Ladders and ladder safety

[Tommy]

I wonder if it's worth attempting something similar with 5mm dyneema.

Obviously there are countless risks involved...

If anyone has any photos of wire walking they would be brilliant to see.

 

[MarkS]

I wonder if it's worth attempting something similar with 5mm dyneema.

Obviously there are countless risks involved...

I suspect this would be feasible by simply using suitable jammers. However, both that method and the wire walking technique would have the fairly severe limitations of very slow descents and a total absence of shock absorbency...

 

[Tommy]

I know this is something Henry Rockliff was looking into with Bob Mehew a few years ago, Dyneema SRT.

The shock absorbance was the main stopping point of course.

 

[Tommy]

I wonder if attaching the walking blocks or jammers to yourself with ripper sling cowstails would help enough.

A system like this is unlikely to reach industry standard levels of safety, but I suspect it could reach a point that I'd be happy with in certain scenarios.

From memory the IRATA level of quality was what Henry was aiming for, as you'd expect .

Ripper slings won't do that. And as you say there is the descent challenge...

 

[Chocolate fireguard]

I can't think of a single advantage of a wire-walking system over SRT with 13mm rope, a whale-tail and loops.

 

[Wolfo]

Well, it's not prone to sharp edges/natural rock like the rope.

 

[Chocolate fireguard]

But you daren't rig it to go over (or even near) those edges because if one of the ferrules got stuck in a crack you would be in trouble.

 

[Tommy]

Stuff like this will never be a 'one size fits all' solution.

Nothing wrong with entertaining the idea.

 

[robjones]

I remember a device invented many years ago (by someone in the Wessex IIRC) called a "Knobbly Dog" to be used as a handline, a single strand of wire with aluminium rung-type things to act as handholds. Don't think it was very successful though.

CS retailed Knobbly Dogs in the early 1980s and possibly in the late 1970s. My experience with them suggested they were an expensive alternative to a knotted rope for straightforward handline-able near-vertical features. I only ever saw one 25ft length and it was very rarely used.

 

[Aubrey]

Knobbly Dogs were good in very muddy conditions where a knotted rope  became difficult to grip.

 

[Wolfo]

Commercially made ladders tended to be made at a price whereas ladders made by clubs were made by the cavers who were going to be using them and who were prepared to devote more time to making the safest ladders they could make.

@Simon: You have a personal message 

 

[Simon Wilson]

Commercially made ladders tended to be made at a price whereas ladders made by clubs were made by the cavers who were going to be using them and who were prepared to devote more time to making the safest ladders they could make.

@Simon: You have a personal message 

Wolfo asked me a question by PM and I wrote a long reply which I posted on this thread because it was something that would be better in public. That post took some time to write and is now not showing but I don't want to write it all again - sorry.

 

[Simon Wilson]

This thread was showing posts from another thread for a few hours and I think any posts made on this thread during that period might have gone somewhere else.

 

[mikem]

If you go to your profile & "show posts", I'm afraid there's no sign of it...

Mike

 

[Badlad]

[gmod]Apologies for the inconvenience. I'm looking into how the threads became mixed up but it's not clear what happened at the moment[/gmod]

 

[Wolfo]

Wolfo asked me a question by PM and I wrote a long reply which I posted on this thread because it was something that would be better in public. That post took some time to write and is now not showing but I don't want to write it all again - sorry.

That's sad, fucking server stuff. 
But many thanks for your efforts.

 

[HardenClimber3]

A ffew thoughts...
We now know storing ladders in old fertilizer bags is very bad, aside to all the other ways they can deteriorate.
There can be a tempation to rig them from a single anchor.

Ladders are still good in a few situations (especially for novices).
For big pitches they require good technique and a lot of effort placing them, and we have got better alternatives now

If a ladder fails it is likely to be in an unexpected abrupt way compared with free climbing.
Someone could be seen to be responsible for the laddder (in contrast to piece of rock).
Whether ladders or free climbing, there needs to be caution in coercing (inexperienced) people to do things ('get on with it you wimp...')
If someone was injured climbing a ladder, under normal circumstances, without a lifeline being offerred (and in a mixed ability group insisted on...to avoid novices being inflenced by those who should know better), there seems to be enough information/advice/documentation to make that difficult to justify.

 

[andrewmcleod]

There can be a tempation to rig them from a single anchor.

Nothing wrong with rigging a ladder off a single anchor, or a bit of shoelace or whatever - they aren't safety gear (not actually recommending this but I would be happy to hang a ladder on something sketchy if it gave a better hang - possibly out of some water or something). I would always want my lifeline rigged from two anchors though (or one bombproof anchor like a massive boulder but preferably with two loops of rope etc).

I understand people who clip the ladder into one bolt and the lifeline into the other but I don't like it.

 

[Kenilworth]

There can be a tempation to rig them from a single anchor.

Nothing wrong with rigging a ladder off a single anchor, or a bit of shoelace or whatever - they aren't safety gear (not actually recommending this but I would be happy to hang a ladder on something sketchy if it gave a better hang - possibly out of some water or something). I would always want my lifeline rigged from two anchors though (or one bombproof anchor like a massive boulder but preferably with two loops of rope etc).

I understand people who clip the ladder into one bolt and the lifeline into the other but I don't like it.

In a discussion about whether or not to use a lifeline, it's a little bit silly to insist that ladders are not "safety gear". If being used without a safety line, they are the only safety gear you've got. The intended purpose of a peice of gear is not nearly as important as the purposes it is commonly or possibly put to.

The number of attachment points needed for any vertical gear is up to the judgement of the rigger.

 

[mikem]

If you're using a lifeline attached to two sound anchors then the ladder won't be safety gear, in other situations it might be...

Mike