Had a problem with my frogging system, any ideas?

[Chads93GT]

I am simply having a hard tome wrapping my head around how a croll is getting jammed up so tight that it wont move or anything, other than a ropewalker bungee getting fed through, or a frog foot loop cord getting sucked in. Ive never seen an ascender of any kind jam up on just the rope, and when people think its jammed, they simply have downward tension on it making it impossible to disengage the cam teeth without bumping the ascender up a smudge to get the teeth out of the rope............ can you guys explain how this is happening?

[Extremeophile]

You jam your croll up against a knot (that's joining two ropes for example) for example, how do you get if off rope without untying the knot? There is no way to get the croll's teeth unengaged to unjam it since you can't move it up rope to disengage.

Hasn't happened to me, but it sounds like a problem that can be easily solved through modifying one's behavior rather than needing an equipment modification.

[LukeM]

You jam your croll up against a knot (that's joining two ropes for example) for example, how do you get if off rope without untying the knot? There is no way to get the croll's teeth unengaged to unjam it since you can't move it up rope to disengage.

I'm having a hard time understanding how you can jam a croll up against a knot hard enough that you wouldn't be able to disengage it. If you give the croll a good shove upward that should be enough to give you the couple of mm necessary to get it unstuck right? I've had my upper ascender up against a knot in this manner and have always been able to give it a good shove and a wiggle to get it off. I guess if you have a foot ascender and end up tensioning the rope below as you stand into the knot you could get it jammed tightly.

[self-deleted_user]

Amy, you might have your croll connected backwards to the maillon.

It's not. And you should know how it's on, you were there :P

[John Lovaas]

You jam your croll up against a knot (that's joining two ropes for example) for example, how do you get if off rope without untying the knot? There is no way to get the croll's teeth unengaged to unjam it since you can't move it up rope to disengage.

Well, you have a mess- even if it's a piece of 11mm rope laying on the floor with a Croll jammed up into a square knot, as I have here right now. That's about as much slack and as "removed from the harness" as one can get- and the only way the Croll is coming off is by creating some slack above the Croll, which means messing with the knot. So it wouldn't seem to matter how the Croll is unweighted.

If I were to duplicate your scenario, I would transfer my upper descender to the upper rope, stand up to release the Croll, allow about 2 feet(for my leg length) of rope to pass through the Croll, and not bother to

A) observe that the lower rope is still inside the Croll, or
B) STOP!!!

Running your ascenders into knots is like rigging your rack backwards- don't do it. Nothing good comes out of it.

If I found myself in that mess, I wouldn't mess with the knot; I'd take my third ascender(which could be a prusik), improvise a Texas rig, haul the whole mess to the top of the drop, recheck the knot, reset the rope, rappel back down, apologize profusely to everyone shivering at the bottom of the drop, then send them up the rope. I sure would hate to mess with the knot while on rope, possibly dropping the lower rope(which might be prevented by NOT REMOVING your Croll, as the lower rope would be captured in the Croll, as long as the Croll was oriented properly) or potentially messing up a knot that others may still have to cross.

Amy, you might have your croll connected backwards to the maillon.

In either orientation, the Croll would be rotated 90 degrees from where the manufacturer designed and intended it to be.

[Marduke]

It's not about unweighting it if jammed (you can do that in easily a number of ways), it's that if jammed beyond your ability to remove it from the rope, you have the option of disconnecting and abandoning it, or continue to attempt to unjam in a more workable position.

[Scott McCrea]

My philosophy is, practice what might happen. But, prepare for what probably will happen.

Abandoning your Croll is something that might happen, but probably not. Even so, a little creativity is all that is necessary to do it, even without an extra link.

FWIW, I just tried to jam a Croll against a knot. Even turning it to an ideal angle and pushing the cam up against the knot. It still wasn't that hard to get it unstuck.

FWIWx2, that is one advantage to the old style Crolls, with the little metal cam handle, with a hole in it. You could attach a cord or biner to it and yank it off of nearly anything. It might snaggle the rope but the Croll would come off.

[NZcaver]

It's not about unweighting it if jammed (you can do that in easily a number of ways), it's that if jammed beyond your ability to remove it from the rope, you have the option of disconnecting and abandoning it, or continue to attempt to unjam in a more workable position.

Every time I've jammed a knot (or my upper right handed Ascension) into my Croll I've been able to clear the problem with minimal effort. The Croll was designed to connect directly to the screw link on your seat harness, and introducing another link for an obscure reason not only reduces efficiency but also adds unnecessary complication to the system. Previous posts by John and others illustrate this well.

I usually say to each his own, but when it comes to advising others some critical thinking needs to come into play. Frankly, this sounds like a solution in search of a problem which rarely - if ever - exists in the real world. KISS.

[PeterFJohnson]

First and foremost, I am NOT advocating putting something between your maillon and your croll. I agree with all the previous posts that this is not how the croll was designed.

However,

I can think of a half dozen ways to unweight a jammed croll without having to use an extra screw link.

As this thread has continued, I was wondering- if something jams a Croll, shouldn't a caver be able to unweight it by standing up in their footloop, then wrestle and swear and tug and pull on the Croll until it gives?

