Passing knots on rappel

[gdstorrick]

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[Cavernuke]

There are several devices that allow one to just rappel over a knot , but I don't recommend them .

Gary

And exactly how many of them do you own?

One of each is my guess.

[gdstorrick]

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[OpenTrackRacer]

Just got home from practicing passing knots. It's certainly not an easy process (at least not going down). We tried a variety of methods using "Alpine Caving Techniques" as our guide (since it was easy to bring along and refer to on the fly). These were basically the two methods that snoboy and chh posted. We got caught up doing those and never tried to downclimb completely past the knot but we'll try that next time. The method using the short cowstail seemed to be the easiest. It caused less crowding on the rope and less effort overall. I totally forgot to bring my Pantin but I think that would really help since it decouples you from your upper ascender (versus using the footloop) and allows you to unweight it much more easily.

I think we'll likely skip passing knots in a mine until we've had more practice but we'll decide for sure when we're out there. We may rig it and decide if we want to go all the way down or just explore the upper drifts while we're in the mine.

Thanks for all the helpful advice!

[Tim White]

I think we'll likely skip passing knots in a mine until we've had more practice but we'll decide for sure when we're out there.

A wise man, you are.

[paul]

I think we'll likely skip passing knots in a mine until we've had more practice but we'll decide for sure when we're out there.

A wise man, you are.

True - but still, knot-passing is a skill worth practicing often - you never know when you might need it!

[OpenTrackRacer]

We plan on practicing a lot more. It's a very useful skill to have in your pocket.

[OpenTrackRacer]

Back from our trip. So, we decided to rig both ropes and evaluate passing the knot based on our physical condition when we finally got to it (after exploring all the levels higher up in sequence). It turned out that debris had plugged the shaft just below the third level which was 270' down (the first rope in the chain was 300'). So, no knot to pass but a lot of rope to pack back up!

We'll keep practicing because it's likely to come up again in the future.