'What if' or 'Shit happens'
- Thread starter Fulk
- Start date
cavermark
New member
cavermark said:owd git said:would you still have enough finger on the one hand for your lord to acknowledge a prayer if both hands were put together in the 'correct' manner?
You'd probably only need one finger to make an appropriate gesture to the lord in those circumstances!?
Spooky coincidence that that was my post number 666.......
TheBitterEnd
Well-known member
JasonC said:Well Fulk, that certainly generated some discussion - some of it useful
Assuming this is not a totally hypothetical scenario - what did you do ??
Or did it happen to a 'friend' ...?
I've been wondering that too
Subpopulus Hibernia
Active member
Well, since this thread has mostly descended into anarchy I might as well throw in my contribution
What if you are underground with a crate of chickens, two wolves, Rolf Harris and a scout group of 24 individuals. You are at a large lake and must get everyone across in a small inflatable dinghy. The dinghy is capable of carrying yourself, a crate of chickens and one wolf, or yourself, Rolf and nine scouts. The wolves can attack the scouts but if 11 scouts gang up on a wolf then they can club it to death with rocks. If half the scouts are able to swim across the lake five times each before catching hypothermia, how do you get everyone across the lake without having to make an appearance at the coroners court?
What if you are underground with a crate of chickens, two wolves, Rolf Harris and a scout group of 24 individuals. You are at a large lake and must get everyone across in a small inflatable dinghy. The dinghy is capable of carrying yourself, a crate of chickens and one wolf, or yourself, Rolf and nine scouts. The wolves can attack the scouts but if 11 scouts gang up on a wolf then they can club it to death with rocks. If half the scouts are able to swim across the lake five times each before catching hypothermia, how do you get everyone across the lake without having to make an appearance at the coroners court?
Many thanks for all the sensible comments and feedback.
JasonC and TheBitterEnd:
No, neither scenario has happened to me (yet!), but ?forewarned is forearmed?.
My solutions to these dilemmas are:
1) Obviously, if you have a spare jammer you simply abandon the stuck one to sort out later and use the spare. But if you don?t have a spare (and no-one can get one up or down to you) one thing you could try ? if there is anyone below you within communicating range ? is to get them to hang on the rope in the hope that their extra weight might provide extra stretch and just give you room to manoeuvre.
If that can?t be done or fails, you could shorten your footloop or tie a loop in the rope, stand up to remove your Croll from below the knot and install it above the knot. Having unweighted the rope, you may be able to manoeuvre the stuck jammer and free it, or untie the knot; failing that, you?d have to cut the rope between the knot and the jammer . . . remembering that ?jammer going up? is equivalent to ?rope going down? ? so make sure you pull up a length of rope and clip it into your harness! Then retie the knot and carry on.
2) Here without a spare jammer you could stand up in your footloop and clip your short cow?s tail into the hand-jammer (above the knot, of course), thus taking the load off the Croll; again, you may be able to free it or untie the knot, but failing that you?d have to cut the rope as above (remembering to tie it off first), install your Croll on the rope, retie the knot and carry on.
I?ve just simulated both these scenarios in the garage and they do in fact work (so far as the rope-cutting stage).
Obviously, things would be more complicated if there was a rebelay below you and/or it was wet.
JasonC and TheBitterEnd:
No, neither scenario has happened to me (yet!), but ?forewarned is forearmed?.
My solutions to these dilemmas are:
1) Obviously, if you have a spare jammer you simply abandon the stuck one to sort out later and use the spare. But if you don?t have a spare (and no-one can get one up or down to you) one thing you could try ? if there is anyone below you within communicating range ? is to get them to hang on the rope in the hope that their extra weight might provide extra stretch and just give you room to manoeuvre.
If that can?t be done or fails, you could shorten your footloop or tie a loop in the rope, stand up to remove your Croll from below the knot and install it above the knot. Having unweighted the rope, you may be able to manoeuvre the stuck jammer and free it, or untie the knot; failing that, you?d have to cut the rope between the knot and the jammer . . . remembering that ?jammer going up? is equivalent to ?rope going down? ? so make sure you pull up a length of rope and clip it into your harness! Then retie the knot and carry on.
2) Here without a spare jammer you could stand up in your footloop and clip your short cow?s tail into the hand-jammer (above the knot, of course), thus taking the load off the Croll; again, you may be able to free it or untie the knot, but failing that you?d have to cut the rope as above (remembering to tie it off first), install your Croll on the rope, retie the knot and carry on.
I?ve just simulated both these scenarios in the garage and they do in fact work (so far as the rope-cutting stage).
Obviously, things would be more complicated if there was a rebelay below you and/or it was wet.
Mike Hopley
New member
Fulk said:
Note there are quite a few things that can replace a jammer or Croll:
- Any similar device, e.g. traxion
- A foot jammer (Pantin)
- Prusik knots tied with the rope below, spare cord, or tape (e.g. your chest harness!)
- A Stop replaces a Croll
- A Remy or Garda hitch replaces a Croll, and requires only two carabiners
- The hand jammer can be neglected entirely by footlocking (!)
These replacements operate with varying degrees of safety. Also some don't combine well -- e.g. I don't think it's possible to footlock if you've also replaced the Croll with a Stop or carabiners.
In my experience (just practising, not in a real situation) a traxion can be used in lieu of a foot-jammer, but not so easily as a chest-jammer; in the event of the latter breaking, I guess your best bet (if you've got a traxion) would be to use the traxion as a hand-jammer and the foot-jammer in place of the Croll . . . though if it broke mid-pitch, it might be quite tricky to organize it!
