My Rope Solo Setup For Climbing By Myself | How To Get Lost Educational Series

let's go ahead and talk a little bit about the top part of the anchor setup so as you can see I'm out of breath [Music] hey there guys so I'm out here in Southern California San Diego I'm in a Mission Gorge here and I wanted to talk a little bit about my top rope solo setup now top rope solo is when you are out climbing by yourself and the only form of protection that you have is the top rope right so you're basically solo climbing there's nobody else around except for yourself but you're still using a rope in case uh you were to fall or let go while climbing and I wanted to talk a little bit about what my setup is and how I do it out here when I want to climb by myself so first off this setup can be done in a couple different ways um there are plenty of videos out there I'm definitely not the first one to do a video on how to do this you can do your own research matter of fact I suggest that you do your own research because the stuff stuff that you are needing to be aware of is definitely a more advanced level of techniques and knowledge and skill set so this isn't for like the brand new climber who's tired of being at the gym and wants to go try climbing by themselves Outdoors you really should have a pretty good working skill set when it comes to climbing when it comes to knots when it comes to Anchor systems please please please don't do this unless you are proficient in those skills and you have done your research now like I said there are different ways of doing it I'm just going to talk about the way that I do it now my setup uses just a dynamic rope Dynamic ropes are an okay choice they do stretch so you do have to be careful if your route is longer and you're closer to the ground you could do this with a semi-static gym rope or you could do this with a static line if you can find one that is small enough to go through your progress capture pulleys as of my current knowledge there is no specific gear made specifically for top rope so following however there are some commonly used pieces of gear that we use to achieve a top rope Solo System now probably one of the more common setups is to use the petzl micro traction this is a progress capture pulley meaning that its intended purpose is to act as a pulley to pull things up to haul things and it's progress capture meaning that once this little tooth system here is enabled that the Rope will only run through the pulley in One Direction it will not go back the other way these little uh these little spikies here grab the rope and keep the rope from moving in the opposite direction now although petzl doesn't officially endorse these for top rope solo they do have a guide and guidelines on their website for safety precautions and things that you should consider before you use the micro traction or mini Traction in a top rope solo setup now I think these are the the best things right now for this system but if you have something else that works for you go ahead and do it just make sure you do your research and you follow all safety precautions and that you're always working in doubles and redundant systems in case something were to fail and with that said I use two micro tractions and I'll show you later how I actually set those up on the row so now let's talk about the other pieces of gear that you might have with you during the top rope solo I'm going to show you what I brought with me your gear may vary depending on where it is you're climbing but I'll show you what I brought so of course I have my petzl micro tractions and locking carabiners I brought my helmet because if you are working in any kind of top rope situation there might be other people up there things could come falling down hit you in the head so it's always a good idea to have your your helmet with you of course you're going to need a comfortable pair of climbing shoes you're going to need your chalk bag your harness all that standard stuff now depending on what it is that you are climbing obviously you want to make sure you have some water with you as well depending on what it is you're climbing I bring a couple quick draws with me just in case I need to set up some kind of directional the routes That I'm Climbing today are pretty straightforward so I won't need anything like directional but I do bring a couple quick draws and Alpine draws just in case I need to do some kind of setup always have a first aid kit with me just in case so you can't see them right now but I also bring a variety of locking carabiners for building my anchor I have slings and quarterlette to help build that anchor I have my two different belay devices I have a grigri I also have an ATC guide I have belay gloves These are nice if you don't want your hands to get all rubbed up and dirty of course always have a personal anchor you're going to need this for when you are setting up your anchor or when you're transitioning to a Repel system and that's pretty much it okay so for the bottom part of our rope here we're going to want to make sure that there is something down here providing weight pulling down on the Rope this will ensure that one our micro tractions will go up the Rope smoothly and two when we do eventually weight the Rope got the micro tractions will have a nice stiff area for it to grab onto so basically what's going to happen is if there is plenty of weight on here it will go up nice and smoothly but as soon as we need to let go the Rope it will catch and um it there's not going to be a chance that we fall further distance or anything like that so we want to make sure that there is weight at the bottom of this rope so in order to do that what you can do many things you can tie a backpack down at the end you can anchor it to a rock but if you don't have either of those you could just do a butterfly coil at the end of the rope and then the weight of that butterfly coil will be enough to hold this in the position that it needs to be in so first things first I'm going to find the ends of my rope um you don't really need to tie the ends of your rope because this will be a closed system but I do it anyways just out of habit and then I'm going to start coiling the Rope here just good old butterfly coil and then we'll tie it off at the end [Music] all right now pass it through here we're gonna just go over it like that all right and there we go now we've got a weight at the end of our rope to keep these in a more I guess straight position and then that way our micro tractions will work nicely on this all right now that I'm all