by potholer » Apr 22, 2006 6:27 am
Rather than the rig on the link you supplied, my rig is essentially a vanilla frog rig, with just the left foot in the normal hand-jammer footloop (held on with a chicken-loop), and the Pantin strapped to the right foot.
You can frog as in a standard frog system using both legs, or one or other single leg if desired, and switch between various frog styles and ropewalking (though requiring some kind of pull from the arms) just by changing the limb rhythm.
There is a kind of half-way situation, where most of the lift is from the arms (on the rope +/or hand jammer) and left leg, but the right leg is raised while standing up on the left, and a small subsequent step is taken with the right leg (via the Pantin), with the right leg being used to support the weight while the hand jammer is raised, so avoiding a loss of height when sitting down - in fact, it's possible to have a continuum between frogging and alternatling roughly equal independent leg movements.
Also, there's what I think is called the asymmetric frog, where there is essentially one standing-up motion, but which starts off with the left foot pulled right up under the backside, and the right foot a little lower down. Initial lift comes from the right leg, since the left leg is too bent to provide much force at first. At the end of the step, the right leg is essentially unloaded - this allows for maximum length steps with all four limbs providing lift, and seems to work well when carrying extra weight.
When plodding out of deep caves against a wall, it's easy to use both legs together for standing up while moving the feet up the wall independently, which is a huge advantage over conventional frogging, especially when rope isn't running through and would otherwise have to be pulled by gripping between the feet, since two-foot frogging against a wall with a single footloop does tend to end up with bruised toes. Also, being able to feel (or look to check) the rope has run through the Pantin, you *know* it will be pulled through the Croll, which is a great bonus when tired and ropes/jammers are dirty.
The big advantage is that the Pantin is a pure extra addition to a regular frog kit, and even when you're using it, you are free to move between all the possible ways of using it just by changing the pattern of leg and arm movements.
They're great in constricted pitches as well - just letting the chest jammer push the hand jammer above it, both hands can be freed for finding handholds, and small pumping steps with the right leg inch you slowly but surely upwards, or alternating small steps can be taken with both legs if the pitch allows hands to be on the hand jammer. They also make climbing off many pitchheads much easier, since you can climb much higher up .