WIN 10 DMM Screwgate Karabiners!!

[TLH]

To follow on from the above with a second, but shorter anecdote...

Around 6 months later, and now I had caught the bug, I invested in some of my own rope that was half a decent length. A nice new and shiny 60m was purchased from Inglesport with a voucher that I was given for my Birthday. I had seen that everybody (including the manufacturer) advised to soak ropes before use, and so I did. You can see what's coming, right?

A quick trip to Jingling pot to rig the main hang from the tree. The book said it was a 60m rope requirement, and so surely my new rope fits the bill. I had mostly realised that rope would shrink slightly, but had kept it in the bag on my side as I descended. I got to the bottom and by removing the knot in the bottom I could touch the ground - WINNER.

Knot removed >> Rope falls out of descender >> Rope now hangs 3-4m off the bottom and I'm no longer attached to it. Oops.

Lessons learnt. Rope shrinks. Rope stretches. Take a short spare length of small diameter "in the shit" rope.

Tom

 

[JAA]

As a 14 yr old my most eagerly lusted after Christmas present (from my completely non caving but extremely supportive parents erm I mean “Father Christmas” was an SRT kit. £150 from Inglesport. A fortune. But perhaps 2 stories which are rigging related might explain why my mother felt compelled to fork out….

In the field behind our house was a big tree.

A big tree with a rope swing using an old climbing rope my dad mate gave us. It was ace and with a little cliff face you got some impressive swings especially if using my heftier than me sister and encouraging her to only let go once you’d gained some momentum.

No SRT kit but that’s ok, I can make some Prussic loops! So I re read my scout handbook and unconcerned set off up the rope.

The first problem was when the knots slipped so far apart I couldn’t move up or down…

Lots of frantic calls to my mum and some reassurance that I was fine but could she maybe bring the big step ladders (I never met my real ladders) and a knife.

Said items duly arrive and are handed/thrown up the tree and I saw away at the loop infront of my face. What I hadn’t expected was how much of a “bang” it would go with after a few strokes of the best family carving knife and that I’d end up suspended upside down wafting backwards and forwards above my mother and now curious walkers who were passing complaining I seemed to have blinded myself…

Time for a frantic mother to take up the cutting tools and I land unceremoniously in a heap and am instructed on no account am I trying that again!

Christmas arrives and shiny SRT kit and rope are in my pillow case by the fireplace. Hoorah!

Christmas afternoon arrives and wondering what the bumping noises are my parents find me passing a rebelay from the bannisters, just below the deviation off the stairs light fitting which pulls the light shade off and then with much thrashing about dislodges the loft hatch and showers the awe struck family gathering with loft insulation, cobwebs and grit.

Rigging practice in the house is also banned….

Thankfully shortly afterwards I nagged a club to let me join and things improved immediately!

Perhaps it’s best I win to save my daughter repeating my learning. Or at least she’d have some nice krabs to do it with.

 

[JAA]

I love Elliot's book - rigging guides with attitude!

I used to have bits memorised! Something about Diccan being “no place for the hairy rope brigade with figure 8’s and wetsuits scampering about under waterfalls”

 

[TLH]

The motorised portable anchor ...

View attachment 21008
Matienzo, northern Spain, 1975.

The motorised portable anchor ...

View attachment 21008
Matienzo, northern Spain, 1975.

That's looks bomber! However, not sure i'd trust some of my friend's landy bumpers!
Is this the same Landy you have now, Dave?

 

[Space Doubt Caver]

This is a tale of a passionate exploration mixed with Stupidity, Stubbornness, Tenacity, and Determination.

Back in 2013 i had been visiting walk in walk out mines and caves for 4 years, it was August 9th 2013, when I decided I wanted to start going vertical in my explorations underground.

I had bought the most basic of kit, that at least I knew would be needed, anything I didn't buy I didn't know I needed. i bought a hand ascender a chest ascender and some krarbinas with a climbing harness and a figure 8 and a 60M 10.5mm Beal rope and a BMX helmet that was old.

Come the 10th August 2013, using Mine-ExplorerUK to find locations, I had a very well-known, specific spar mine in North Wales, in mind, that i had already visited numerous times.

The only place I had not seen in the mine was down the wormhole, where at the top was a scaff bar, big enough to cover the edges and beyond of the opening making for solid rigging, I tied a double figure-8 knot with a stopper knot, threaded my figure-8 abseiling device and attached it to my harness and off I went and abseiled happily through and down the wormhole.

Little did I know how ill-equipped I would be, I had no cows tails, no footloops, no chest harness, no rope protector, being a climber it felt normal abseiling down, but I didn't know this at the time, so I happily plodded along, and went for a little explore, after getting to the bottom.

I had planned to sleep there overnight, just for the experience of sleeping underground, I just needed space away from everyone, the experience, the peace and quiet, the underground noises, all of it was amazing I had never felt so relaxed and peaceful my head was in a great place!

So I cooked a bacon sandwich in which fuels most cavers and climbers, and used my Jetboil to make a cuppa, and went to sleep.

