Tag: Rope awareness

Why are climbers being lowered off the end of the rope?

It seems to me that the instances of climbers being lowered off the end of the rope while lowering are on the increase. I know of several people who have had lucky escapes surviving falls after being lowered off the end of their rope and some who haven’t been so lucky.
While it is something that I’ve always been acutely aware of and maybe have a healthy paranoia of, it is also something that I feel should just never happen.

Rope length

Climbers of a certain age might remember when sport climbing ropes were generally 50m (trad ropes 45m). Then after a few climbing trips in France and Spain it didn’t seem worth travelling with anything shorter than a 60m. Then routes got even longer and you really needed a 70m. These days it’s standard to buy an 80m and even this
might occasionally not be long enough. We keep a 100m in Kalymnos for the 50m pitches.

Having often dealt with ropes being too short, expecting it and planning for dealing with it has developed a certain level of awareness that I think is useful to pass on.

Knot is not always there

A greater number of people are aware of the benefits of tying a knot in the end of the rope. However, relying on the system of tying a knot in the end of the rope is not on its own sufficient, as it has proven to not always be there:

1. Human error

People simply forget, or think that the other person has already tied it. Assuming that the bottom end is tied
into the rope bag but not checking is also a possibility.

2. Someone in your group unties the knot.

I’ve seen this happen on several occasions and each time the belayer failed to notice. An inexperienced climber taking the end to practice tying in or to practice clipping and not knowing what the knot in the end
was there for, will not necessarily tie it back in.

As the knot is not always there, people need to have other reliable
systems in place for noticing that the rope is too short.

Before the knot

There are a few things that we have failed to do when the knot jams up against the belay device, or when the rope disappears through the belay device. If safety is an awareness of danger it might be useful to look at what we as climbers/instructors do ourselves to avoid needing to use that knot in the first place and make our clients
aware of that as well.

1. Read the guide book to see what rope length is recommended and take one that is long enough for any route you might want to do (ropes are cheap but you shouldn’t be).
2. Be aware! If you arrive at a crag and it looks big maybe the routes are long.
3. As you’re climbing the route you’re thinking “Wow, nice long pitch, I love long routes. Hmm, did we pack the 70m or the 80m?” Communicate with your belayer.
4. You’re belaying and your climber seems to be going up forever. Do you think: “Awesome I love long pitches, I’m really excited about getting on it myself”? Or are you looking down at the rope next to your feet and think: “I wonder if it’s long enough for my climber to get down”? Communicating at this point can be valuable!

Middle marks

I’m deliberately not mentioning middle marks when teaching clients. The problem with middle marks is that they can be unreliable. One of the advantages of buying a longer rope than you generally need is that it is often the 4 or 5 meters at the ends that show wear. Cutting 4 or 5 meters off the end of an 80m rope still gives you a useful length rope, but means your mark is no longer marking the middle of it.

Watch the end of the rope!

In recent years, I have been making a point of teaching belayers to pay more attention to the rope next to them than to the person they are lowering. As a belayer it can be hard sometimes to concentrate when your climbing partner is wearing a tight pair of Lycra pants but the rope right next to your feet is what you should be paying most attention to. It’s the only place that danger is coming from during the lowering process. This should be an integral part of the lowering process and is what we should be teaching.
We should also make clients aware of the importance of developing the habit of looking down at the rope while being lowered. It is great to take time to enjoy the view but more important to look down to see the rope next to the belayer and calculate well before you are lowered off the end of it whether it is long enough. I reckon about 99% of the time I’m able to see the rope after a few metres of lowering. Keep the rope visible! not tucked away in your IKEA bag!
Having asked thousands of climbers with a variety of experience where they look when lowering, virtually no one ever answers “the rope”. Even though that is where the danger is coming from, and it is almost always there next to the belayer’s foot.

Every time I hear of or read an article about someone being lowered off the rope the cause is always said to be the lack of a knot. And of course, no one would be lowered off the end if there was a knot, but it would be helpful to acknowledge that the belayer (and climber) failed to pay attention to the rope. We should not be switching off
because (we think) we have fixed the issue by tying a knot in the end of the rope. The knot should not be seen as the first line of defence – it is the last!

Trevor Massiah (MIA) – Professional Mountaineer – Spring 2020

Is it possible to always avoid getting the rope behind your leg? Maybe not 100% of the time but it is important to give a clear procedure to help people avoid it.

Teaching people how to avoid getting the rope behind their legs at first seems a fairly straightforward thing to teach. However, there is a little more to it than advising climbers to keep the rope between their legs and the rock (rock-rope-leg).

When teaching lead climbing we will often choose routes that are well protected and therefore present less opportunity for the climber to make the mistake of getting the rope behind the leg. As there is quite a bit of new information for new leaders to think about, placing lots of gear when trad leading, or placing trad gear in between bolts when sport climbing, can provide a useful way of deferring teaching rope awareness until later in a course when the information might be more easily retained. It is still possible to fall with the with the rope behind the leg when clipped into gear above the waist, but this is more likely to result in a rope burn rather than falling upside down.

As the consequences of falling upside down can be serious it is something that deserves a reasonable amount of attention.

Most people find the concept of rock-rope-leg fairly straightforward. The difficulty comes when the choice of foothold necessitates making a decision to go around the outside of the rope keeping it between the cliff and your leg or to control the rope with the foot or the leg. I’m going to look in more detail at why we sometimes feel we have made the correct decision but still find the rope travelling behind our leg.

So, is there a rule or procedure that we can apply or teach to help students with these decisions? Yes there is. And most of us have one, and that is: when moving around the rope always go around the outside of the rope. This makes perfect sense as logically if you step inside the rope it would usually end up behind the leg. This is however only part of the procedure. There does need to be a second part to this rule which is: only step over the rope if you are also going past the gear or the bolt below you.

If the chosen foothold is directly above or not beyond the gear or bolt below, then the correct decision would be to control the rope with the side of your foot or leg. Failure to do this will almost always result in the rope travelling behind the leg once you have moved your body to stand on that foothold. It is moving your body that takes the rope behind your leg. And that is part of the problems. It seems ok to go around the outside of the rope when you place your foot on the hold, but as soon as you move your body, the rope travels with it and ends up behind your leg.

Not taking into account the angle of the rope travelling up from the last piece of gear, and/or the foothold in relation to the protection will lead to the rope travelling behind the leg often. A good percentage of clients attending coaching courses is related to having psychological issues that stem from having fallen upside down. Which may have been avoided had they received a more detailed explanation of how to avoid getting the rope behind their leg.

To summarise, in teaching rope awareness we should not just explain the rock-rope-legs principle and teach clients to always go around the outside of the rope. What we need to create in lead climbers is an awareness of the gear or bolt below. If the chosen foothold is past the gear or bolt below: go around the outside of the rope. If the chosen foothold is close to, just above, or not past the gear or bolt below: it is best to push the rope aside with the side of the foot.

For a visual and more detailed description, we refer to this video: “How to Avoid falling upside down – Rope Awareness – Rock and Sun”

How to avoid falling upside down – Rope Awareness

written by Trevor Massiah – Published in Professional Mountaineer Winter 2019