March 19, 2023 • 18 mins
Part 2: Learn about twin releasable systems, some aspects to consider with twin releasable systems, and some cautions about releasable systems in general.
Resources:
Totem rigging and releasing video from Rock Exotica
Jester rigging options Facebook photo from @totemrigging
Jester rigging video from North Wash Outdoors
Joker Mickey rigging variations on RopeWiki
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Katie (00:08):
Hey everyone.
Thanks for joining us.
I'm Katie
Carma (00:10):
and I'm Carma and you're listening to, I'd rather be
canyoneering.
Katie (00:14):
We're best friends who totally geek out about canyon
rigging and beautifully slotcanyons.
Basically we'd always rather becanyoneering.
But when we can't, we spendevery spare minute, we have
talking about it.
Carma (00:26):
This podcast is for entertainment purposes only.
Please seek professionalinstruction and practice
technical skills in a controlledenvironment before entering slot
canyons.
Your safety is entirely your ownresponsibility.
Katie (00:41):
Welcome to our canyon crew! In our last episode we
talked about single strandreleasable systems.
Now, some of you might bewondering if there's a way to
rig releasable, but also useboth strands of rope for
repelling.
The answer is yes.
this is twin releasable systems.
Carma (01:00):
This is something that you could do if you need to keep
the group moving quickly.
for example, You may want to usea twin releasable system.
If it's getting late, there'sbad weather coming, or if you
want to move the group through acold section faster, it allows
people to go down on either sideof the rope, utilizing both
strands for repelling.
Someone can be loading on onestrand while someone else is
(01:22):
repelling on the other strand.
If the repel has enough spaceand the anchor is strong enough,
you can even have two peoplerepelling at the same time.
Katie (01:31):
In the static rigging world, twin systems might be
built by using a stone knot toisolate both strands of a double
strand setup.
If the stone knot's familiar toyou, you may be able to picture
this already.
So for a twin releasable system,you take the concept of the
stone knot and add a releasablecomponent.
we'll be sharing some of ourfavorite twin releasable systems
(01:52):
in this episode, and rememberthat you can find links to
videos and other resources inthe show notes and on our
Facebook page when you're donelistening, The first twin
releasable system that welearned was the gesture, and we
learned this on a totem.
You can actually do it on anumber of other devices as well,
like the Kong Gigi or theSterling at s basically anything
(02:14):
with a double stitch plate.
We chose the gesture because itlooked really familiar to us
when we were looking through allthe different kinds of
releasable systems.
It looks a lot like an ATC andguide mode for a top belay.
And so coming from the climbingworld, we gravitated towards
this one.
In order to set up the gesture,you'll need some sort of a
stitch plate device and twocarabiners.
(02:35):
You run your rope through thequick link at the anchor so that
both strands of the rope reachall the way to the ground.
It looks like you're setting updouble strand technique, but
it's not.
to finish turning it into agesture.
You clip a carabiner to thewebbing right next to the quick
link.
And when you do this, you clipthe rope too.
Then you use that same carabinerto attach the stitch plate
device to the anchor.
(02:55):
Last, you'll pull up two strandsof rope and put a bite from each
of the strands through thestitch plate and clip them off
with a second carabiner.
We prefer the second carabinerto be a round stock carabiner
because the two strands of ropethat go through the stitch plate
are going to run around thespine of that carabiner when you
release and lower.
So it's nicer on the rope not tohit a hard edge of like the 3D
(03:17):
type carabiners.
Carma (03:18):
What we like about the Jester is that we find it easy
to rig and easy to inspect.
It also requires less gear thanthe Joker, which is the other
option we're going to talk aboutnext.
The jester has a little bit morefriction than the Joker, and in
order to release and lower on ajester, you have to pull out
some slack between the stitchplate and the anchor, and then
(03:39):
kind of feed it through thestitch plate.
That can be kind of difficult.
Katie actually learned a greathack for that though.
