hank moon wrote:i s'pose there are different defs for "QAS"...I hear many people referring to it as an extra ascender w/lanyard - that can be attached to the rope quickly with one hand - to be used at pitch heads and whenever it might be handy (many possibilities), so that's the definition I'm using. The ubiquity of the so-called "QAS" in the U.S. caving community and its near-absence in other parts of the world smells more like a successful marketing scheme than a meaningful innovation.
Well I haven't needed (or wanted) a QAS yet
so I have to agree
If you really need to clip into the rope and there are no rebelays, loops etc handy tie a knot (figure nine or alpine butterfly) and clip into that.
On the other hand, they mostly don't seem to be doing any harm, except adding to your gear weight. One exception might be the accident report we had on here where the user had a ropewalker and the QAS attachment was too long, but I don't think we can blame that on the QAS.
My confusion with the term "cowstail" - is a single lanyard a "cowstail" or does "cowstail" specifically refer to a lanyard with 2 legs like the Spelegyca.
Here we have a long cowstail and a short cowstail, and a cord attaching the hand ascender to the central mailon. The short cowstail is mainly used for crossing rebelays on the way down. The long cowstail is used as a general safety attachment at pitch heads it is also used when crossing rebelays on the way up. The two are most often tied in a single piece of dynamic rope, once tied these are refered to as your cowstails. You could just as correctly tie your cowstails out of two pieces of rope but you would have more bulk around your central mailon and mine is busy enough already.
Oh also if your interested:
There is a suggestion you can get rid of the hand ascender attachment cord and use your long cowstail for this purpose, I don't do this because:
1: A metre and half of rope doesn't weight much.
2: passing rebelays on the way up is more difficult as the short cowstail has to be clipped into the rebelay , this also means the short cowstail may have to be longer than it otherwise would.