So next morning 11th August 2013, I woke up bearing in mind I was all by myself, alone and needed to get out, so I packed all my stuff up and attached the chest ascender to my harness with a karabiner, with no chest harness, no footloops or cowstails, so I wasn't clipped into my hand ascender, and not a clue what to do, so with raw strength, I struggled to make my way out of the mine, but i was determined beyond belief, that i was going to get out of this place, it took me some 15 whole minutes on the rope, thrutching my way up inch by inch, i had to use one hand to make sure the rope was feeding through the chest ascender, and hold onto the hand ascender with stubbornness, determination & sheer grip.


I made it back out of the well known, Spar mine, but only through sheer dumb luck, I had shared my experience on Mine-ExplorerUK, and got roasted so hard, over such a lack of experience going vertical underground, lack of kit, the fact i only rigged to one thing with no back-up, and some people just didn't like me because I went adventuring with 100% tenacity.

After taking such a hard roasting I learned real quick about SRT, and joined a club who helped me refine all the wonderful things i had learned about SRT, & Rigging.
The funniest part was the roasting, while people where trying to tell me off, there where older explorers, talking about when they used seatbelts instead of harnesses, I learned so much from my mistakes, but don't we all.

Some will even remember this, and laugh.

 

[Lara_]

I was spending a fun day bolting an obscure limestone mine in North Wales to use a somewhat of an SRT training gym. My friends had just finished bolting an entirely unnecessary 3-4m pitch which connected two levels so I crawled up a sandy slope to try it out from the top. Being the last one to descend I was given the job of derigging.

The pitch was down a hole with a questionable wobbly bar over it so they’d added a traverse line and the sensible thing to do would have been to use that to derig the pitch from the top and walk the 30 seconds extra to the bottom. I decided I wanted to practice something more fancy though so with quite a bit of jumping off the bar and swinging I managed to clip into the two bolts above the pitch in order to rerig it as a pull through. Unfortunately as I was untying the final knot the rope slipped from my hands and hit the floor, the sound of it alerting my friends. They spend the appropriate amount of time laughing at me hanging in mid air on two bolts with absolutely no way to escape before throwing up the rope.

 

[Fulk]

Hiya,

Space Doubt Caver,​

I can't quite envisage how you got out! Could you possibly provide more information about your ascending technique? Anyway good for you!! Quite a story.

 

[Space Doubt Caver]

Hiya,

Space Doubt Caver,​

I can't quite envisage how you got out! Could you possibly provide more information about your ascending technique? Anyway good for you!! Quite a story.

I was lucky that I was against a wall, I had my feet on the wall, right hand on hand ascender and left on the rope underneath me, my chest jammer attached to my harness helped me stay in position, so when I moved the hand ascender and pulled the rope through the chest ascender from underneath me so it was more like rope humping thinking back and it wasn't easy, but I was more determined to get out, but as long as I moved my chest ascender up I could move up another few inches at a time.

 

[davel]

That's looks bomber! However, not sure i'd trust some of my friend's landy bumpers!
Is this the same Landy you have now, Dave?

No, my current one is number 5. However, BOM 664K survived two trips to Matienzo despite punctures and having to fabricate replacement exhaust pipe hangers from bits of metal found by the roadside in France.

I should say though that wasn't a joke picture, we really were checking out some holes on the south side of the depression on the slopes of Beralta.

 

[davel]

... older explorers, talking about when they used seatbelts instead of harnesses

My first venture on single rope was a Maskhill Mine - Oxlow Cavern through trip in 1975. Until this time, all my vertical caving experience was 'ladder and lifeline'. My set up for Maskhill was a length of seatbelt webbing with two overhand knots to form leg loops, linked to a 'Cavers Belay Belt' with a screw gate carabineer to which was attached a Figure-of-8 descender, and ... nothing else!

Fortunately, the laddering party from from Oxlow arrived in good time and we exited without incident.

The next year I made myself a sort of rope walking setup using two Clog jammers (one at the knee and one at the ankle) and these days I use the more or less standard setup as per Dave Elliot's book.

 

[aricooperdavis]

My first entry will be a rigging tip (personal preference of course):

When packing your rope bag, tie one end into the top of the bag with a loop forming knot (e.g. rethreaded fig-8, bowline, etc.), pack the rope in, then tie the other end into your first knot with another loop forming knot.

If you're packing multiple ropes into the same bag you can repeat this, but tying into the end of the chain of knots instead of the bag.

I like this approach because:

- It's simple to identify which end of the rope is on top and you should be rigging with next (it's the last knot in the chain).
- You can check that there's a knot in the end of your rope (absolute necessity).
- Your bag remains attached to your pitch rope unless you untie it at the bottom (a sensible precaution).
- Your pitch ropes can't all fall out of the bag in one massive length because each end is tied in.

It's a simple pretty effortless habit that makes life fractionally safer and easier in the long run.

 

[langcliffe]

My first venture on single rope was a Maskhill Mine - Oxlow Cavern through trip in 1975. Until this time, all my vertical caving experience was 'ladder and lifeline'. My set up for Maskhill was a length of seatbelt webbing with two overhand knots to form leg loops, linked to a 'Cavers Belay Belt' with a screw gate carabineer to which was attached a Figure-of-8 descender, and ... nothing else!