If you want it to lower a littlefaster and smoother, you can
clip another carabiner onto theslack and loop and help it slide
a little better.
Katie (03:54):
I also like that cuz then my hand isn't just right in that
loop.
My one hand is on the carabinerand one hand is still my break
hand, but I'm prote.
It from, if it were to go tight,I don't crush my hand.
Carma (04:05):
Good call.
Katie (04:06):
Now we're gonna talk about the Joker.
It's the other twin releasablesystem that we wanna share with
you today.
The Joker can be rigged on atotem as well.
If you take the totem from itsvertical position and turn it to
a horizontal position, thenyou're ready to rig the joker.
A joker can also be rigged ontwo figure eight descenders.
And that makes it pretty coolbecause if you're sharing gear
(04:27):
in the group, then you can, passthat around.
To rig it, you simply take thetwo descenders and overlap the
big opening on each of them andclip those big holes with a
carabiner up to the anchor,you'll have the two big holes
overlapping and the two hornssticking out to the left and
right.
Next.
You grab a bite of rope from theleft hand side and pull it
through both large holes on thefigure eights, and then pull it
(04:49):
up and over the horn on the lefthand side.
You do the same thing with theright hand side of the rope.
Take a bite of rope from theright hand side.
And pull it through both bigholes of the figure eight
devices, and then over the hornon the right hand side to safety
off the setup clip both thehorns with a locking quick draw.
People sometimes call the jokera mickey because it looks like a
(05:11):
Mickey mouse when it's rigged.
This.
The joker's a little morenuanced than the gesture and
it's set up.
It's a little tricky because youhave to attach the carabiner to
the anchor in a certain way sothat the rope sits on top of the
carabiner and doesn't getpitched underneath it.
If that happens, you won't beable to release the system.
For that reason, you see a lotof variations on the Joker
(05:32):
Mickey.
Some people will click thecarabiner to the webbing and
mirror the quick link to avoidany pinching at all.
Other people will add a secondcarabiner to that setup to help
correct the orientation.
Still others will use a lockingquick draw to add space and fix
the orientation problem at thesame time.
I think that's pretty cool.
All of these are great solutionsand it's your choice based on
(05:52):
what gear you carry and whatyour particular situation.
Carma (05:56):
The biggest benefit for the Joker is that it's smoother
to release than the jester.
You unclip the quick draw andactually take the rope off of
one side of the setup.
So this creates less frictionfor when you're lowering, so you
can do things a little smoother.
Katie (06:12):
Twin releasable systems have some special
considerations.
The twin releasable systems thatwe just told you about, rely on
counterweight to stay fixed.
So when someone gets off at thebottom, you need to make sure
that there's still counterweightat the top.
We usually just assign an anchormanager at the top on these to
be handing ropes to the nextperson, do load and go, things
(06:32):
like that.
Um, and with their hands onthose two ropes, they're just
making sure that there's noslippage through the anchor.
If one side gets it's unweightedas someone's getting off.
Carma (06:42):
If you are only sending one person down at a time and
your anchor manager wants to behands free, you do have the
option to tie a knot on theopposite side from the repeller
to prevent the rope fromslipping through the totem.
In our experience with thejester, it doesn't slip very
often.
We've only seen it happen once.
and it was when the anchor wasvery low to the ground, so the
(07:04):
totem was situated in a morehorizontal position rather than
a more vertical hangingposition.
Our friend on repel did a jumpto clear the edge of an
overhang.
Katie was manning the system andreacted immediately, but the
rope still slipped a few inchesthrough the totem.
It definitely started our friendon repel, and it surprised us
(07:25):
how much more effort it took forthe belay in that horizontal
position because we had justnever seen it happen before.
Katie (07:31):
Yeah, it surprised him and it surprised.
another consideration with thesetwin releasable systems is that
the last person is gonna have toconvert that gesture or joker
into something else before goingdown the repel, because you
don't wanna leave all that gearat the top.
