'Neat' Way of Building Anchors 'On the Rocks' (The Scottish Belay)

With a little practice it is easy to extend Rgolds rope anchor system to a remote belay stance. (as Marty C states)

1. Get to the stance where you want to build the anchor. You can be attached to your first anchor piece if need be.

2. Roughly gauge how much rope you will need to extend to your preferred Belay stance (being generous) and clove that much rope, off your tie in, onto a locker attached to your belay loop. You should have a slack loop of rope from your tie in to the cloved biner on your belay loop.

3. Create your upper master point with an alpine butterfly from the rope coming off the cloved biner (not the slack loop)

4. Build the rest of the anchor per Rgolds picture from this higher stance. You can weight and adjust the cloves/arms from here.

5. Finally, let the rope out of the slack loop through the clove hitch to get to your belay stance. You could flip the clove it into a munter to descend and then back to the clove at your stance. Hopefully when you get to your stance you have enough slack to add another butterfly to create a lower anchor point for plate attachment. Adjust the clove at your belay loop to fine tune your stance.

How do you like the above systems in comparison to the bunny rabbit ears figure 8? I would see the bunny 8 as only for small spacing between anchors and stance, and maybe only at bolted anchors where you only have two pieces of pro. No real comparison between them when considering extended anchors, etc, as explained above. This backcountry post really sells it though.

backcountry.com/explore/bun…

Faulted Geologist wrote:How do you like the above systems in comparison to the bunny rabbit ears figure 8? I would see the bunny 8 as only for small spacing between anchors and stance, and maybe only at bolted anchors where you only have two pieces of pro. No real comparison between them when considering extended anchors, etc, as explained above. This backcountry post really sells it though. backcountry.com/explore/bun…

The figure 8 with a double bight would most likely require additional material to make it to your anchors in most situations. The other options are way more adjustable but certainly nothing wrong with it.

I still use the rope wherever feasible, in other words if there's enough slack, and there usually is. I use a separate locker on my belay loop, and bring stuff back to that.

rgold, how do you modify your system when you're climbing with double ropes and want to tie into three pieces?

There are so many ways to use double ropes to build belay anchors.

The one that comes to mind using RGold's system, is to just treat the two ropes as one.

Tie your alpine butterfly/masterpoint using both ropes. Proceed to clove each of the double ropes separately to the pro and back to the masterpoint. This works easily for three or four pieces of pro without any modifications.

That would be pretty much the last method I would use. Why would you double up? That sounds like a cluster$%ck.

Normally I would use just one rope. But no harm in mixing and matching.

I agree, it could be a clusterf$&k. I probably wouldn't use it either.

However, the question asked was how could/would you modify RGold's system, not what is a better alternative using double ropes.

I am sure we could suggest an easier/better system using double ropes.

build a 2 piece rope anchor with one double ...

and simply loop the other piece with the other double ..

thats all there is to it

;)

bearbreeder wrote:build a 2 piece rope anchor with one double ... and simply loop the other piece with the other double .. thats all there is to it ;)

Magic!

Event wrote:rgold, how do you modify your system when you're climbing with double ropes and want to tie into three pieces?

There are basically three choices:

1. Tie the power point in both ropes and then use method 2 below.

2. As mentioned by bb, rig a two-point anchor with one rope and clip the second rope to the third anchor.

3. Build the entire anchor with one rope and leave the other rope completely free of the anchor.

I use all three in different circumstances. One of the deciding factors is how much you care about having a power point, and if you do care whether it matters that it be rigged to all three pieces or not, and another is how easy it is going to be to escape the system if you have to. (I view this as a very minor consideration most of the time, but its importance increases as the climbing situation becomes more remote.)

In remote and uncertain circumstances, there is something to be said for using just one of the two ropes to rig the entire anchor. Having a rope completely free of the anchor might simplify some emergency procedures, and it means (with some faffing to be sure, including untying from one of the ropes) that the leader could, in extremis, stretch a lead to the absolute full rope length.

one note is that the option #2 (2 piece anchor + 1 piece) also allows you to make full use of the rope in an emergency as long as your top 2 pieces are good ... just unclove the single 3rd piece

also it works pretty well when taking up the second in autoblock as the separation between the ropes allow you to flake each half rope individually over each tie in point without too much faff

;)

This is from A Manual of Modern Rope Techniques by Nigel Shepherd:

Tying in to anchors.