

The bivy at El Cap Tree. The rope is tied as my solo anchor.

Notice how the gear sling is hanging, nice and open and easy to get gear from or to transfer gear onto.

BTW, I don't ever take my gear sling off before clipping it to the anchor. That way, I can NEVER drop it!

The hanging gear sling.

Thanks. I'm trying setting up ledge, bags, and ropes on my beefy 3/4" bolts I have at home. So many ways to do it, so much to tangle up. Mark, your beta is invaluable to a new big Waller like myself. Thanks! Maybe I will see you on the wall in the Valley this season.

I'll be there from the 1st to the 15th of June.

Mark Hudon wrote:BTW, I don't ever take my gear sling off before clipping it to the anchor. That way, I can NEVER drop it!

Do you find that the rack tether loops get in the way when you're leading and/or jugging? I like the idea of not being able to drop the rack, but would worry that the tether loops would just add to the cluster factor. But then again, at this stage I'm just a BWT (as PtPP would say...)

Thanks for the info Mark! So that's your solo anchor as well, figure 8 on a bight on the end and then a butterfly for the second bolt? Or should both be a butterfly? seems simple and easy either way. you don't incorporate a screamer into the system? I also want to know about the additional clusterfuckage of having extra loops on your gear sling. So far I've just been really careful when I'm putting my rack on and off, but dropping a entire rack would put a big damper on the sendage (and I wouldn't put myself past such a noob mistake).

I'll be in the valley from May 5th to September 2nd, working in yose beats living in the 'rents basement...

I saw that mark and pete replied to this, but it was during the time when any posts had blank text. what'd ya'll say?

Hmm.. a post of mine got deleted.

The Gear sling tether cords don't get in my way hardly at all. I flip them to my back and they pretty much stay there.

Off of that anchor there was some very easy climbing and then some easy 5th class. There would have been a lot of rope out to cushion any fall. I usually put a Screamer as the last piece on the anchor or the very first piece off it.

The end eight knot doesn't have to pass any force along so there is no need for a Butterfly.

Here is a drawing of my modified gear rack showing the tethers. You're crazy if you don't have tethers on your lead rack! The first thing you want to do when you get to the anchor is clip the thing in, and get it the hell off of you! Plus, you'll never have to worry about dropping it.

You can read more here about how to modify your lead rack:

rockclimbing.com/cgi-bin/fo…

Wow, old school drawing above, several things wrong with it. The tails that the chameleon is hanging from, I use only one of those, and that's where I hang my shoulder-length and double-length slings to keep those out of the way.

The rack tethers are not shown in the right place. After I drew this, my friend Chad added a clip in loop on the top of the shoulder on each side, and I moved the tethers to there. I also added the front sub-racks which you see.

Somewhere I wrote, "One day, all lead racks will be made this way. But for now, you will have to do it yourself." Well guess what? These days, almost all lead racks are made this way!

I do knott use the fifi, but might consider adding it if I was climbing a REALLY steep pitch. I used it on the Wing of Native Son, I remember. But usually it just gets in the way.

Can't believe that drawing is fifteen years old! Crap, I must be getting old. I don't *feel* old .... much .... often...

As for the other stuff:

”If there's a 3 bolt anchor would you advise clipping each bolt with a locker and cloving all the bolts together with the rope. hanging your ledge off the rightmost bolt and hauling/hanging the bags off the leftmost bolt, and organizing gear on the rope "clotheslines" in between each bolt? I'm talking traderoutes here, so each bolt is bomber. seems like clusterfuckage could be minimized with the disadvantage of less strength on your anchor setup.”

In a word – NEVER. I will never incorporate my rope[s] into the anchor for the purpose of racking. It is too hard to take the stuff apart! Sure as hell, you’ll have everything all racked up there, only to find out you used the middle of the rope, or your partner is running out of rope near the top of the pitch, or the rope is hopelessly behind something that is weighted like the ledge, or or or.

You can never have enough of two things on a big wall – free carabiners, and extra slings. String some slings between the bolts for racking stuff, don’t use your rope, or sooner or later you will end up being sorry. If you do use your rope, when it gets stuck, remember this post: “I told you so.”

I have a couple regular daisies – not adjustables – that I use to string between bolts for racking stuff. Then I can remove my subracks from my piglet – CAREFULLY! With TWO hands! – and clip them into the racking daisies for easy access to the rack, which is typically very big.

If the bolts are good, I would simply back them up with diagonal slings, hanging the pigs from the left bolt and the ledge from the right bolt more or less. For crappier anchors, I would construct power points left and right, which means that everything will necessarily be hanging lower.

gotcha mark and pete, looks like I'll be buying another 50 feet of cordage!

this is great! i just added tethers to my yates bigwall rack. gonna try it out on lurking fear this weekend. but im not sure i understand the 'nylon racks' on the back. how do you attach your slings, runners, etc to them? thanks!