Carma (07:45):
Yeah, you can't pull the rope down when it's rigged in
either a jester or joker becauseboth strands of the rope are
going through the setup.
So that last person has to takeit off.
And we found one of the reasonswhy we like the jester so much
is because it's super easy asthe last person down to unclip
the totem from the anchor andflip that over to your harness
(08:05):
and just go down on throttlemode.
At this point, when the lastperson is going down, there's
really no more advantage toreleasable rigging cuz there's
nobody at the top to release itfor them.
And by going down on a stitchplate device, that last person
is cleaning out all of thetwists that the other repellers
have put into the rope by usingfigure eight descenders like
(08:25):
critters.
The stitch plates actually helpclean it up.
And help to prevent the ropesfrom getting stuck when you go
to pull them.
so we really do like the jesterwhen we're willing to carry a
totem, Something we should notehere too is that while these
twin systems allow two people tobe on rope at the same time, you
can only release a twin systemwith one person on the rope.
(08:48):
You need to have one strand freein order to lower.
If two people are on rappel atthe same time and one of them
gets stuck, then the otherrepeller would need to finish
the rappel and get off ropebefore the stuck repeller can be
lowered.
Katie (09:03):
to finish out the topic of releasable rigging in general
and touching back on our, partone as well, we just wanna talk
about some overallconsiderations and cautions for
releasable rigging.
The first thing we wanna talkabout is do you have a way to
communicate with the personwho's on repel?
So this is gonna go for both ourreleasable blocks and the
(09:24):
releasable twin systems that wejust talked about.
If you don't know why they.
exercise.
Some caution before you gostraight to lowering.
You have no idea if they'realready solving a problem on
their own, like doing a selfrescue and they're depending on
the rope to hold still.
You also don't know if loweringthem could cause an injury or
make a bad situation worse.
(09:45):
For example, if you lowersomeone whose foot is stuck,
you'll most likely make thingsworse.
You need to know if there's areason that they stop too.
Like maybe there's a rattlesnakeat the bottom of a pothole or
there's a pool filled with logsthat they don't wanna go into.
So don't assume and just jumpstraight to releasing.
Carma (10:02):
It would be super scary to be suddenly lowered on repel
if you didn't expect it to Likeyou, you would initially think
you were just falling.
Katie (10:13):
Something broke like.
Carma (10:14):
right?
Yeah.
Especially when releasing ablock because when you release
the lock off, there's some slackthat needs to be quickly pulled
out of the system.
So ideally you're gonna warn theperson on rope that they're
going to feel the rope pop whenthat happens.
Cuz if they're already in astressful situation, having the
rope move like that is probablygonna make them panic.
Katie (10:36):
It really could.
And ideally the person who's onrappel can lock off their device
before you start lowering themso that they can use their hands
to navigate things on their waydown or, they just have more
options that way.
So being able to communicate, isreally key.
So you don't make a badsituation
Carma (10:52):
Right.
Another thing you wanna considerwhen you're setting up a
releasable rigging system is howfar do you need to be able to
lower someone?
So the ideal situation whenrigging releasable is to have
one rope that is double thelength of the repel or longer.
That way you have half or morethan half of the rope in reserve
(11:12):
at the top, and you couldpotentially lower someone from
anywhere on the repel all theway to the ground.
In reality, we know that thatdoesn't always happen like often
in canyons.
We need to tie two ropestogether or tie a rope in a pool
cord together to be able to haveboth ends of our system reach
the ground and be retrievable.
(11:33):
So if you're tying a pull cordonto one side, you don't have as
much space to lower someone.
Katie (11:39):
You wanna know how far you have until you reach the
knot that you tied, because thatknot is not gonna pass through
the rigging.
So you wanna think about thatahead of time or put the knot on
the other side and make surethat is a safe knot for load
bearing, holding the full weightof a person, kind of a knot
basically what we're saying isthat it really depends on how
far you need to lower someone.
