Marduke wrote:From what you describe, your rack is attached incorrectly. A rack should be attached so you are looking at the END of the bars, and the opening should be down and away from your body, not to the right or left.
Not to pick a fight, but this is an OPINION shared by some cavers and not by others. Not a hard and fast rule for all, because doing it the other way IS safe and DOES work. Also it doesn't apply quite the same to U-racks as it does to J-racks. But yes, with an open-frame rack this is quite an efficient way to maintain control and add/drop bars.
I understand what muskrat means by "torque" now. Just a little rotation is normal and nothing to worry about. I have my rack (a micro) attached via an oval Maillon Rapide screw link to my Petzl Omni harness link. It is free to rotate maybe 45 degrees each way or so, and in practice I don't even give it a second thought.
chh wrote:Also, at a certain risk of crossing everyone here I'll go ahead and say that trial and error IS how we learn. And how we learn to anticipate how to approach different scenarios and assess risk. But, DO try to keep the errors small...
Good point, Caleb. I guess I was thinking in terms of a new vertical caver using unfamiliar equipment, as opposed to those of us who have been around the vertical caving world for a while and like to tinker with our setups. In the former situation, many others before us have done the trial and error method when learning from scratch. Now we have the luxury of learning the basics from others, generations beyond those who had to do all the original trial and error process themselves. Of course we can still tinker, provided we know enough already to be able to do it safely.