Moderator: Tim White
On a 6-bar, J-frame rack you can engage enough bars so that you will be having to hold the lower bars apart to move on the rope; if you let go then the bars will move together and add friction. At the least you won't hit the ground at near free-fall velocity as you would if let go while rapping on a fig-8.
The FW is intended to replace your braking hand should you inadvertently let go. It was not developed in order to hold you if your descender comes off the rope. But its still an interesting question. You'd have to test it under shock conditions of course in order to get a reliable result, and that might hurt.hunter wrote:has anyone here actually tried hanging from the leg loop on their harness?
Buford Pruitt wrote:The books, "On Rope" and "Alpine Caving Techniques" do not adequately discuss those two subjects.
On Rope (1996) [page 128] ... the only reference to a French wrap style self-belay is this: "Some people try this (rappelling) with a short Prusik below a rappel device. In practice, the hitch always stretches into the device, rendering it useless."
hank_moon wrote:On Rope (1996) [page 128] ... the only reference to a French wrap style self-belay is this: "Some people try this (rappelling) with a short Prusik below a rappel device. In practice, the hitch always stretches into the device, rendering it useless."
A demonstrably false statement...easy to disprove. Was there more text? I don't have a copy of this book.
NZcaver wrote:I love Gary's last line on that webpage - "The Prusik safety may be highly contested among climbers. Among cavers, it is not. It is almost universally rejected."
Perhaps it should be...
hunter wrote:I was in a cave this weekend that had a 20+ year old rope in it which we replaced but I would be really interested in data on how much the nylon actually degrades over that time period.
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