Elliott,
Welcome to the eccentric fraternity of caving. Hopefully I'll see you out there some day. A few thoughts:
From the pictures and your description it seems more like you are using a frog system than a ropewalker? Are you using a chest roller?
Elliott-Hellmann wrote:
The changeovers are definaltly something that I'm trying to work on in my free time. The way I've been doing it is hooking the belay device to a carabiner on my D ring. I have a petzl croll attached to my D ring, A petzl Pantin foot ascender (Left) and a Petzl hand ascender with a single leg strap (right). By keeping the Belay device above the Croll I can attach the foot acender and hand ascender, step into the strap. Take the tension off the the belay device, remove it and then attach the croll. With both the foot and hand acender attached, I feel pretty secure on the rope while preforming the switch from the belay to the croll.
Not sure I am reading this correctly but it sounds as though when changing over from descent to ascent you are momentarily only connected to the rope with a hand(or "upper") ascender and a foot ascender? I am looking at this specifically:
Elliott-Hellmann wrote:Take the tension off the the belay device, remove it and then attach the croll.
This is bad practice for a change over and can be corrected pretty easily by attaching the croll
before removing the belay device(or "Descender" or "Rappel Device").
There are two reasons for this:
1)A foot ascender lacks the safety catch of a normal ascender and therefore should never be considered a device for use in life safe applications. You will find out that most foot ascenders come off the rope fairly easily(for reasons which are good, but irrelevant to this thread). It is best to disregard a foot ascender when thinking about life safety and instead think of it only as something that makes ascending more efficient.
2)Even ascenders with safety catches, like a croll or upper/handled ascender, slip on the rope from time to time. If you cave long enough this will happen to you. As a result it isn't consider safe to rely on only one ascender for life safety. Some people chose to think of an ascender as "half" a connection to the rope to help remember not to rely on a single ascender.
2a) In looking at the picture of you coming up over the lip it looks like you have no connection to your hand ascender other than your foot loop. You should have a tether connecting your hand ascender to your d-ring for safety reasons.
All this might seem like overkill at first, but it isn't. And since you already have the proper gear on you, it only takes small changes to make it a much safer system. See if you can find a copy of Alpine Caving Techniques(unless you actually are using a rope walker, in which case get On Rope) or
check out this site for more info. And as everyone else said, its nice to have a mentor.
If I misunderstood any of your posts I apologize, but I thought I would chime in on those few points since nobody else had so far. They seemed preoccupied with other things...
Have fun out there man