(12:00):
some options here are that youwant to lower them all the way
to the bottom of the repel.
Maybe their hair is caught inthe device, maybe their glove
got sucked into the device andtheir whole hand is crunched up
in there and you just wannalower them all the way at the
bottom.
Or maybe you just wanna lower'emto a shelf where they can fix
the problem themself.
Or maybe you, threw down anotherrope and you're gonna go ahead
(12:20):
and switch their weight over tothat other rope.
It really just kinda depends onwhat your game plan is and, you
know, before you even send downthe first person how much you
have in.
Carma (12:31):
Right.
And you really don't need that.
Length to be able to shiftsomeone over.
So it still is worth rigging,releaseable, even if you can't
lower someone all the way to theground.
Now, An example of a time whenwe had to figure out how to deal
with the knot when we wanted torig a releasable system was when
we did Mystery Canyon in Zion.
(12:51):
When we got to the mysterysprings repel, we wanted to be
able to rig releasable and to beable to lower someone all the
way down if we needed to.
We had a mixed group of canyonyears from beginner to advanced,
and we just wanted to have thatoption.
So the mystery springs repel isabout 200 feet.
Katie (13:08):
But I didn't wanna carry a 400 foot rope.
I death protest
Carma (13:14):
too heavy and too much money.
So we needed to tie two 200 footropes together in order to make
this happen.
And we had to put the knot onthe repel side of the releasable
system.
That meant that the pull sidewas completely clean so that we
could use the pull side to belaysomeone and lower them all the
(13:35):
way to the bottom if we neededto.
And the knot was right up nextto the ring so everyone could
easily get on rappel below theknot and have a clean ride all
the way down on the rappel sideas well.
Like Katie said, if you're goingto do that, you need to make
sure that the knot that you areusing is one that is safe to
repel on.
(13:56):
And also that the second ropethat you're using is also a
reparable rope because it willbe holding the full weight of a
person and you need to have likea thicker repel rope running
through your releasable system.
It won't work.
The friction won't work the sameway if you're trying to use a
pull cord in a releasablesystem.
Katie (14:16):
And that's it for today,
Carma (14:18):
we've covered a lot of ground today.
tell.
Tell us what we learned, Katie.
Katie (14:25):
All right, so we're gonna do a little summary just cuz we
have gone through a lot here.
We've talked about severaldifferent releasable setups in
the releasable blocks category.
We covered our favoritereleasable blocks, including the
compact secure eight block andthe E M O or the eight mule
overhand.
In the twin releasablecategories, we've covered the
(14:46):
gesture, which can be done withanything with a stitch plate,
but a lot of times it's thetotem gesture that's pretty
popular.
And the Joker, which can be donewith a totem device or a couple
of figure eight descenders.
These are all great optionsunder the right circumstances.
I'd say it really just dependson the Canyon geography and the
needs of your group.
(15:06):
The conditions.
It's one of those skills that wethink is really essential for a
Canyon leader to know so thatyou have options.
Carma (15:14):
when you know how to rig releasable, you can really be
prepared to simply andefficiently deal with the
situation if one of your buddiesgets stuck on repel, if you need
to adjust the rope length on thefly, or if you need to slip the
rope over a sharp edge.
So when you are trying to decidewhat setup you wanna use, just
know that there are a lot ofreleasable options out there.
(15:37):
You can go and research theseoptions that we've talked about
to learn more about how to rigthem and how to safely release
them.
They are more complex than justthe static rigging options we
talked about last time.
So it's best if you have morethan one person on your team who
knows how to use them and how toinspect your rigging and yeah,
Katie (15:59):
when Karma and I were trying to expand from just
knowing how to rig releasable onthe gesture and trying to add in
figure eight blocks, there wereso many confusing things out
there that I didn't rig thatreleasable rig for a group for
over a year until I absolutelyknew that it was perfect and I
could confirm it with a pictureand that karma could check that
same picture and make sure thatwe are completely safe before we
(16:21):
sent any friends down over onit.
