How to Haul a Climber Out of a Crevasse

hi I'm Jeff Ward a mga instructor team member we ascended out of the curve ass and now we're ready to haul I'm going to come back a little ways from the lip so I have some room to work I don't necessarily need to go all the way back to my anchor I can work a little closer to the edge and that'll make for better communication and a little less rope stretch and friction so I'm gonna move back a little ways and if I've assessed this zone really well with probing I can send them away from the edge now come off of here safely if I had concerns here I'd stay attached this process and maybe keep a longer leash because this is gonna be weighted but this is a good zone here we're gonna work in here I'll tie a master point here just do a figure 8 and now I'm going to set up my ratchet so I really like using the micro traction and I always have to look at the pictures here where's the person there's the person or the weight that lock that in and I should be able to pull on Emily so I've set up the micro traction so that's my progress capture I have a drop see which gives me a two-to-one but I'm probably going to need a little more mechanical advantage so the lines here we have our haul line that's pulling on our two two one that's in the hole and then behind me here is the original load line what Emily's hanging on right now so that's great that gives us a bit of a backup for a while while we set up our system so now I'm going to walk down here still tied in to the rope so I have a bit of security not much slack which is nice and I'm going to tie a friction hitch on to this line here so this is the one that's going back to the anchor that goes down through a locker on Emily's harness and comes back up here we'll add some mechanical advantage by tying a prusik hitch here and putting a carabiner on this so now we've taken our two two one dropsy and added a three to one on top of that that gives us a six to one mechanical advantage I'm going to back up so I can get a good angle on this the more I open this up the less mechanical advantage is I'm going to get so I want to be nice and in line here and now I can just start hauling once it gets back near the micro traction I can then just slide it out and keep hauling so I've pulled Emily quite a ways up and so I've generated some slack in the system and currently the only thing holding her is this micro traction which is quite reliable but ideally I'd like to back that up if I go over to the original load line one of the methods is to see if I can get slack in that original line if I can I'll pull all the slack up until I come tight to the person in the hole and then I can just tie a knot in that system and that eliminates that slack and then I can continue to halt and continue to put knots in that rope or extend that original knot and that'll backup my progress capture device so for a backup I can take my haul line and clip that into my master point here that way if we get anything in here you know if it's stuck in the snow I might dig this out now decrease the likelihood of it having any issues but to be extra safe we'll just stick a clove hitch in here now if we have any slippage or any issues she won't go too far as Emily gets close to the lip that's often the most difficult time of the haul so I might need to go out there and give her a hand if I've done a really good job of lip prep my job of getting her over the lip is going to be much easier so a little bit of coaching here for Emily would be try and push yourself away from the wall as we're hauling and we'll try and not get that knot stuck in the lip so we'll see how that goes go ahead and push yourself away I'm gonna all slowly nice that's looking pretty good if for some reason we get her not stuck maybe she's unconscious she can't help we might have to go down there and do a little redirecting by lifting the ropes out or we might have to pull from a different direction if she's gotten stuck this is for most people this is the hardest part of the hauling so this drop see with the Z got it on top of it the sixth one that's usually enough mechanical advantage to get someone out of the hole as long as you've done really good lip preparation you should be able to do that even with just one rescuer on the surface you you

Channel: Outdoor Research

Views: 144,483

Keywords: mountaineering, climbing, crevasse, rescue, haul, load, glacier, snow, rope, mechancical, advantage, 6:1, drop c, z system, anchor, master point, amga, american mountain guides association, or, outdoor research

Id: XXRf4fCyass

Length: 6min 42sec (402 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 12 2018