Over the Edge is a company that puts on fundraisers where they rig up buildings, and people raise money for whatever organization, and then rappel off. It's not srt but the company is run? by some long-time cavers so naturally when it came to Alabama we (the Huntsville Cave Rescue Unit) were asked to volunteer because they need lots of help on rope, and we're basically trained already just have to learn their system. It uses two ropes, and is to rope access standards so kinda different from caving! Both ropes are kinda squishy and much more maliable than we use for caving but remind me of your ropes...which makes sense because guess what the rappel device was?! If you guess "a stop!" you are right! So there you go now I have stop experience for real. 135ft rappel. My thoughts on a stop now that I've actually had some decent experience with it... 1) It sucks. 2) Yeah, really don't like it.

Okay for real...
- Heats up SO DAMN FAST. Holy crap...almost burning my hands through the leather gloves, on only 135 ft? I wasn't pushing it past the 1m/sec "safe speed"
- Difficult to very fine tune control, which I am used to that being effortless on a rack. This could perhaps come with more experience, but having about an inch of "squeeze distance" for the handle, rather than working with multiple bars and 12"+ definitely means fine tune comes from the brake hand unlike a rack which you adjust with the bars, should slide through your brake hand.
- Even on the rope used (meant for stops, unlike our pit ropes here) I'm not sure how it got it's name as a stop. You let go you still move down the rope. "Creeper" would be a better name for it, yeah it'll slow if you let go but it doesn't stop. In fact (and I used three stops over the course of the two days) To make it (mostly) stop, have to actually pull out the handle to make it bite into the rope.
- Between needing to squeeze to go, and utilizing the brake hand more for the fine tune control, my hands were actually a bit tired after 135ft!

So anyway...experience gained...and very glad we dont use them here.

Oh also, LOL I had to check sooo often that it was rigged right because damn you rig it bottom-up! haha (I've seen/run rope through a stop before this, so I knew how to rig it onto the rope, but still messed with my brain!)

Me going "over the edge" on the training volunteer rappel

Rappeling - Me on Rope 4 by Sunguramy, on Flickr


On rappel

Rappeling - Me on Rope 7 by Sunguramy, on Flickr

And then day of the actual rappelling I was on the belay/gear runner team

Belayers 7 by Sunguramy, on Flickr

Woot gear heaven!

Gear Heaven 1 by Sunguramy, on Flickr

Amy said:

- Heats up SO DAMN FAST. Holy crap...almost burning my hands through the leather gloves, on only 135 ft? I wasn't pushing it past the 1m/sec "safe speed"

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Wet the rope and use thinner rope.

Amy said:

- Difficult to very fine tune control, which I am used to that being effortless on a rack. This could perhaps come with more experience, but having about an inch of "squeeze distance" for the handle, rather than working with multiple bars and 12"+ definitely means fine tune comes from the brake hand unlike a rack which you adjust with the bars, should slide through your brake hand.

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Use a braking carabiner (the photo shows you aren't using one and this results in a lack the fine control you mention).

Amy said:

- Even on the rope used (meant for stops, unlike our pit ropes here) I'm not sure how it got it's name as a stop. You let go you still move down the rope. "Creeper" would be a better name for it, yeah it'll slow if you let go but it doesn't stop. In fact (and I used three stops over the course of the two days) To make it (mostly) stop, have to actually pull out the handle to make it bite into the rope.

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It's called a Stop because the dead-man's handle means if you lose grip on the feed rope you don't plummet to your death as would be the case with a figure 8, ATC, rack or bobbin. It's not "Stop" as in "Cease moving*" but "Stop" as in "Stops you dying". [*If the rigging had been done with pre-loved caving rope then it's most likely that you would indeed halt if you released both hands mid-pitch due to impact trauma rendering you unconscious].

Amy said:

- Between needing to squeeze to go, and utilizing the brake hand more for the fine tune control, my hands were actually a bit tired after 135ft!

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Use them more/go to the gym.

Amy said:

So anyway...experience gained...and very glad we dont use them here.

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We do use them here. This is UKCaving, not USACaving.

Basically what Chris said...

If you were trying to fine tune your speed with the stop handle then the people who taught you have got it very wrong. That's not how the stop was designed to work. Slowing down, speeding up and stopping is controlled by the hand holding the rope. Think of it as the parking brake on a car, you don't usually apply it until the car has stopped moving... This may also be the reason it was getting unreasonably hot. Easing on the stop action would have rapidly built up the levels of friction and heat would have been the inevitable consequence.

Like chris said, the stop is designed to save your life should the worst ever happen and you drop the rope or lose your ability to control it. It's not really a speed control and it isn't designed to be used to allow mid rope manoeuvres. If you want to stop mid rope then do so with the breaking hand and then release the stop handle. Then lock-off

I'm still just learning but the way I've been taught seems to make sense to me...

Well done on getting involved in charity work. Good karma for you and your grotto. Did you manage to get any new members out of it?

Sent from my HTC Sensation using Tapatalk 2

Bit like a throwback to when Stops first appeared here. (Britain).