Fortunately, the laddering party from from Oxlow arrived in good time and we exited without incident.

The next year I made myself a sort of rope walking setup using two Clog jammers (one at the knee and one at the ankle) and these days I use the more or less standard setup as per Dave Elliot's book.

We still just use a sling for a sit-harness on through trips such as Borehole to Boundary where prussiking isn't required.

 

[Alex]

I cant remember the name of the hole, only that it was on East Kingsdale, possibly catamite hole, or maybe Lord tots? Anyway, on arrival we could tell this place definately don't get much visitors. On the surface we could see two dubious wooden stakes, one in a shakehole and one partway down a steep slope leading to the hole. Anyway I tested the one partway down with a quick tap with my foot and it promptly broke in two. The one in the shakehole seemed to be a little stronger but we certainly did not trust it. So Don sat down in the hole, bracing himself against the heather and grass and I basically rigged off him. I hoped there was a rebelay as the slope got steeper and I could see an almost 10m drop below. Thankfully after a bit of digging in the grass, I found an old rope which I followed back to an okay looking bolt. I rigged off this and a second bolt and descended the hole. I shouted rope and Don somehow joined me after derigging himself, as the slope to the first anchor was not too bad. Getting back out was a little hairaising.

 

[carpet]

On a trip round a mine in North Wales a year or two back (had to be a North Wales tale with DMM being North Wales based), we took a very helpful seeming route description that we found somewhere on the Internet. This description said something to the effect of "rig and abseil 20m down the shaft in x location and you will find some interesting artefacts", which we of course wanted to try, so we rigged our 40 metre rope off some extremely questionable anchors (some would say they were better described as rusty old bits of scrap iron). My mate went down first and I could hear incoherent yelling from the bottom of the hole, which I came to understand meant that he had reached the end of the rope and was not yet at the bottom of the hole. Anyway, he reascended, and naturally now being curious as to why our 40m rope didn't reach the bottom of a 20m hole, we tied a 50m on at the lip of the hole such that there was probably 49m of rope hanging down the shaft. Anyway, I was up next for some fun, so off I went down the hole. On reaching the bottom, it turned out it popped out in an ore chute that we'd been stood next to an hour ago, perfectly accessible via a ladderway. I went back up the shaft to derig our deviations, my mate (who I of course convinced I'd found something cool and made him come down too) climbed the ladderway, and when derigging we discovered if we'd looked about 2m further, there were some lovely bolts to build a Y-hang off instead of our sketchy 5 point anchor on rusty old tat. Never did figure out if the description was lying to us about pitch length or if we were simply in the wrong place, and I haven't been able to find the description since to verify this.

Tl,dr: managed to use a total of 90m of rope on what was allegedly a 20m pitch, and didn't find the anchors so rigged it off horrific old anchors, and also it didn't even go anywhere except for where we'd just come from.

 

[carpet]

Forgot to add evidence of our escapades and editing time has now expired, here is a link to a video of the hang in question, it was equalised better when we added the extra 50m of rope, thus more evenly loading the 4 anchors (was a 4-point anchor not a 5-point, that's my memory playing up)

 

[Fulk]

Further to my post about my first-ever SRT trip, in which I mentioned the use of Cloggers:

I think that Cloggers were the forerunner of the modern jammers we use today, in that they had a metal body with a wrap-around-the-rope section and a spring-loaded cam (if you want to know what they look like, I think they’ve got one on display in Bernie's). However, as a 'safety feature' the bottom krab-hole was located very close to the wrap-around-the-rope section such that it couldn't come off the rope by the rope's accidentally popping out . . . which is all very well, except that when you wanted to get the rope out – obviously at the top of a pitch – then you had to remove the krab or maillon rapide from the jammer before you could do so. This was clearly a bit of a ball-ache for a foot-jammer – but a real pain in the butt for your chest-jammer. It meant that you couldn't have your harness MR clipped into it, but you had to have a separate krab or MR to connect the two. And as for rebelays or changing over to ascending – what a performance!

 

[NivagSwerdna]

A simple but top tip...
When using a screw-gate karabiner don't screw up the gate when under load... because you can never get the ****er open again later if you don't. (Or at least when using the ones I have!)

 

[Cantclimbtom]

A simple but top tip...
When using a screw-gate karabiner don't screw up the gate when under load... because you can never get the ****er open again later if you don't. (Or at least when using the ones I have!)

Absolutely agree, if it's under load screw it closed then back-off 1/8 turn!

(a bit like 1/4 turn back-off for diving cylinders, welding gas bottles, etc).

Edit: this post isn't an attempt at a comp entry.

 

[andrewmcleod]

A simple but top tip...
When using a screw-gate karabiner don't screw up the gate when under load... because you can never get the ****er open again later if you don't. (Or at least when using the ones I have!)

*Mostly* applies to old carabiners without a internal gate stop (i.e. the gate closes up against the nose) but still good not to over-tighten when loaded (and always worth loading to free a stuck carabiner).

 

[Alex]

I forgot to put advice from my story. I guess it's if you have got a mate and a shake-hole, you have got an anchor lol. I guess the real advice is, it's probably not a good idea.