left-handed chest ascenders

[fuzzy-hair-man]

Thought I would volunteer that I was once careless and inattentive enough to jam my croll into my right handed ascender the manner pictured in this thread. I was new to using the pantin, trying to reach to clip in the to an anchor, and had used my pantin to push myself "too high". Fortunately I had a QAS, and was at the anchor. None the less, it took me quite a while to get off that rope as it was very difficult to thumb the croll, and the RHA was jammed into a knot. I now use a LHA when I use a handled ascender. I often, however, still use a basic; which is right handed.

Quite interesting. Thanks for sharing. Always good to learn from each other.

If it were me I'd just concentrate on not jamming your upper ascender into the knot, if in this case the upper ascender wasn't jammed into the knot he could have raised the upper ascender to free the jam, IMO the real problem was the upper ascender was jammed in the knot the fact that it blocked access to the Croll is just a complication brought about by the initial error, removing or thumbing down the Croll doesn't nessicarily help with removing the jammed upper ascender (it might make access easier but isn't a solution of it'self...) it is entirely possible to have a jam with just the upper ascender on the rope jammed into a knot hard.

BTW: if your struggles to free the ascender still don't work it's worthwhile remembering that there's also the option of undoing the knot (after clipping into the anchor/ rope above) and going past then replacing the knot. I've been on a trip where one caver jammed their ascender into the knot and was some 1 hour sorting it out if they had thought to undo the knot it could have been solved in minutes.

[underdog]

Strider,
No doubt there were several mistakes made. This was more than 5 years ago, so the memory is foggy. But I would put the first mistake at the manner in which the drop was rigged, it was quite awkward and not "standard", difficult to reach the clip in point which is how ended up all jammed up. Learned a thing or two the hard way that day, and avoidence of jamming one's ascender into anything was definitely one of them. I hadn't thought to undo the knot, but I wasn't there for an hour either. If I am ever careless enough to repeat the mistake I hope your advice will come to mind.