Tips and trick for rope solo free climbing?

I unfortunately often find myself without partners who are excited about the same things as me. This has lead me to do a fair bit of rope solo climbing. I can't say I particularly enjoy it but it allows me to go climbing which I do enjoy.

My basic setup is modified grigri clipped with a BD gridlock and a petzl chest harness. To manage the weight and length of the extra rope I run it through a micro traxion on the right side of my harness. This way it is easy to dial in just the right amount slack so the grigri feeds easily. Once I get far enough off the belay and the lead side of the rope starts to get heavy I use a shoulder length to tie an autoblock around the rope, I also have the rope clipped through the carabiner which minds the autoblock so the rope still travels upwards to allow stretch in the rope during a fall. I use a small rope bag/backpack to stack the rope in that is hung off the anchor. Occasionally this is attached with a fifi hook/prussic combo that allows me to tag it up and hang it on a higher piece if I want. I also just wear the pack on some pitches if I think the rope will feed better. If I already know the length of the pitch I fix the rope at the belay anchor with only the amount of rope I'll need so I'm not dragging a bunch of extra rope up the pitch with me.

These are bunch of the tricks I've figured out but I'm sure people have got a few that I'm missing. So who's got some??

I use a Silent Partner, so my setup is going to be a bit different than yours. I've tried the GriGri, but found that for free climbing the Silent Partner is the smoothest belay ever.

What I've found to work best is to stack the rope in a 20ish liter pack with stopper knots every 20-30 ft. I wear the pack, and let the slack end run out the top, clipped through a biner on the shoulder strap, and then down in a manageable loop.

In order to keep the Silent Partner from auto-feeding, I'll place an auto block under the rope biner of a piece of pro every 60-70 ft. I place the auto block under the piece instead of above so that the piece bears more of the force in the case of a fall. I'm pretty sure this is the same technique you described.

I like to run the rope out in full 60-70m pitches and can actually do a lot of routes faster on my own than with an inexperienced partner.

When I finish a pitch, I anchor the end and leave the pack. I clean pitches with a mini-traxion and back up knots below. I haven't cared for this setup as much because I haven't gotten it to auto-feed. To start the next pitch, I leave the anchor in place, put the silent partner on close to the anchor, and restock the rope in the pack.

I believe there is a certain MP user that would reccomend a Edelrid eddy for roped soloing, shame i cant spell that users name.

Mikey Schaefer wrote:These are bunch of the tricks I've figured out but I'm sure people have got a few that I'm missing. So who's got some??

Healyje

eli poss wrote: Healyje

THAT'S THE MP USER I'M TALKIN ABOUT.

that guy named seb wrote: THAT'S THE MP USER I'M TALKIN ABOUT.

WHY ARE WE YELLING IN ALL CAPS?!

eli poss wrote: WHY ARE WE YELLING IN ALL CAPS?!

I'm in a all caps kind of mood, easily excited, maybe i'm just tired.

I thought I'd get a couple more hits on this subject. Aren't there a bunch of other loners on MP like me that can't find partners like me?

I've tried the Silent Partner a couple times. I found it to be really big! The grigri is so much smaller and more than half the weight.

Having spent a bunch of time trying "ALL" the other options, I finally came around to the Edelrid Eddy. There are lots of other posts and many other websites out there that discuss this option. My experience is that it is by far the best option compared to the silent partner, soloist, or grigri.

And by best, I mean that it requires the least amount of hassle with rope management and provides the smoothest rope feed.

Most of us start out rope soloing and get tired of dealing with it and move to free soloing when we can't find a partner which leads to deaths and keeps the population on this subject low.

ViperScale wrote:Most of us start out rope soloing and get tired of dealing with it and move to free soloing when we can't find a partner which leads to deaths and keeps the population on this subject low.

Whoa whoa. That's super general and morbid. If you just look it up, most soloist pass on not doing solos but from other activities. One of the main reasons to go away from rope soloing to free soloing is for speed.

Mikey or Nate, Can you snap a pic of that autoblock set up to keep the rope feeding correctly? I've always just tied off a solid piece to keep the grigri from autofeeding. It's not ideal.

I've tried the SP, didn't work well for me. I find the grigri plus backup knots is okay, but only if I'm climbing from stance to stance. That or I'll be hanging on a piece to feed out more slack. It seems throwing out 20-30 feet of slack and climbing until you run out has been my most efficient method. Certainly not something you you want to do at your limit, or with bad fall consequences.