We learned how to use them properly eventually, but not before some wag labelled them the 'Petzl Go'.....

Nice thread, Amy how did the fund raising go?

135' is about 40 meters?

I see a braking krab on the right hip gear loop of the harness?

The difficulty of the stop handle could be because of the height from the body.  My Stop is, a rough guess, 15cm closer to the harness than yours seems to be, so much less strenuous to grip.

Did you belay the guy with a prosthetic leg?

Again I think this may be a question of Amys body shape that makes it a bit more difficult, thats probbably why was further away from her.

But stops are great normally, granted the only other thing I have abbed with before was with a metal crab (long time ago, boring storey). My handle hand never gets tired but I do admit my breaking hand does on thicker rope and long single drop pitches. The great thing about a stop is though you can easily lock it off and rest your hand should you need to. I even sometimes hold the breaking rope with my other hand and shake off the tired arm.

Around 80% of cavers use them here (at a guess) so they must be okay and your official rope access guys as well as ours all use them too. As people already mentioned the main advantage is, get knocked out, your not dead though you will have to be rescued sharpish due to supsension trauma.

I dont follow Alex?  body shape?

re: body shape: top heavy people (like me, see my own personal "rack" for why ) you fall back away from the rope on rappel, it takes a lot of core strength to hold close to the rope. Normally when I rappel I teather my chestroller to they eye in the rack to hold me up better.

We were on 10mm, not the usual thick and stiff stuff for caving, 'cause it was all put together compliance with all the national safety standards here for rope access. (NOT caving). Remember - this is our national rope access safety standards it has to comply with which yes is different than caving...the rope doesn't get wet (never heard of needing the rope wet, care to explain more on that? Seems awefully inconvienient. And wet rope would reduce friction the rope provides...so you'd need to squeeze less to maintain same safe rappel speed, and to maintain the same rappel speed the friction between the rope and stop would have to remain constant...so I'm confused) and the backup on the second line is an ASAP. And yes, we did use a friction 'biner sorry if I use my silly American terms

LOL sorry if I offended anyone, I went into it excited and thinking I'll get another tool in my toolbox for rappeling. But honestly...I'd never bother owning a stop. I was honestly suprised at how poorly they performed. I could see heat being much less an issue in cold wet caves though. Not saying they are not safe or anything like that. If I want something small I'll use my microrack. =) To each their own.

Alex - you can quickly and easily lock off racks too. =)

Also if you want to stop from dying on a rack if you get knocked out, use a French wrap =)

And yeah we got a few folks who loved it, so we told them to check out our rescue unit as we are actually teaching a SRT course end of next month. So we might get some new vertical cavers!

I didn't belay the guy with the prosthetic leg, that's why I was able to take the photo

The fundraiser was a huge success, I believe the YMCA will have Over the Edge back next year. It really is a great idea and carried out very well. I was happy to help out!

Amy said:

We were on 10mm, not the usual thick and stiff stuff for caving, 'cause it was all put together compliance with all the national safety standards here for rope access. (NOT caving). Remember - this is our national rope access safety standards it has to comply with which yes is different than caving...the rope doesn't get wet (never heard of needing the rope wet, care to explain more on that? Seems awefully inconvienient. And wet rope would reduce friction the rope provides...so you'd need to squeeze less to maintain same safe rappel speed, and to maintain the same rappel speed the friction between the rope and stop would have to remain constant...so I'm confused) and the backup on the second line is an ASAP. And yes, we did use a friction 'biner sorry if I use my silly American terms

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Having a wet rope will mean that the stop does not get as hot which was one of your original complaints.

Simon already mentioned the correct use of the handle but your comment above suggests that you haven't followed this. The handle is not supposed to be used to provide variable pressure on the rope. It is supposed to be either held in completely or released completely. So if it is held in completely then the stop part of the bobbin has no braking effect. Instead you control braking with the right hand - usually by passing the tail end through a braking carabiner against which you can vary the pressure by moving your right arm. You don't vary the squeeze on the handle to control the descent speed. You control the speed with your right hand instead.

If you do only squeeze the handle in part way then this will again be a source of additional friction heat.

Plenty of people in the UK use racks. I find that a rack gives a much nicer descent than a stop but that a stop is quicker to put on the rope and easier to use around rebelays and deviations. In part I think this might simply be due to the design of rack commonly availably over here. The hyper bars you use are not commonly used here which is a shame as I think they look to solve most of the difficulty of locking off a rack.

The other issue of course is weight and bulk. Racks tend to be bigger and heavier which might not be a consideration in America where you chuck a rope down a big hole and off you go but is a consideration in the UK where you might have lots of tight narrow passage before you get anywhere near a pitch.

Both bits of kit have their place.

Yeah 'tis why I say I'll stick with a micro in place of a stop. I have a dual hyperbar one, super easy to lock off (litterally two seconds) and prettymuch the size of a stop. I really do agree that one reason racks are not enjoyed over there is (no offence intented) the typical 5-bar petzl is a crappy rack. *I* wouldn't have fun on that thing LOL. If you don't see things like the BMS micro there....I can understand why with your rigging you tend to hate racks.

