by Anonymous_Coward » Oct 28, 2013 6:01 pm
Hi Tony,
There have been pages upon pages written about this, but I will spare you the misery and try to give you the quick version. (which will almost certainly be immediately and passionately disagreed with by trolls)
For certain on-rope maneuvers, you need a short cowstail and a long cowstail. Ideally, both of them should be equipped with a carabiner for clipping into things. In the simplest version of the frog, your foot (upper) ascender is attached to your long cowstail via a carabiner. This setup allows the long cowstail to function as the safety tether between you and the foot ascender, or as a clip in point for anchors, rebelays, traverses, etc.
Other methods of attaching the upper ascender are not as versatile. Hard-tying the ascender to the cowstail robs you of the ability to clip into anything with your long cowstail except a vertical rope. Attaching the ascender with a small quick link is also popular. This is more versatile than hard-tying, but adds weight and another link in the system. With this setup, a carabiner can be added into the quick link for when you need to clip into bolts or loops of rope or webbing.
Some cavers add a third cowstail. This is usually because their long cowstail is hard-tied to the ascender, preventing it from being used for other applications, or because the caver uses a 6-bar (long) rack. With a 6-bar rack, it is very difficult to perform a changeover with only two ascenders (foot +croll). It is much easier to do a 6-bar rack changeover with two ascenders each on long cowstails because it allows you to disengage the croll and hang from the two uppers.
I personally recommend having only two cowstails (short and long), both with biners on the end for maximum efficiency and weight savings. I add a third cowstail with QAS when I am using a 6-bar rack. When using shorter descenders like micro-racks and bobbins, the third ascender is not necessary.
Last edited by
Anonymous_Coward on Oct 28, 2013 6:03 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Andy Armstrong
American Carbide Council