Quote:
> >You are absolutely right. I had the rope in a rope bag on my back.
> > I
> >also unfortunately had the sp lock up at the crux of a climb because
> >I
> >clipped above my head without enough slack. Very frustrating.
> >Leaving the rope on at the bottom sounds like it can be very limiting.
> > No good for travese climbs. Hard to do multi-pitch. Maybe trailing
> >the rope in a rope back below you as you climb? Although that would
> >be hell on a Gunk's roof. Any solutions?
> Sure...Not all routes are good routes for soloing or for soloing with the
> Silent Partner. Pick nice, snag-hazzard-free plumbline routes for your SP
> days and leave the rope at the bottom of the pitch (think of the weight
you'll
> save!), and do the stuff that wanders through the jungle when you're with
> a partner.
> Melissa
I'll add my gumby experiences too. Maybe other folks who, like me, are new
to rope-soloing, will find them useful (or sobering).
I began free climbing with an Silent Partner last spring (25 years after
after a few scary leads dissuaded me from
rope-soloing with a Jumar ). Over the summer, I
benefited from a few pointers posted on rec.climbers' web pages, and learned
some lessons the hard way.
Two very helpful pointers:
Thanks to Karl Baba's suggestion on www.tradgirl.com, I used Screamers as
intermediate tie-offs when leading long pitches. Clove-hitching the lead
rope to a Screamer clipped into omni-directional anchors at +/- 40'
intervals prevented the weight of the rope from pulling slack back through
the SP and, although it increased the fall factor, was more efficient than
the "shoelace prussik" tie-off recommended in the SP manual. (And, yes, I
inadvertantly "tested" the set-up. A 10' airborne fall with about 30' of
10mm dynamic rope between me and my last Screamer popped a few stitches
in the first row of bar tacks.)
I didn't clip a Screamer between the belay anchors and the lead rope as an
earlier post suggested, but it sounds like a good idea.
I gleaned another useful tip from www.putzl.com/~klew/home, Karl Lew's web
page. Rapping with an ATC *in addition to* the SP made it a lot easier to
lock off a single-strand rappel when cleaning a pitch.
Several lessons learned the hard way:
I thought that the SP was a much bigger PITA seconding some pitches on
multi-pitch climbs than it had been leading them. Since the "TR" from the
upper anchors couldn't be tied into the lower anchors, the rope had to be
fed through the SP manually -- which was a minor annoyance on easy terrain,
but difficult on sustained, thin face or hard overhanging moves. Seconding
the cruxes with a lot of slack in my TR felt too much like leading them all
over again.
I ran into a related problem leading a difficult roof. Without thinking, I
did what I often do on the lead: climbed part-way out the roof, clipped, and
then downclimbed to shake out before committing to the crux. Unfortunately,
the lead rope that pulled through the SP when I downclimbed was impossible
to take in as I re-climbed the strenuous moves back to and past the pro.
(With a mediocre ape index, I couldn't repeatedly hang by one hand while
feeding slack through the SP with the other.) The resulting accumulation of
slack led to a 15' - 20' fall from a crux that was only 5' above my last
piece --
happily, a nice 3/8" bolt. After that, I A0'ed similar moves instead of
downclimbing to rest.
Then there's the too *little* slack problem. I short-roped myself twice
because I wasn't paying close attention to the length of the loop between
the SP and the backup knot clipped into my harness. Releasing a backup
knot -- even a clove hitch -- one-handed when it's jammed against the SP
isn't easy. Twice was enough. I learned.
In the same vein, Melissa and Elan are right about the SP locking up when
you try to clip above your head. Unless you're at a decent stance and
can feed slack through the SP before making a reachy clip, it's easier, if
unnerving, to climb a poorly protected move or two and then clip at waist
height.
Naturally, the loop of rope between my backup knots and, more often, the
longer loop between the second backup knot and my harness tie-in routinely
hung up on flakes, bushes, cracks, and whatever. Even after I got better at
managing the "hula skirt," (and better at stacking the rope well away from
sneaky detritus both at belays and on the ground), I had to downclimb to
free stuck ropes several times. I didn't try stacking the long loop in a
rope bag on my back. After reading Melissa and Elan's comments, I'm
glad I didn't.
On balance, the SP worked reasonably well for leading single pitch climbs
that could be descended and cleaned on rappel. On multi-pitch climbs,
seconding hard pitches was a little dicey. I thought about jugging, but
acenders would have added more gear to an already heavy rack. However,
the most important lesson was learning to pay careful attention to my ropes
(plural since I had several dangling loops as well as the lead rope to worry
about). Getting them stuck, jamming the backup knot against the SP, and,
especially, letting too much slack accumulate in the lead rope were the most
frequent and dangerous mistakes I made.
Still, I had fun. A Silent Partner is better than no partner on a weekday
when most people are at work and the crags are less crowded than usual. It
also added a new dimension to moderates -- and what felt like a few letter
grades to routes at or near my usual on-sight leading level (hence the
falls).
FWIW, I stuck to sport or mostly sport climbs reasoning that the bomber pro
would enable me to concentrate on learning soloing techniques -- and to see
how the SP performed on what, for me, were comparatively hard climbs.
Considering some of my mistakes, it was probably a wise choice. I'm not sure
I would have survived them on equally difficult trad routes.
Bruce Pech
Boulder