Interesting Article Relating to "Clutch and Plummet" Autolock Descender Incidents

[paul]

A posting from climber and author Andy Kirkpatrick relating to "Limbic Hijack" and how this affects the usage of many autolock descenders (and other actions where a panic reaction occurs). It includes a story of his first experience of a Petzl Stop and how things didn't go as expected, luckily on the surface in a shop with a well-known caver.

andykirkpatrick.substack.com/p/limbic-hijack

 

[aricooperdavis]

"Training it out" is really hard, because you almost never lose control of your speed on a descent, so you very rarely actually test what your reaction would be to finding yourself unexpectedly in freefall. The closest I've come is in a mine in Cornwall where the in-situ rope went from thick mud to very clean and wet. I wasn't using my friction crab, as the rope was too muddy, so I fell quite a distance before I managed to get my arm up to apply more friction. I'm glad it was a reasonably long pitch, as had it been <10m I think I would have hit the floor before I got back under control.

 

[andrewmcleod]

This is part of why I almost always use a braking karabiner (or at least my Freino) these days despite originally never using one - I find the difference between 'super fast' and 'super slow' is less with a braking karabiner than without one. I still remember hitting a wet patch of rope going down the big pitch in Alum during Eurospeleo 2016 and dropping several metres and _then_ the stretch and bounce and generally scaring the crap out of myself...