Belay Escape

hi I'm Rob and I'm going to show you one way to do a fully releasable a escape so let's start with an anchor you can build an anchor if you have a quarter left or you can use a double runner if you have to do the double runner on my pair of bolts here gonna put one on either side find the stitching clip close to that boom and then I'm going to take the locking carabiner that I'm going to connect myself with put in between and then put the strands down below and I'm going to bring that out in the direction of cold that I anticipate let's say that my climber is climbing up off that way so my direction of pull figure eight knot and there's an anchor but I can attach myself to personally I prefer to make my anchors out of corlett you can make a quarter let into a double runner by essentially folding it in half big loop accord double it up and now it is the size of a double runner find the knot in there got the not close to the there I'm going to take the that I'm going to connect myself with clip between clip below and stretch this out in the direction that I anticipate the pool let's say my climber is going that way and then I'm going to do a big overhand knot and call that my serene anchor so as the follower I need to tie in so there's my tie-in not to connect myself to the anchor I like to do a clove hitch close to me to start so I put in here and do a clove now notice that with this clove hitch that I don't leave a lot of space between me and the anchor I can still reach everything over here if I need to I'll lock up my clove I'm going to come quite a ways down the rope and I'm going to do it as a backup a figure eight on a bite on a separate all right I've got my redundant connection to the anchor and I'm going to put my partner on belay normally my belay device of choice is the ëtil rid megajoule I like it because it's got assisted braking very similar to a gris-gris and I appreciate that extra layer of safety however since we're demoing belay escape the assisted braking makes it so easy that is practically cheating so instead I'm going to put this away and use something that does not have assisted braking my old favourite Petzl River so if you're practicing this yourself I recommend that you also use a belay device that is not assisted braking just so that you prove you really can do it okay so I'm going to put my partner on belay we go through our safety checks I've got the locked I check my buckles I check their buckles if you want you can put on belay gloves but they are optional if you do use belay clothes I recommend ones that have had the fingers cut off so that you can more easily do knots and stuff if you need to so um where you want to stand is important to like so right now I've got myself stretched out in line with the anchor since the direction of the rope goes slightly off this way that's going to make sure that if there is a fall that pulls me I don't go very far whereas if I stood more over here if I was head slack to my anchor and Blaine Blaine Blaine and then if suddenly there was a fall I would get yanked and that would not be good okay I'm connected to my anchor I'm aligning myself with my anchor so that I've got tension through it and then it will help me hold a fall and blame my climber so then let's say that my climber takes a fall so I'm holding them and first thing I want to do is communicate with them and say hey are you okay what's going on like ah so if I get no response I don't immediately want to jump to belay escape nine times out of ten you're going to have less than half the rope length out and it's okay just to lower them to the platform that you're on if you can get them back to your belay ledge or to another ledge somewhere else on the climb that's ideal you're going to have to lower them anyway at some point better to just get it out of the way now so if if you really cannot lower them if more than half of the rope is out then you're forced to escape the belay in order to be able to reach them to give them first aid or to be able to go for help so first step to escaping the belay is getting hands-free so I'm holding my climber and braking position braking position for the rope and a belay device is down I want to keep it going down so do that I'm going to bring a bite of rope through and I'm going to use my hands like doors in an airlock I'm going to close the second one completely before we even start to open the first I'm going to do this one finger at a time so that I can really hold that tension and not have any lowering happen there I can bring this up so that it is the same direction the two lines are parallel there I'm going to hold that and I'm going to fold down making a loop that passes in front so you see how this break strand is parallel to the load strand and I'm going to cross in front go around behind and then bring the bite of rope up and through and I am closing completely before I open with this one so that way I can pull it really tight and keep it really close to the belay device there with this big bite of rope I can tie an overhand to back the whole thing up now I'm hands-free the belay is completely tied off so if this is enough maybe I can now like reach my cell phone and call for help or if we need to go further if I need to move away now I need to actually escape from the system I'm still part of the system with the load running through me here if I need to escape I want the load to go from thus loaded strand to the anchor and I need some way of connecting the two so I need to build something else that's going to hold the load well if I want to grab a loaded strand I need a friction hitch so I might as well get out my hero loop and do a prusik for prusik sile ike to take the knot hold that up against the rope and move the knot around three times then i grab the knot and i pull next to it not pulling the knot itself but pulling one of the strands until it's pulled tight dress it there so now I've got my prusik attached and the not in the prusik is along one of the straight lines not bound up in the pro stick