Titan trip (from hell) report 4/5/2024

[Maisie Syntax]

View attachment 19797
This is how it looked before the trip down titan

Total absence of green/yellow striped electrical tape I see - a tale of an incident forseen perhaps?

 

[Ben.E]

Ahh yes how could I have been soooo foolish

 

[Steve Clark]

Sounds like quite an epic that could have gone much worse!

I've never encountered that particular failure mode before - how on earth did the tail end of the hand ascender tether get into your chest ascender when the pitch rope is already in it? Did you end up with both ropes in the chest ascender, or just the tether?

It's surprisingly easy to put other things in the croll whilst the pitch rope is in there too. So far, with a Croll L, I've managed :

A ladder wire
The loose end of the narrow webbing from an AV chest harness
A dyneema footloop

I guess the compounding problem this is that by catching the tail of the foot ascender safety cord you can no longer move the foot ascender up the rope and use it do effectively de-load the croll. And it's also hard up against the knot preventing the cam opening.

Nightmare! - I'll be taping or heat shrinking the tail on my safety cord I think.

 

[Ben.E]

It's surprisingly easy to put other things in the croll whilst the pitch rope is in there too. So far, with a Croll L, I've managed :

A ladder wire
The loose end of the narrow webbing from an AV chest harness
A dyneema footloop

I guess the compounding problem this is that by catching the tail of the foot ascender safety cord you can no longer move the foot ascender up the rope and use it do effectively de-load the croll. And it's also hard up against the knot preventing the cam opening.

Nightmare! - I'll be taping or heat shrinking the tail on my safety cord I think.

That’s exactly what we’ve done to prevent this happening in the future. The main issue was due to both ropes being large in the croll it essientally cinched to the pitch rope and so even while the pitch rope was fully deweighted I could not get it open

 

[pwhole]

I've occasionally had my foot-jammer leave the rope and magically attach itself to the hauling cord of the bag I was pulling up instead - that's 'amusing'. Except when it happens in The Narrows in Nettle Pot, and the bag is below the squeeze. Didn't happen to me, but it did happen to one of our group just below me, and she was totally screwed as she'd already committed and now couldn't get her Croll off the rope, or the foot-jammer off the cord - luckily one more caver was below her, and was able to cut the hauling cord. If she'd been the last one up (or he hadn't brought a knife), I'm still not sure how we would have got that one resolved. Oxlow would hardly be practical...

 

[alanw]

I've occasionally had my foot-jammer leave the rope and magically attach itself to the hauling cord of the bag I was pulling up instead - that's 'amusing'.

Exactly the same as happened to me (see above).

 

[caving_fox]

It's surprisingly easy to put other things in the croll whilst the pitch rope is in there too. So far, with a Croll L, I've managed :

A ladder wire
The loose end of the narrow webbing from an AV chest harness
A dyneema footloop

I guess the compounding problem this is that by catching the tail of the foot ascender safety cord you can no longer move the foot ascender up the rope and use it do effectively de-load the croll. And it's also hard up against the knot preventing the cam opening.

Nightmare! - I'll be taping or heat shrinking the tail on my safety cord I think.

I believe that long hair is also quite a painful/difficult situation to resolve.

 

[Loki]

View attachment 19797
This is how it looked before the trip down titan

I’m going to check mine when I get it out of the back of the van when I’ve finished driving across France . Think I’ve also got jammers tangled in a ladder wire too.

 

[Chocolate fireguard]

This sort of thing obviously happens quite a lot.
A couple of us were late after a trip and decided to tandem Titan while derigging it.
All went well until the entrance pitch when I was in the lead and the haul cord joined the pitch rope in my Pantin. This is an obvious possibility in those circumstances if you think about it, which I didn't.
I couldn't do anything because of the weight on the rope, and my friend couldn't free the Pantin.
She did manage repeatedly to push the bag and my foot up a bit so I could take short steps. We were within 15m of the top, but it still took a while.
If it hadn't been for those footholds at the top getting us both off the rope would have been a real challenge.

 

[Ben.E]

This is starting to sound like a more common issue than I thought

 

[mrodoc]

Something similar happened to me. I was just congratulation myself on a nice smooth ascent and changeover when I found I had two ropes in my chest jammer. So annoying as the only rebelay was less than 3 metres from the head of the pitch. Took about 5 minutes to get sorted out.

 

[Fulk]

Well, nothing like this has ever happened to me, and I've never seen it happen to anyone else . . . nevertheless, it's good to be forewarned that it can – and does – happen!

Thanks for sharing this with us, and glad it all turned out OK in the end.

 

[Ben.E]

Well, nothing like this has ever happened to me, and I've never seen it happen to anyone else . . . nevertheless, it's good to be forewarned that it can – and does – happen!

Thanks for sharing this with us, and glad it all turned out OK in the end.

I’d heat wrap your tail of ur safety cord if there is one , just to be safe

 

[Pegasus]

Great thread, thanks for posting - food for thought.....