Work positioning belts as caving belts

[pwhole]

Our work-gang got told off recently on a job for walking about on a roof without our harnesses on. This despite being over 10m from any edge, and with nothing to clip onto. A Mansafe system was installed (at 2.4m from the edge, correctly - though one line was slack, incorrectly), and so when we came to rig ropes (from anchors up to 20m from the edge), we'd put on our harnesses, clip to the Mansafe, and then get onto the ropes. We pointed out that a harness wasn't a jet-pack, and offered no more protection than extra underpants without being on a rope, but that didn't resonate with the 'H&S', who apparently had seen us from a multi-storey car-park half a mile away. In reality it was the crane-driver, who basically functioned as site snitch, when he wasn't endangering our safety swinging badly-slung pallets of bricks over our heads...

 

[alastairgott]

I saw a bloke come out of nowhere and climb a ladder in Giants at the weekend. He set off well after one of the SRT-er's and had half coiled his ladder before they had even got off the pitch.

I think he'd gone to do a few lengths of Front crawl in the east canal.

 

[pwhole]

I think confidence is 50% of the deal with ladders. And good arms. I generally trust myself more than the ladder, to be honest, especially one I went on recently that the owner happily declared (afterwards) was 30 years old, though I was lifelined. I did think the rungs looked a bit chunky...

I usually use one of my battered Super Avanti harnesses with just cowstails and maybe a Shunt for lifelining/positioning now, as it's plenty good enough for that, and light enough to forget about when I'm moving about.

 

[paul]

On a relatively short pitch a few years ago we were following a caver who rigged the ladder and climbed down wtihout waiting for a lifeline. The remainder of us refused to follow without a lifeline, which was brought anyway, and rigged the lifeline to its own bomb-proof anchor.

I was climbing down the ladder and after a few rungs I started falling and landed on a narrow ledge a few feet down and was prevented form falling further because I was belayed by the lifeline from below.

It turned out the ladder had been attached to the belay by a karabiner through the keyring clip used to attach an ID tag to it and no one noticed... It unfurled when I was at the top of the ladder.

Luckily the top of the ladder caught on a flake was still in reach and with aid from the lifeline, I could climb back up and attach the ladder properly to the belay and climb down again, this time to the bottom.

Ladders can break, other things can go wrong besides not being able to hold on to a ladder, confident and strong arms or not.