I am simply having a hard tome wrapping my head around how a croll is getting jammed up so tight that it wont move or anything... can you guys explain how this is happening?

(etc. etc.)

Since you all asked...No, there are times - albeit rare - that unweighting, or twisting the body of, or thumbing the cam on your croll will not fix the situation. I apologize because my original post may not have been all that clear, but this was the case in that situation. Just to paraphrase again, a nano carabiner attached to the bottom of my basic upper ascender slid into the channel on my croll along with the rope when I stepped up on my footloop. This locked the cam on my croll. Normally one would simply unweight the croll, thumb the cam, and slide it down. However, since my two ascenders were now essentially attached neither could go up or down. If I wasn't able to unjam it - which required taking at least some weight off both ascenders at the same time and a whole lot of mostly one handed fiddling - I would have been in a pickle. A third ascender would have helped.

Your top connector to your Croll shouldn't be long enough and/or large enough to get sucked into the Croll, and there shouldn't be anything loose in the vicinity of the Croll gate that is thin/small enough to fit into the Croll gate at any point when it is moving along rope.

You hit the nail on the head. But I think most people would not consider a carabiner to be something that was "thin/small enough" fit into the croll gate. Even something the size of a Nano.

Again, my croll remains attached directly to my maillon half round. But in the name of comprehensiveness I think it is worth relating the story if only so people can come up with creative solutions that involve neither of your two main ascenders...

[self-deleted_user]

I'm trying to imagine the situation you describe...would a QAS of helped? I mean I have one, could you have still stood up in the footloops putting the qas high, hence weighting the qas and then had both ascenders unweighted?

[PeterFJohnson]

I'm trying to imagine the situation you describe...would a QAS of helped? I mean I have one, could you have still stood up in the footloops putting the qas high, hence weighting the qas and then had both ascenders unweighted?

A third ascender would have helped.

Yes, to quote myself, A third ascender(i.e. a QAS) would have helped.

I realize the scenario is difficult to describe/understand, but just imagine that both of your ascenders will move neither up or down the rope. Unjamming a croll usually requires that you move the croll down at least a few millimeters. Maybe I will try to post pictures.

[Tubo Longo]

To tell the truth there is a very practical reason to have the Croll connected to the screw link: I have seen it and used it myself, to great advantage have to say.

That is in those kind of long and vertical cave where pits are alternating with tight crevasse-like passages and crawlways. Then you'd love to disconnect your Croll from the screw link between each pit, so that it doesn't bother you while crawling and squeezing for several hundreds yards at time, may be carrying or towing an heavy pack as surplus. Sure you loose some efficiency while resuming climbing, but in the big picture of caving in THAT particular cave is a great trick in your hat.

I won't reccomend thou as standard tech to use on everyday caving: I can see the point suggested by Marduke, but I agree with most if not everybody else that some juggling may however help to free the Croll even when it could get desperately jammed into a knot or somehow else.
Won't like at all to perform a self rescue or pick-off with the Croll connected to the the screw link via a small maillon. Just won't make me feel safe.

My cent, of course

[NZcaver]

That is in those kind of long and vertical cave where pits are alternating with tight crevasse-like passages and crawlways. Then you'd love to disconnect your Croll from the screw link between each pit, so that it doesn't bother you while crawling and squeezing for several hundreds yards at time, may be carrying or towing an heavy pack as surplus.

Hi Renato,

If I understand correctly, you suggest adding a small maillon below the Croll to make it easy to disconnect the tight chest harness from the low seat harness in certain pit/crevasse caves. A fast method to free yourself from the hunched-over posture of the frog system once you get off rope. Correct?

If you're using a fixed chest harness like the classic figure 8 loop, wouldn't a small carabiner or maillon above the Croll (between Croll and chest harness) achieve the same thing without losing efficiency or twisting the Croll? Or if you have an adjustable frog harness like the Petzl, PMI, GGG, etc, couldn't you simply loosen the strap without disconnecting anything at all? Or am I missing something?

[Tubo Longo]

No Jansen, you got it wrong, sorry.... my fault!
The idea is to disconnect the Croll from the seat harness, without having to open/close every time the screw link. To disconnect the Croll from the upper harness, whatever its type, there are countless way, all efficient and worthwhile.

Why from the lower (i.e. seat) harness? Because in those kind of caves even the top of the pits is often tight and you don't want to find yourself with an open seat harness at the top of, say, a 70 m (200') free fall chasm. Better a small maillon to re-connect the Croll and then go.
Have to say that in Europe is standard practice to rappell wearing the climbing gear, just in case you have to turn around etc. A very simple proposition indeed with Frog, as any frogger surely knows. So the attach/detach thing is something down on both the way in and out for every drop where is needed.

Hope to have been a bit clearer now, sorry for the confusion.

[chh]

Renato is just talking about making crawling/sqeezing more comfortable in tight passages in between vertical pitches. Am I right? Maybe worthwhile if there's a lot of it, but otherwise probably unnecessary.
I would also argue that an Omni user could probably just pop the croll off as fast or faster than undoing a little screw link inbetween the half-round and the croll, and without the slight loss in efficiency while climbing. Granted you are essentially taking your harness off for a second, but if you truly are inbetween pitches what's the difference?