Ladders and ladder safety

[Mark Wright]

Electron ladders aren't really designed to be left in caves long term; this is likely to result in deterioration.

A properly constructed ladder (whether commercially or home made), which is carefully inspected for physical damage following each trip - and looked after correctly (i.e. cleaned & dried as soon as possible after use and occasionally dipped in a preserving substance such as lanolin) is very unlikely to fail.

Many examples of ladders breaking seem not to have had one or more of the above points properly adhered to.

Have to agree completely with Pitlamp.

The only broken ladders I've ever seen have been left down a cave for a long time. I've never known 'C' links breaking though.

I was brought up on ladders and did a lot of the Dales and Derbyshire classics on them before SRT really took off. GG main shaft was my most memorable - not just the climb but carrying a 400' lifeline rope and about 16 ladders up to the entrance on the back of my motorbike, with permission before you ask. The ride up there was more of a workout than the ladder climb.

We used to have a regular Tuesday night ladder making session at the TSG hut when I first joined in the early 80's. The TSG used to make them for Caving Supplies before I joined.

One of the problems was with the wire which often had a hemp core. It would get wet and then start to corrode the wire from the inside out so not always noticed during the visual examination. If ladders are stored in, e.g. a damp cellar, the core would never dry out. I wonder where the ladders MarkS mentions were stored after use?

I'm sure there was a serious accident due to this and Caving Supplies decided not to sell them anymore probably down to potential liabilty issues. I don't think it was one of theirs that failed.   

Another issue was kinking the wires when coiling, particularly when using ladders with a 10" rung spacing where, as robjones mentions, the 'C' links are joined together to finish it off. Much less of a problem with 12" rung spacings. We had a combination of 10" and 12" spacing ladders when we rigged GG which did send me out of rhythm a few times.

Another problem was caused by uncoiling ladders by dropping them down the pitch instead of uncoiling them from the top. The ladder could fall through the gap between the rungs and when it was subsequently stepped on - because you didn't notice it - the wire would be permanently damaged.

I love the sound they make as they clank about when you climb them or as you scrape against the side of the passage with 2 on each arm. I always remembered the sound of them from the Beneath the Pennines films when I first started caving.

They might be 18th Century but I'd still rather do P8 and Giants on ladders. There are a few short lengths in the Ice Cream Trail in Rowter Hole that are definitely the most appropriate tool for the job.

I must confess to being grossly negligent in Giants as I don't usually bother with a lifeline on Garlands though I would on Geology.

With regard to the CRO lecture on potentially fatal falls of more than 2m, in industry, the majority of fatal falls are less than 2m.

Would it be considered grossly negligent to regularly free climb Idiots Leap in P8 without a lifeline?

I'm sure any insurance company would try their damnedest to get out of having to pay out ?5M.

Assuming the plaintiff didn't have a gun to their head and was just stupid enough to climb a ladder without a lifeline then I can't see any civil claim getting very far.

Mark

 

[Hammy]

A good few years ago i did a caving trip with a club into Ireby Fell Caverns. They rigged for SRT down all the pitches, except for the last pitch down (Rope Pitch) which they insisted on bringing a ladder for (because the club always did it that way!), which was duly climbed without lifeline.

Why on earth they didn't take a 15m rope which takes up less space and means people aren't going to fall off the thing I have absolutely no idea!

Quite bizarre! Didn't cave with that club after that.

 

[ZombieCake]

Complacency and arrogance are both excellent ways to feed an ambulance.  Ladders are a lot stronger than the icy fingers that cling to them.  Muddy rungs are sponsored by the hooded skeletal bloke with a scythe.  Use a lifeline and a dollop of common sense.

 

[NewStuff]

An accident waiting to happen? Well, for those of us oldies who spent most of their caving lives we depended on them for the many thousands of feet we climbed, up & down some pretty huge pitches, and failure was a very rare occurrence. Lifelines were always used, not because we thought the ladders would break but in case something caused us to fall off - a falling rock, or a sudden surge of water.

I did say I understood that back in ye olde dayes, there wasn't much else. However, irrespective of your age or experience, bombing down an electron is an accident waiting to happen, and those who have "used them for years" are likely to get complacent and do something silly (IME, having watched it happen a few times). IS SRT more of a faff on small pitches? I don't think so, but even if you do, it's safer. You have to really try hard to fall off a rope, but can fall off a ladder very easily, despite trying very hard not to.

 

[Pitlamp]

Electron ladders are an accident waiting to happen.

I get that before SRT, there wasn't much else, but using one today is like riding a pony everywhere when we have cars and bikes. It'll get you there, but it's got a mind of it's own. This is all coming from someone that hates SRT as well... but not as much as I hate Electrons.

