Posted by Abby Normal
Nice photos of your "night ops"! One point though for anyone reading this thread, Walmart rope is NOT safe to climb or descend on!! Honestly, if you can not borrow the right gear and can't afford to buy it, then you should really postpone vertical exploring until you can get the right stuff. I realize that we are an adventuresome group, but vertical requires the proper gear and adequate training. Really. Joanne
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Been lectured on it countless times.
Also, I now have
>300' of rated static rope
>150' of dynamic rope
>$500 in climbing hardware, not counting rope.
I almost got hurt twice that night but it wasn't the rope that did it. Awkward positioning trying to drop down, while upside down, from the ladder, I found myself experiencing free fall twice that night.
The first time, I was on an ATC and had to do this kind of sideways inverted drop to get off the ladder and not a standard rappel. The amount of force on my brake hand and the direction of force changed when I went to free hang. When I started dropping because I was not applying enough brake pressure, I made the worse mistake of trying to pull up on the rope. I was left with had about 1.5" to assess the situation and figure it out.
Started to call out to my friends, but realized they were too far away to be able to possibly get back and catch me, or at least break my fall. That realization occurred simultaneously with my brain immediately jumping to shift 10's of thousands of useless pieces of information to the one piece that could save me, a post on this forum no less. "The rope goes up and it will do nothing, something has to lock down on the rope." IIRC I even yelled "LOCK DOWN!" while doing it. A more seasoned and less exhausted climber would probably have corrected the mistake automatically and/or not made it in the first place.
Second time, I said fuck the ATC and tried a Figure 8 twisted around and dropped me and after not making the same mistake of not braking, I applied maximum brake pressure to no effect. I ended up grabbing the rope with both hands and slowing my descent, landing surprisingly softly with both knees bent, while melting through my gloves and burning my hands.
Now I have a grigri and a bunch more experience. I just keep in mind the lever on the grigri is to go down and even if I pulled the lever, as long as my brake hand is on the rope applying pressure, it won't drop me. Yes, I've tested this.
My preferred rig:
(2010-ish long hair era)
And there's this:
I think this experience, combined with my near identical response in similar situations really put basejumping onto my agenda. If anything my brain moves too quickly for my body to react. Combined with fact I pretty much never freeze. It's always fight or flight, figure it out, react, and commit to the path. But you know us
edgeworkers are always thinking
we have what other people lack...