Found a yosemite rescue on rope.........explain this one

[Chads93GT]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IyyE7RoG ... re=related

surfing youtube out of boredom.

Not sure what is going on here but around 8:10 into the video a yosemite rescue guy starts to ascend the rope to the injured idiot on rope. (drunk climber hanging by his feet upside down). Anyway..............Do the yosemite rescue guys not know what rope walkers are? I mean, this guy was really struggeling to climb up the rope to rescue this guy and he has some long etriers (sp) dangeling for foot loops??? What gives?

[NZcaver]

Short answer - no. I've never seen Mountain Rescue guys using ropewalker ascending systems. It's quite possible some might, but if so they're probably also pit bouncing cavers.

The guy in the video appears to be using a Texas rig - pretty much the standard for most mountain rescue rope work. It's not particularly efficient for climbing, but it's fairly easy for the average guy to throw on, climb a rope, and do changeovers and other maneuvers. It doesn't require much refresher training so it's good for some rescuers who may not have been on rope for a while and might be a bit rusty. Personally I prefer the frog system, and so do a few of the other caver/mountain rescue folks I know. But if a team chooses to go with one standard for all their people, it's likely to be the Texas. At least in the US.

I'm not sure why the guy in the video is climbing with a long etrier hanging down. Seems pretty cumbersome to me. But I'm guessing he wanted it easily available for doing the pickoff once he reached the subject.

[Evan G]

The guy in the video appears to be using a Texas rig

Nope, that would be a typical climber/mountain ascending system. I get a chuckle every time I see this system being used. Aid climbers invented this climbing system and it is a struggle to use. Many a friend that were climbers first then cavers will use this system until they get to a lip. Crossing a lip with this system is next to impossible. 20 years ago climbers and cavers were about equal in the advancement of rope techniques, but now cavers have far excelled beyond the mountaineers and climbers.

[Chads93GT]

So basically what you are saying, if you want to see a monkey F a football while on rope, watch this climbing rig being used, lol. I still don't get what happend to the guy on rope int he first place. I couldn't tell if he almost fell out of his harness or what.

[chh]

I think the reason why the aider was hanging down was that it was just a normal 5 or 6 step that just didn't need to be that long for the footloop.
It's actually kind of hard to figure out what's going on there. At first I thought the guy had a harness on. He had a jumar. Maybe he forgot to thread the waist buckle, took a fall and ends up hanging upside down from his leg loops which in turn end up around his knees. It's also hard to tell if he had more than one rope with him, or those other ropes were lowered down by yosar. At one point it almost looks like he was climbing on doubles and managed to get a leg in between them in the fall.
I think it very unlikely that the guy had managed to fall without a harness on, get tangled in ropes and come to a stop without some serious injury to his legs. He was able to move them around on the ground, there was no blood, etc. What was he doing with a couple of ropes and a jug without a harness anyway?
As far as the system the rescuer was using, I don't see the problem with it. It wasn't really that far from the ledge, and texas/mitchell systems are far more common on walls than frogs or ropewalkers. I agree with NZ caver, probably just what the guy was familiar with or what the team had been trained in. Anyway, it worked. IMHO ropewalkers are more cumbersome than other systems are for any task other than climbing rope.

[Evan G]

The typical Climbers/Aid/Mountaineering system is two aiders connected to two jumars then the two jumars are connected to the seat harness via two daisy chains.

YOSAR did a wonderful that boy is lucky to be alive. In the second part the guy says that his harness slipped and bound around the left knee.

[Geary]

I think that Evan nailed the climbing system used by YOSAR. This is a very typical set up for aid climbing/seconding but is very inefficient. Not sure why the climbing community hasn't switch since the Frog and Mitchell systems have both been covered in the climbing literature/magazines. Old habits die hard I guess.

I know when I was at the base of El Cap some years ago, I felt naked without my helmet, I noted that few folks in the video had a helmet on even though they had a number of folks about them. All you need is the knucklehead climber to drop a binner, clock, pin, or his rock hammer on your head from that height and I would suspect it would ruin your day.