So for the heat dissipation, you have to keep the rope wet so you have to dunk it in water somewhere before getting to the cave, or rig in a waterfall or something. (for wetting it, how long does that last if you have multiple people going down the rope?)

And for the speed control, you are *always* using your braking hand. Thanks for clearing up you don't control speed with the handle on the stop at all.  Perhaps not being fully depressed was part of why it wouldn't spring back to the "stopped" position for me.

LOL sorry still not seeing the advantage over a proper rack! As you say Andrew, I'm thinking with a proper rack it would solve your typical issues with it.

Amy were you wearing a caving sit harness or a climbing harness? 
 

Amy said:

still not seeing the advantage over a proper rack

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A Stop is a spanner, it is a pulley, it is a bobbin, it is a third connection point if used with additional krab to load and undo recalcitrant krabs, it can be used as a slider to keep you close on traverse lines, it is a rope tensioner for tyroleans/zip lines, it is major element in a 3:1 z-rig for hauling, a 6:1 v-lift for rescue, a substitute for a jammer for self-rescue, it facilitates tandem abseiling with an unconscious person to pass rebelays when used in combination with another, etc.; it is all these things and more.

It is a multi-purpose piece of kit, with proper training, and this characteristic means cavers continue to use them here, if not there.

WAAAY more useful than a rack.

So, if you're "still not seeing the advantage over a proper rack" you'll benefit from training in the use of the Petzl Stop, for sure, and you'll have a nice day doing it.

In my admittedly very limited experience I've not been told to wet the rope when using a stop. Ok I've only done one course and that was about 15 years ago and a bit of other srt before that (completely untrained) but I didn't notice the stop getting particularly hot on a 50 ft pitch.

Crickleymal, how old is your Stop? If it's 15+ years old then probably the reason it's not getting hot in use is because the friction surfaces have worn away with masses of use. A Stop has a usage of about 5,000m of abseiling (depending on rope type/grit etc.) before replacement parts are called for.

Amy said:

Yeah 'tis why I say I'll stick with a micro in place of a stop. I have a dual hyperbar one, super easy to lock off (litterally two seconds) and prettymuch the size of a stop. I really do agree that one reason racks are not enjoyed over there is (no offence intented) the typical 5-bar petzl is a crappy rack. *I* wouldn't have fun on that thing LOL. If you don't see things like the BMS micro there....I can understand why with your rigging you tend to hate racks.

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You are making some big assumptions there.

Racks are not hated over here. A significant minority of cavers use them, and used properly they are safe and convienient. Just like a Stop is.
And a 'crappy Petzl' (is it crappy because it's not American?) is far more suited to the average British caving situation than a monster 'bigger is better' American one. Which is why you don't see them this side of the pond.

Your comments don't ring true for British caving at all.

cap 'n chris said:

Crickleymal, how old is your Stop? If it's 15+ years old then probably the reason it's not getting hot in use is because the friction surfaces have worn away with masses of use. A Stop has a usage of about 5,000m of abseiling (depending on rope type/grit etc.) before replacement parts are called for.

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I guess mine has done ooh, let me think, 400m total in the last 25 years. I did say "in my very limited experience"

cap 'n chris said:

A Stop is a ... third connection point if used with additional krab to load and undo recalcitrant krabs,

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Could you elaborate a little on this usage?

Amy makes some valid points about the Stop, and immediately gets told she's wrong.

(1) Difficult to control: okay, this was a fair cop. Use the rope, not the handle, to fine-tune your abseil.

(2) It gets hotter than a rack: she's right; a rack is better at dissipating heat. However, if you keep your hand away from the friction surfaces, it shouldn't be a problem.

(3) Creeping, not stopping: she's right, depending on the rope. It's usually effective as a "safety brake", but sometimes not as a "convenience brake" (e.g. going hands-free as you clip in to a rebelay). There are other devices that do this better -- e.g. the SRTE Stop (bulky and heavy, though).

(4) Tiring / discomfort of the left hand: she's right. Sure, you can live with it, but does anyone actually like this? Again, the SRTE is better here.


Confirmation bias is a wonderful thing. Humans are hard-wired to resist anything that could change their long-held beliefs. That's why we have the following situation:

-- The Americans use racks and think Europeans are daft & unsafe using bobbins.

-- The Brits use Stops and think Americans are quaint for using racks, and the French are insane for using Simples.

-- The French use Simples and think we Brits, with our Stops and separate "safety cords", are parochial.

-- The Polish use Stops, or Simples with a prusik back-up, and think the French are bonkers.

-- The Aussies use their own massive SRTE descenders, and don't give a crap what the rest of the world does, secure in the knowledge that they are Aussie and therefore awesome.

A "Brit" and been using a Simple for the past eleven years 

"Simples"

AA Speleo said:

A "Brit" and been using a Simple for the past eleven years 

"Simples"

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Me too, since 2009. 

...just keep it quiet, as I don't want to let down the stereotype.