It is more gear, because if you are life-lining as you should be, you're already packing a significant percentage of your SRT kit anyway.  I'll drop fixed ladders without a lifeline, but they generally don't try to swing around and up on themselves.

Completely spot on.

Ladders are 18th century shite. Use SRT. It's 20th century technology, admittedly, but the way to go.

Both are useful and are regularly used. The opinion immediately above isn't especially helpful because it gives no actual information.

What about a surface dig? Does it really matter that you have the minor inconvenience of carrying a lifeline with the ladder? It's often logistically easier not to use SRT in such situations. Done competently it's perfectly safe of course.

Zombiecake makes a very useful point about complacency and arrogance, which we can all take on board.

Mark Wright's post above has (as is often the case) huge value.

I think an accident which really caused awareness of why hemp cored wire is unsuitable took place on the pitch from Roof Tunnel down into the Kingsdale Master Cave. That was (I think) late 60s, although I wasn't  caving then. (There is written material about this accident in the caving literature of the time; probably in CRG and / or Speleologist magazine, from memory.) I do remember coming across some X ray photographs of the equipment in question which were in a large collection of material from Jack Myers' estate. Cavers took it seriously, investigated properly and learned from it. I've not seen a ladder made from hemp cored wire for a great many years.

 

[Ian Ball]

Is that in Race Against Time?

 

[Pitlamp]

Is that in Race Against Time?

Good point Ian - I'd forgotten that. Yes, probably.

 

[MJenkinson]

So, how to reconcile light weight and no faff with safety using ladders? Any ideas/advice?

I am not sure you can.  Lightweight and no faff is probably always going to have the issue of a greater magnitude of consequence if it goes wrong (note consequence not risk of occurrence), than say carrying more gear.

Faster will keep you warmer, offer less chance of hypothermia and associated mistakes caused by poor judgement.  A lifeline is heavier but will help protect you if the ladder fails.  SRT is arguably a safer way of getting up and a down a pitch (in my head anyway) but it is more faffy in constricted caves.  You will be slower.

I think you just have to stack the odds in your favour.  If you are going to use a ladder without a lifeline then try and limit the chances of it failing; multiple anchors, proper regular inspection, good maintenance, best practice with regards coiling / deployment etc.

A little like more advanced cave diving, by the time you get to the point where you are considering these techniques - then you should have the personal experience to make the call which suits you / your group. And be willing to live with the consequences.

 

[Simon Wilson]

Hemp cored wire was rejected as unsuitable early on in the development of electron ladders.

The technology of making ladders was developed and taken to its high point by caving clubs and caving clubs made the best ladders.

The clubs that made ladders also maintained them meticulously because they had tacklemasters who knew their job and had a good understanding of the technology.

I was taught how to make ladders by cavers who were also engineers who worked in the aerospace industry and I have had an interest in the technology of vertical caving ever since.

Cavers who were not caving before SRT came into use are unlikely to have a full appreciation of how ladders were used by expert exponants of the art and that is evident in this thread.

 

[Pitlamp]

A lot of clubs provide both ladders and lifelines as well as SRT ropes for their members' use. I can't fault Simon's comments above.

Simon - do you remember the brief evolutionary foray along the lines of wire walking? I'm pretty sure this was Burnley based cavers. I can just remember this as a child. There was a bloke with a beard called Jim Penney (I think). I have vague memories of him showing me the benefits of short bits of tinned wire with ferrules on, like the longer lengths they were using for pitches at the time. He demonstrated the value of the short (stiffer) lengths of wire to me as etriers for aid climbing at Malham. You could use them to reach up to pegs or bolts that would normally be out of reach to those using normal etriers.

 

[grahams]

I used Jim's wire invention a few times without a lot of success. During testing we tried the Cow buttress at Ilkley but couldn't get off the top due to the wire lying against the sloping rock and we attempted Simpson Pot. The latter taught us that climbing blindly down wet pitches on 1/8 inch wire was not easy as you can't see sufficiently to safely place the ascender block on the wire. Jim started to use thicker wire (3/16 inch IIRC) and improvements were made to the ascender blocks used to climb the wire but there were three main problems - psychological hanging on a single strand of wire, down climbing was as time consuming as climbing up and the ascender blocks required a lot of hand strength and care to place on the ferrule correctly. In addition, when placing a block, you only had a single point of contact with the wire.

Nevertheless I believe that one of the lads soloed Nettle Pot and Long Kin west.

 

[Pitlamp]

Thanks Grahams - that's really interesting (and jogs my memory further).

That was a time of great innovation and experimentation - concurrent with a lot of experimentation in all sorts of variants on the theme of single rope technique.