Geary

[NZcaver]

Yeah it never ceases to amaze me that helmets are considered optional or maybe an afterthought by many climbers, both on the wall and watching from below.

I asked some well-known climber about this once after he gave a presentation, and received a look like I was from another planet. Obviously he'd never been involved in a rescue and seen the results of a head injury up close.

[Extremeophile]

This is a very typical set up for aid climbing/seconding but is very inefficient. Not sure why the climbing community hasn't switch since the Frog and Mitchell systems have both been covered in the climbing literature/magazines. Old habits die hard I guess.

In most big wall climbing there will be direct aid requiring two etriers (aiders). Then the leader will need to haul the bag using two ascenders, or one ascender and a cam/pulley, and handled ascenders are easier to use. To second a pitch requires ascending along with all sorts of tricks to negotiate horizontal traverses, tension traverses, pendulums, etc. while cleaning gear that often is under tension. It's hard to see that a Frog, Mitchell or Ropewalker system could be as useful in this context as the traditional big wall system of two ascenders, two daisies and two etriers. The caving-evolved climbing systems become much more efficient when climbing fixed ropes between anchors without intermediate gear placements - especially when it's overhanging terrain. For most big wall climbs this may only be one or two pitches out of 30 and it's not worth bringing specialized gear for this purpose. The traditional big wall system can be very efficient when climbing against a wall or up a lower angle slab. I've converted my traditional system into a pseudo-Frog system on occasion for greater efficiency (the Kor roof on Skull Queen / S. Face Washington Column comes to mind).

Derek

[harrym]

I, too have been amazed at the differences in gear and techniques between cavers and big wall climbers. Derek does a good job of explaining why the two sports use such vastly different ascending rigs.

The aid climbing/big wall technique is actually very efficient for... aid climbing and big walls. Caving single rope technique is very efficient for... single rope technique.

Frankly, I can't see how I would manage to follow a lead on an El Cap big wall using a rope walker system. Explain how you would expeditiously and efficiently ascend a slab, followed by a pendulum/traverse, followed by an overhang using a rope walker or a frog? And I can't see how I would manage to pull myself out of Fern Sink with my arms using a big wall rig. How is caving technique better at negotiating lips than climbing technique? I don't see a different, except that cavers are much more likely and willing than climbers to place bolts to optimize rigging and avoid lips.

However, there is definitely room for some shared information and shared technique. With just a little more gear, big wall climbers could make ascending considerably easier in certain conditions, such as ascending fixed ropes.

Cavers, though much more advanced than climbers in terms of ascending free-hanging ropes, have much to learn from climbers about dynamic loads, fall factors, and the like.

Finally, I agree that climbers haven't really accepted helmets. I think climbers have much larger egos than cavers. Helmets are simply not cool. That is, until you''ve had your bashed in by a rock. Wanna see my scar? I narrowly survivied that lesson back in 1978.

About 2,000 feet up the Muir Wall, El Capitan, 30 years ago

[Chads93GT]

I understand the helmet issue, having been a climber before a caver. i still find it hard to put on a helmet when simply going to the cliffs for a vertical training day. Old habbits die hard. The climbers are the local crags sure do look at us funny when we have our racks, climbing systems, static lines, and helmets. Always good for a laugh.

Awesome photo by the way. Do people climb el cap on fixed ropes often? I realize that not everyone in the world is tommy caldwell and can't climb El cap the badass way, I just never knew people actually went there and used a srt system to climb it. Basically the alpine system is like a texas system right?

[harrym]

I understand the helmet issue, having been a climber before a caver. i still find it hard to put on a helmet when simply going to the cliffs for a vertical training day. Old habbits die hard. The climbers are the local crags sure do look at us funny when we have our racks, climbing systems, static lines, and helmets. Always good for a laugh.

Awesome photo by the way. Do people climb el cap on fixed ropes often? I realize that not everyone in the world is tommy caldwell and can't climb El cap the badass way, I just never knew people actually went there and used a srt system to climb it. Basically the alpine system is like a texas system right?

Fixed ropes are used only when you've reached high point for the day and need to rap down to a ledge for the night. A big wall system is bascially two ascenders, each with it's own etrier, each tied into the harness.