It seems we all agree that stacking the rope into a small pack is a nice way to manage it. Does the microtrax on your gear loop do anything other than hold the rope weight off the brake strand? Are you backed up in any way if you take an inverted fall or the gri gri fails?

I really want to like rope soloing, but its such a pain that I feel like daisy solo or free solo is better.

Here's a pic of the friction hitch set-up. I use a klemheist.

this one shows the klemheist and the tag rack arrangement

Mikey Schaefer wrote:So who's got some??

Petzl. Look on their site.

Here is a pic of my autoblock setup. I like this method as I am able to tie it with one hand as a lot of the climbing I do is hard enough that I can't let go with both hands.

I do just use the micro-traxion to manage the weight and slack of the break strand. I use to use a Wild country rope man but since I haul with the Micro and TR with it It's usually with me. I don't use any backups to the grigri besides a knot in the end of the rope. Not sure exactly how many falls I've taken on this setup but I'd say over 25. I won't lie, it is a bit scary.

@wivanoff Could you be more specific as to where Petzl has any beta at all on lead soloing? They of course have beta on TR soloing but if you read the thread you'd realize that isn't what is being discussed.



Above pic is from yesterday on the current project, a new 1400ft route on Liberty Bell I'm doing ground up solo. Good times!

Mikey Schaefer wrote: @wivanoff Could you be more specific as to where Petzl has any beta at all on lead soloing?

Sorry. Saw this:

Mikey Schaefer wrote: This has lead me to do a fair bit of rope solo climbing.

Did not see that you specified lead soloing. My bad.

After trying out the Silent Partner and eventually getting rid of it (rope twisting, weight and cold failures all being an issue) I've decided that the Edelrid Eddy is probably what I'm looking for. I generally want a device for alpine climbing, where it can be hard to find partners willing to do the same stuff I'm doing (and the requisite suffering). Generally I'm on relatively easy, albeit exposed ground where I'm not expecting to fall, but the consequences would be pretty absolute. In the search for the perfect alpine solo device here are a few questions that one of the Mikes or perhaps someone else can answer.

Is there any free climbing solo device that I'm missing here that would be a better solution (probably not)?

Does the Edelrid Eddy work that much better than a modified Grigri II? (will it actually freely payout rope if set up right?)

How safe is soloing on thinner ropes (8.9-9.5?) I suppose this is a tradeoff between the device freely paying out slack and locking up when appropriate (Healyje says no, so I guess I'm looking at sticking with a 9.8-10.1 mm rope)?

Thoughts about using a Grigri or Edelrid Eddy on potentially icy ropes (obviously not ideal but that's what backup knots are for right?)

Alexander K wrote: Thoughts about using a Grigri or Edelrid Eddy on potentially icy ropes (obviously not ideal but that's what backup knots are for right?)

Frozen ropes wouldn't feed at all and ropes that are a little icy will still fail to lock due to the lack of friction going through the device, if you wait till the wild country revo i would imagine it working allot better on icy ropes.

What I do, YMMV

Rope pairing with the Eddy is a fairly critical component of the whole affair working decent. I've tried a variety of ropes but eventually settled in on the Maxim 9.9 glider and gone through seven or eight of them at this point.

Icy / cold ropes? Hmmm, definitely not on the icy and would probably drop down to a 9.8 with the Eddy if we were talking freezing cold (I've climbed a lot in sub-32 degree weather, but on only on rock).

Can't quite picture Mikey's exact setup, but he obviously has something figured out that's working for him. I did use a modded grigri in the years before the Eddy came out, but just off the harness as I can't stand having any kind of device on my chest or any kind of connection between something on my upper body and my harness, but that's just me.

And looks like batguano is talking about aid soloing as opposed to free lead rope soloing.

In Mikey's picture you see the rope path
1: tied to the anchor
2: through the pro
3: to grigri on chest harness
4: to microtrax on harness
5: back down to the pack

Pros of the seem to be no/fewer backup knots, and minimum rope carried on the climber

Mikey:
What mods to the grigri have you done, also how important is the chest harness?

Do you do anything special to the anchor to prime it for an upward pull?

What are the most inefficient parts of the system that you want to fix?

Seems like the Eddy might be worth trying, also a quicker way of getting the rope weight off. I remember reading that someone used bungee cord or thin Prussik material and just girth hitched the rope to get the weight off, I haven't tried that but that might be quicker.

Just saw a FB post that Max was looking for a partner, maybe that is the short term solution...

From Joe Healy's original RC.com post:
use either a rubber band, a slipknot that sits above the biner, or a long sling with a klemheist to rebelay the rope

How well does the slip knot work?