I think it's useful for anyone who expounds the virtues of what most people accept as the "norm" for SRT at the moment at least to be aware of what led up to the present status quo. Such awareness is also potentially useful in future for those seeking to evolve vertical techniques; knowledge from previous experiments, although not considered a success at the time, sometimes has relevance going forwards.

 

[Simon Wilson]

Ah, Jim Penny, a legend and a hero. He was a highly accomplished climber as well as a caver and inspired many younger cavers and climbers. One of his feats was on the day of a club trip down Penygent Pot when he went early and free climbed the whole cave solo down and back out.

I don't know if wire walking was invented by Burnley Caving Club but they took it further than any other club. It was after ladder making changed from using ferrules to using araldite. The rungs of ferrule ladders would wear at the holes until one slipped over the ferrule. The club was left with ferrule ladders with slipped rungs but which still had good wire. So the rungs were cut off and wire walking blocks were made. Some of the young and keener members of the club were enthusiastic about wire walking and so went on to make specially walking wires.

I think it might have been Pete Hartley who did most wire walking and did a few big solo trips.

There were a few incidents when people stepped up without engaging the block properly and one snapped foot loop. All this was watched with disapproval by some older club members until the wires were all confiscated on the order of the committee.

Burnley had at the time a thriving high tech engineering industry with firms such as Lucas Aerospace, Michelin, Mullard and nearby Rolls Royce, General Electric and British Aerospace. Several BCC members worked in that industry and so had advantages over other clubs. Earby Pothole Club was similar and the two clubs cooperated to some extent and made the very finest ladders.

 

[grahams]

In my experience, the main problem with lifelineless ladder climbing was complacency. A 10 foot fall onto rock in the dark will probably result in serious injury. On a short pitch the danger isn't as in yer face as on a hundred footer and there is therefore a temptation to dispense with a lifeline.

This complacency resulted in a near death experience (NDE) which makes me shudder to this day. Whilst climbing a tatty old ladder on the Gingling entrance pitch, the ladder end failed at the top rung probably due to bending of the wire as describe in Rob's post. Thankfully the belay wire was wrapped several times round the belay. The wire at the other side of the ladder was in a similar state with only a couple of intact strands. We had words with the tackle master - apparently the ladder should have been retired but had been resurrected as Gingling needs a lot of ladder. Had the ladder been on any of Gingling's other short pitches there would undoubtedly have been a disaster.

 

[tony from suffolk]

Hemp cored wire was rejected as unsuitable early on in the development of electron ladders.

The technology of making ladders was developed and taken to its high point by caving clubs and caving clubs made the best ladders.

The clubs that made ladders also maintained them meticulously because they had tacklemasters who knew their job and had a good understanding of the technology.

I was taught how to make ladders by cavers who were also engineers who worked in the aerospace industry and I have had an interest in the technology of vertical caving ever since.

Cavers who were not caving before SRT came into use are unlikely to have a full appreciation of how ladders were used by expert exponants of the art and that is evident in this thread.

Spot on Simon. Hemp-cored wire was always a big no-no, not only because of the risk of internal corrosion but also because it compromised the swaging that held the "C" links. Like all equipment, safe use of electron ladders required common sense and the adoption of straightforward safety measures.

 

[paul]

They might be 18th Century but I'd still rather do P8 and Giants on ladders.

Another thing relating to use of ladders and lifeline on short pitches as opposed to SRT is beginners trips. It is much easier to teach someone how to climb a short ladder safely on the surface using the appropriate gear and then take take them for a trip into P8, Giants Hole, Swildons Hole, etc. where a lot of cave can be visited beyond one or two short pitches rather than having to sort out SRT training first.

 

[mikem]

Sludge Pit is one place where a ladder is safer than SRT, there are nasty sharp edges near where the rope hangs.

Mike

 

[HardenClimber3]

Yes, normal electron ladders don't do well in persistently damp environments...
A 'ladder' at the far end of Mistral

 

[BradW]

Is free climbing safer or more dangerous than using a ladder with or without a line. Does anyone frown upon free-climbing?

 

[cooleycr]

Ladder pitches are always done with a life-line in my experience and I think that it would be foolhardy indeed to not do this, as all it takes is a misplaced foot or a loss of hand grip (especially if it has been a long, cold, wet trip) and off you go...
You might not die, but you might land on one (or more) of your caving chums and kill/main them, how would you feel then?
Free-climbing in a cave/mine is, from experience, no different to free-climbing outside.
The obvious differences being visibility and the possibility of being blown off the rock face, but the other risks are pretty similar - a wrong decision, over-reaching, over-balancing, rock coming away in the hand (as happened to me recently in the Krypton Series in Peak cavern!), rocks falling from above...

As with most of these situations, it is often not the person having the accident who suffers...