Mike Hopley
New member
Fulk said:
Yes, I think so too.
Conversely, some options (e.g. Remy hitch) can replace a Croll but might not work well as a hand jammer (although I've never actually tried. Hmm....).
The really fun part of your scenario is when the Croll gets stuck. This is a problem no matter how many backups you have, since you can't remove your Croll without taking off your harness, which is obviously crazy-dangerous -- but has been done, as this classic caving tale relates!
Hence your logical solution, where you cut the rope if necessary.
Bottlebank
New member
If you are using a standard UK frog rig then there is a way of removing your harness on rope while ascending, next to last resort perhaps and takes a little time, and much more difficult when cold, wet and exhausted than in a dry warm practice situation. Better than dying though. Takes around five minutes in comfortable surroundings. A couple of spare krabs make it a lot easier.
First, get rid of all excess gear, tackle bags etc, clip to belay.
Next fashion a temporary harness from the rope below you, a figure of eight and a y-hang below it essentially, step into into all three loops and then move the knots up the rope until they are just below the croll, try and keep them snug around waist and legs as much as you can, get as much slack out of the three loops as you can. Clip your Stop into your cows tails belay knot (i.e. the middle one) and through both knots, which is where the extra krab or two are handy. Install your Stop on the rope just below your chest jammer.
Now you can take your harness off.
Very hard in practice because your harness is weighted and your new belay point will inevitably be as much as a foot or so below the old one - you might even have to cut it off BUT if you are able to climb up a foot or two and clip your new harness directly into a belay - using your short cows tail or a couple of krabs, or whatever, and thus unweighting your "old" harness it becomes a viable escape method.
When we worked this out twenty odd years ago our starting point was "What could you do with a standard rig to replace your harness mid rope" - i.e. no spare kit.
Why did we bother? One of the lads I was caving with at the time had a problem, he was basically using an off the shelf setup but his pride and joy was his home sewn harness. Near the top of a pitch it decided to unsew itself, fortunately he had hold of the traverse at the pitch head at the time and he was able to climb out, and wander off shopping for a new one. We decided to try and work out if you could improvise a harness should you realise yours had or was about to fail, and a jammer stuck under a knot was one of the things we thought about.
We eventually decided on balance it was much better to make sure you don't start shoving jammers hard into knots. If anyone can improve on it I'd love to hear about it.
Bottlebank
New member
BTW, if anyone is daft, anal or dedicated enough to want to try this your starting point is to learn how to improvise a sit harness from SRT rope, then work out how to do it mid rope etc. Do try this at home - first - not underground. I can't draw so won't be providing any easy to follow diagrams
blackholesun
New member
Indeed a scary story.
Mike, I don't understand why the harness would have to be removed if the croll was jammed. If you had a spare carabiner, couldn't you could clip it through the harness loops that the D-maillon passes through? It could be clipped through the security link, the cows tails and the stop carabiner. The D-maillon could then be removed with the offending croll.
Granted, you'd be cross loading a crab, but as they're rated (in this manner) to more than a croll, it seems to be safer then getting out of a harness mid pitch.
Mike, I don't understand why the harness would have to be removed if the croll was jammed. If you had a spare carabiner, couldn't you could clip it through the harness loops that the D-maillon passes through? It could be clipped through the security link, the cows tails and the stop carabiner. The D-maillon could then be removed with the offending croll.
Granted, you'd be cross loading a crab, but as they're rated (in this manner) to more than a croll, it seems to be safer then getting out of a harness mid pitch.
Bottlebank
New member
blackholesun said:
In our case we never thought of that
Mike Hopley
New member
blackholesun said:
Good idea; might not be possible in practice, depending on how much space is available in the harness loops and cowstail loop. But it would probably work.
I think almost anything is safer than getting out of a harness mid pitch.
In particular, you can cut the rope to release the Croll, as described by Fulk.
JasonC
Well-known member
OK here's another unlikely scenario to fret about...
You're last one down on the second pitch of a pull-through trip, when you somehow lose your descender (I don't know, it drops, it breaks, something....). It's a proper free-hanging pitch so a rope-only classic abseil is unappealing, what to do ?
My thought was that if you had 3, preferably 4, spare crabs/maillons to hand you could improvise a rack - either by clipping them all to your D-maillon (IF you could find space on it) and snaking the rope through them. ie working from L to R, have the rope go from R to L through each metal loop in turn.
Alternatively, link crabs/maillons in a chain and do something similar vertically.
Has anyone tried anything like this ? Did it work ?
I had half a mind to try this out up a tree, but then it started raining....
You're last one down on the second pitch of a pull-through trip, when you somehow lose your descender (I don't know, it drops, it breaks, something....). It's a proper free-hanging pitch so a rope-only classic abseil is unappealing, what to do ?
My thought was that if you had 3, preferably 4, spare crabs/maillons to hand you could improvise a rack - either by clipping them all to your D-maillon (IF you could find space on it) and snaking the rope through them. ie working from L to R, have the rope go from R to L through each metal loop in turn.
Alternatively, link crabs/maillons in a chain and do something similar vertically.
Has anyone tried anything like this ? Did it work ?
I had half a mind to try this out up a tree, but then it started raining....
bograt
Active member
JasonC said:
Done it on trees with two crabs, for demonstration (along with "classic" and "flying angel"), and undergroud for desperation, just make sure the rope tightens up the screw gate crabs!!. Also prusicked up High Tor on Knots!!.
(I suppose I am a pioneer of SRT!) circa 1973!!.