geared up let's go ahead and talk about actually attaching ourselves to the Rope using the micro tractions so I'm using two petzl micro tractions attached to these locking carabiners and we want to make sure when we're attaching these that they are attached with the carabiners facing you and the orange side or the color plated side I don't know if yours are going to be orange facing to the left now that's where the micro attractions make sure you check your progress capture pulleys to make sure that you are attaching them right and that they are in fact in an Engaged position before you start climbing that's why this is really something that somebody who has a decent level of skill should be attempting and should always do your research ahead of time anyways let's go ahead and attach these so I'm going to go ahead and attach this to one end of the Rope all right we see that it is not in an Engaged position I'm going to leave it like that just until I can get both of them attached all right now for the next one okay and then on my harness I am going to do it through my hard gear Loop here and I'm going to make sure that actually that my gates are opposite and opposed where the gates are facing outwards now I don't know if this makes a whole lot of difference it's just something that I like to do opposing and opposite Gates in an outwards position all right both of these are now locked and now both of my progress capture devices are engaged so I can see I move it up move it up but they don't come back down so now we are ready to climb now the thing is as I start climbing up the Rope the or up the rock the progress capture pulleys will move up the rope and if I were to let go then these sharp little teeth in here will stop the rope from moving through the pulley in the opposite direction so let's go ahead and get started perfect [Music] [Music] all right so at this point if I were to let go of The Rock we can see that the pro Gress capture pulleys have done their job I have two of them just to be redundant in case one strand were to fail I would have the other to capture me so always make sure that you keep these things nice and redundant as you work your way up there we go as you can see it's working as intended if I were to start climbing again [Music] they move up with me [Music] okay now that I've captured my breath a little bit or caught my breath here let's talk a little bit about the top of the anchor setup here that I have done so let's go ahead and start off with sort of the tie-in here notice that I have tied in with the bunny ears figure eight here this is just a version of the figure eight that gives you two strands that can go up to your master Point here I just do this because if this was just roped through like a regular top rope then if one strand were to fail the whole system would fail now I know climbing ropes aren't going to fail like that but you know what everything else in my system is completely backed up and redundant so that might as well be too so I've got my bunny ears figure eight I've got my opposite and opposed walking carabiners I've got my big hunk and knot there running up to two bolts with screw gate carabiners that's all locked in now your anchor setup may vary depending on where you're climbing since these are nice bolt anchors I just did a big honking knot you can do a quad if the bolts are situated in a way where they're a little bit more even you could even do two quick draws but just use caution when you're doing two quick draws because you can't necessarily micro adjust the length of those quick draws so anyways I'm up here I am anchored in with my PAs my progress capture pulleys are still attached before repelling down I'm going to remove these just because even though they have an option to stay in the unlocked position usually when coming down they get knocked and they get locked up anyways so I'm just going to take these off the Rope before I repel foreign and even though it's a nice blue sunny day no inclement weather easy enough terrain here I'm still going to use my third hand as a backup for my repel because one it's good practice and two you just never know there's a guy up here earlier setting up or stashing stuff for an anchor course and I didn't know he was up here necessarily so you know that could have created a situation whether I was surprised or something fell and hit me while I am in the process of repelling so it's always good to have some sort of backup and plus now I can go hands-free on my repel while my third hand holds me in place in case I have to make any adjustments on my way down anyways let's go ahead and head down yeah also I guess an added benefit I wouldn't count this as actual something you should rely on but since you do have the weight on the end of your repel of your climbing rope here it could act as a fireman's uh backup but I wouldn't trust that as an actual repel backup just use the third hand you can either buy one of these Auto blocks from Sterling hollow blocks from Sterling or you can make it out of some uh five or six millimeter quarter lit anyways there we go we're back down at the end [Music] hey there this is future Cameron and I realized I never filmed the proper sign off or gave any final thoughts so in closing I just want to remind you of a few things first off this is how I do my rope solo setup if you decide to build a rope Solo System please educate yourself and do the damn research practice at home or in a low risk environment this video is not meant to show you 100 of the things that go into a complex system such as this second research and be familiar with the area you are climbing in familiarity will help you stay focused on the important tasks like setting up your anchor and rope systems the last thing you need is to be stressing out over a new area or a route third invest into your gear there are no shortcuts when it comes to safety yes three hundred dollars in New Gear is cheaper than a hospital visit it's worth your safety and your life to invest in the pieces needed to do something like this properly and finally just be safe and use your head if you don't feel good or confident then back out the climbing will always be there and rocks they're pretty good at waiting for you anyways thanks for watching and I'll see you guys out at the Crag stay safe [Music]

Channel: How To Get Lost

Views: 18,303

Keywords: climbing, outdoors, rock climbing, education, skills, learn to, nature, adventure, instruction, how to

Id: -OWIO21xHfY

Length: 16min 4sec (964 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 14 2023