Rope Climbing

I took full advantage of the great weather we had this weekend and started preparing for one of my future adventures. If you remember Matt Fuller's visit to Colorado in the summer of 2011 (check this post for a refresher), we spent most of our time exploring abandoned mines and the rest of our time working on an elaborate system to drop into a vertical mine shaft. To summarize, our system was unsuccessful and I only managed to drop about 20 feet down a 100 foot vertical shaft.

 

Ever since I climbed back out of that hole, I've been planning how to go back in it, but this time make it all the way to the bottom. Safely.

I finally started buying some of the equipment we'll need to safely explore the mine. Getting down the shaft is the easy part. It's getting out that requires some work. Here's a video of me practicing climbing up a rope hanging from my back porch. This particular rope climbing method is called the Yo-Yo system and is used by tree climbers and spelunkers (in case you want to Google it).

I still haven't bought all the equipment I want (you can see in the video that I'm using a carabiner and short section of rope, known as a Bachmann knot, instead of the more common mechanical ascender) and have some tweaking to do to the system. This is a first step, though, and a good proof of concept. Here's a close up of my current ascent system, for the curious.


I like it because you are always connected to the Grigri (the blue thing) and you can switch from ascend to descend and vice versa quickly and without any potentially unsafe connections/disconnections. The Grigri is great for descending because it allows you to easily stop mid descent and hang without using your hands or tying off the rope.

I also practiced prusiking, a method of climbing a rope using only two loops of smaller cord. It works pretty well.