Peak District Rigging Guide. CCPC

[andrewmcleod]

The ventilator pitch rigging now shows the fixed traverse lines and the rope lengths required to pull through, as this is the way the pitches are normally done.

Just to do my complete idiot check here (me being the idiot), when you say the 'rope lengths required to pull through', do you mean the pitch lengths are shown (13m, 17m and 16m) and should therefore be interpreted to mean either bring 2 x 17m ropes or a 34m rope?

Peak District Rigging Guide - Peak Cavern / Speedwell - White River

 

[wellyjen]

Just to do my complete idiot check here (me being the idiot), when you say the 'rope lengths required to pull through', do you mean the pitch lengths are shown (13m, 17m and 16m) and should therefore be interpreted to mean either bring 2 x 17m ropes or a 34m rope?

Peak District Rigging Guide - Peak Cavern / Speedwell - White River

It's always a good idea to ask. The rope lengths are the ones with circles around them, not the pitch lengths. So for Fever, Ventilator and Terminator you'll need 30m, 60m and 40m of rope respectively. Which could be made up of any combination you like, depending on how much spare rope you are comfortable taking to cope with a rope hang up when pulling them down.

There is no standard for drawing topos and each group that does them uses different symbols, which is why it is important to check the key to confirm their meanings. The Crewe key is included with each download. CCPC and the DCA do something similar with theirs. It would be a good idea if some one like the BCA came up with a standard rigging topo key, similar to the standards for cave surveys, but for the present, there isn't one.

You'll see that 13m for the Fever Pitch height is less than half the 30m rope length recommended. Similarly with the other two pitches, the rope length is more than twice the pitch height. There are several reasons for this. You'll need extra rope for the pull down knot and also for the knot at the end of at least the abseil rope so there is no risk of sliding off the end, if you pulled the wrong rope from the bag. In some cases, you'll want a bit extra to ensure you can reach either the next pitch, or the traverse to it, while still on the previous rope. Secondly, the pitch heights aren't guaranteed to be totally accurate, whereas the rope lengths are measured. Thirdly, for a pull through, you want too much rope, rather than too little. Once the Fever rope is pulled down, you are committed and finding you don't have enough rope to do the next two is going to leave you either waiting to be rescued, or doing some improvisation and leaving ropes behind. Ropes shrink with age and this continues slowly through their life. The tape measure used to measure them probably isn't completely traceable back to the National Physical Laboratory, so what is written on the end could be out by several metres on a long rope. The lengths given on the guide for pull through ropes are therefore on the generous side.

Hope that helps. Multi-pitch pull through trips are a lot of fun, but they are committing, so you have to be sure of what you are about before you start.
Jen

 

[wellyjen]

To add. Probably the minimum I'd take for a pull through from White River to the Trenches would be something like 30m and a 60m, or three of 30m ropes. That way, if a 30m got stuck on Fever Pitch, you could get down Terminator and Ventilator on the 60m. If the 60m, or two 30's stuck on Terminator, you've got a 30m left to hard rig Ventilator with a single rope. Only if you had both Fever and Terminator hang up, with no chance of retrieval, then it really isn't your lucky day and you would you be stuck, wondering if you should take up macrame as a hobby instead!
Now I've written this, you can guess what is guaranteed to happen to me the next trip there.

 

[andrewmcleod]

Thanks 60m seemed like a lot for a 17m pitch, but I guess it all depends for all the reasons you specify particularly, I imagine, the distance from the bottom of the pitch to the next anchors (I'd initially thought 60m was what was needed to rig the traverse and pitch as for the other pitches as it seemed long).

 

[wellyjen]

Thanks 60m seemed like a lot for a 17m pitch, but I guess it all depends for all the reasons you specify particularly, I imagine, the distance from the bottom of the pitch to the next anchors (I'd initially thought 60m was what was needed to rig the traverse and pitch as for the other pitches as it seemed long).

In practice, 55m was enough, but the Peak key holders recommend 60.

 

[wellyjen]

The safety section of the guide has been amended to replace a dead link and make it a bit clearer who to get in touch with regarding dodgy belays, artificial, or natural.
Speaking of natural belays, the symbol used for tree belays has been replaced with a creative commons one that looks more like a tree than the one I drew, which would have embarrassed a pre-school child. All the topos where trees are used to belay, plus the key have been updated.