itself and not where I'm going to clip the carabiner so I'm clipping a specifically I'm using a that is Munter compatible that has this nice wide top for a Munter hitch so I've got that there and I can keep the prusik close to me for now now I wanted to connect from here to the anchor so I need something else that's on the anchor that I'm going to be able to connect here so back on my anchor I already have this figure eight on a bite that was my backup to my clove hitch there so if I take the strand of rope that's going to the big pile of flaked rope on the ground I can bring this up and I can tie a Munter hitch to that blue Locker that I have added on the prusik let me connect the Munter hitch I'm going to lock that I'm going to cinch it as tight as I can get it and I'm even going to pre flip the Munter so that it is ready to lower here later now finally I'm going to tie that off with another mule knot so if you remember that we made that loop that pinches the break strand ah and since the Munter breaks in this direction in the same direction as the load we're not passing it through the it's in line with the other strand so I make a loop pull the bite through and I'm going to tie the overhand back up so there's no chance of that accidentally getting on tied and finally I'm going to push the prusik up as much as I can to have it start out tensioned okay so the load is still coming down to me and to the anchor but I've got this other thing built that could hold the load if I wanted it to eventually I'm going to release the belay device mule and overhand to lower it onto here but since I'm in this state I'm going to jump ahead a little bit I'm going to add another winter compatible to the anchor and I'm going to find the rope coming out of my belay device and I'm going to bring that over to that do another Munter hitch I'm doing this now while I still have two hands-free got them under hitch in there I've got it locked and that's for later use I can just let go of this for now right now I'm going to focus on the original belay device I'm going to get my hand back in there and ready to hold on I'm going to untie the overhand so we've got this loop up here that's going to come out and I'm going to pull till that loop is really small so you can see there's a little bit left there and I'm going to warn my partner hey you might lower a bit even if they're unconscious they might still be able to hear you so it's best to just give them a heads up no one likes a surprise lower so at this point I'm holding ctrl and I'm going to pop that loop out and now I can slowly lower transferring the load onto this new thing that I built for holding the load okay so I'm back to regular belay device set up here except that I can pull enough rope through that it is totally slack and the load is getting held by this instead so I want to get my belay device out but notice that I have not let go of the brake hand yet I don't want to trust just that prusik up there so instead since I built this motor I can pull all that extra slack through the motor and now I've got this brake hand in control and I'm going to open this brake hand so now I'm essentially using the Munter on the yellow back here as my belay and I haven't taken out all the slack I still have enough that I can take my belay device out of the system so even though the belay device is out if that prusik failed its held by the motor back here I'm going to pull that in as tight as I can get it and I'm going to do one more mule not twisting it so that the brake strand I'll be in there and bring that up and around keep it nice and tight tie lose as little distance as possible and tie that off okay so I don't necessarily have to be part of this anymore I've got my hardest time going to the anchor but if I wanted I could take out that clove hitch that's connecting me to the anchor and I'm free to walk around I'm still tied in to that figure eight back here that's holding the load it I want to evaluate what my situation is like here if I feel like I'm on a really safe ledge I could untie completely if I didn't feel as safe I could take my PA and connect myself perhaps to the Shelf of the anchor okay now remember that prusik that we've got up off screen I want to get that back and I want to put all of the load on this yellow Munter I want to have it be just the climbing rope holding them not the tiny material of the prusik okay this mule not up here untying the overhand finding which strand of this is going to be the break strand it's going to be this one I'm going to hold on to that I'm going to pull until the loop gets small and now I'm going to do the pop so clammer you may lower a bit and I've got control of that there and now I can lower on that muncher and the weight is entirely going to the yellow back there so I can get that motor out of there could simplify things a bit because now you can see that the weight is entirely on this yellow and the Munter mule overhand on that I do want to get back my gear up here I should have been careful to keep things a little bit tighter I'm going to do my best to reach the prusik cleaning up everything else here you can see that the climber is left just on a mantra mule overhand on the anchor the only thing that I'm leaving behind is this yellow locking carabiner if I want to make it a little bit safer for them I can make sure that that overhand can't come unclipped by adding a to to the loop clip to the overhand or another way of backing this thing up that's also an option is that I could take the slack rope coming out of that add another figure eight on a bite and clip that to the anchor alright so that's belay escape you text me now so if there's a fall that I have to catch it didn't work so well the Rope is in the braking position on the reverse oh here I want to hold it there I'm going to hold it there no one noticed that

Channel: Rob Busack

Views: 73,913

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Id: fDtOdyCOe4o

Length: 17min 46sec (1066 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 04 2016