Carma (16:22):
Yeah.
And you wanna make sure topractice releasing your setup
before you actually go in acanyon and have to use it on
another human in an emergency.
You don't want that to be thefirst time that you ever release
someone.
You want to be comfortableknowing how it feels to release
the system safely, and how thefriction setting feels as you're
(16:44):
lowering so that you can stay incontrol when you do that.
Katie (16:48):
You don't want any surprises, uh, when you're doing
something like that.
And I started just in thebasement with a 12 pound weight,
and then I moved to my ringsetup over in our carport and
worked with some friends, youknow, three feet off the ground.
Carma (17:01):
yeah, definitely wanna learn it in a controlled
environment.
If there's something that youlove that we haven't listed
here, share it with us.
So we are nerds, right?
We're gonna go look up anyrigging that someone's gonna
tell us about So if there'ssomething that you love and
you're using it all the time andit's working great out there,
(17:22):
let us know.
Cuz we love to learn new waysto.
Katie (17:25):
yeah.
Share a picture on our Facebookpage.
Come talk to us, we're gonna bekeeping the trolls off and try
to keep it a fun atmosphere ofjust actual learning and people
sharing ideas.
Carma (17:37):
If you're totally hooked on canyoneering like us,
remember to subscribe, so youdon't miss any episodes and you
can also reach out to us onFacebook.
with questions, comments, topicsyou wanna talk about, or just to
say, Hey, cuz We would love tohear from you.
Thanks for dropping in with usand we'll catch you on the wrap
(17:58):
side.
Hey everyone.
Thanks for joining us.
I'm Katie
Carma (00:10):
and I'm Carma and you're listening to, I'd rather be
canyoneering.
Katie (00:14):
We're best friends who totally geek out about canyon
rigging and beautifully slotcanyons.
Basically we'd always rather becanyoneering.
But when we can't, we spendevery spare minute, we have
talking about it.
Carma (00:26):
This podcast is for entertainment purposes only.
Please seek professionalinstruction and practice
technical skills in a controlledenvironment before entering slot
canyons.
Your safety is entirely your ownresponsibility.
Katie (00:41):
Welcome to our canyon crew! In our last episode we
talked about single strandreleasable systems.
Now, some of you might bewondering if there's a way to
rig releasable, but also useboth strands of rope for
repelling.
The answer is yes.
this is twin releasable systems.
Carma (01:00):
This is something that you could do if you need to keep
the group moving quickly.
for example, You may want to usea twin releasable system.
If it's getting late, there'sbad weather coming, or if you
want to move the group through acold section faster, it allows
people to go down on either sideof the rope, utilizing both
strands for repelling.
Someone can be loading on onestrand while someone else is
(01:22):
repelling on the other strand.
If the repel has enough spaceand the anchor is strong enough,
you can even have two peoplerepelling at the same time.
Katie (01:31):
In the static rigging world, twin systems might be
built by using a stone knot toisolate both strands of a double
strand setup.
If the stone knot's familiar toyou, you may be able to picture
this already.
So for a twin releasable system,you take the concept of the
stone knot and add a releasablecomponent.
we'll be sharing some of ourfavorite twin releasable systems
(01:52):
in this episode, and rememberthat you can find links to
videos and other resources inthe show notes and on our
Facebook page when you're donelistening, The first twin
releasable system that welearned was the gesture, and we
learned this on a totem.
You can actually do it on anumber of other devices as well,
like the Kong Gigi or theSterling at s basically anything
(02:14):
with a double stitch plate.
We chose the gesture because itlooked really familiar to us
when we were looking through allthe different kinds of
releasable systems.
It looks a lot like an ATC andguide mode for a top belay.
And so coming from the climbingworld, we gravitated towards
this one.
In order to set up the gesture,you'll need some sort of a
stitch plate device and twocarabiners.
(02:35):
You run your rope through thequick link at the anchor so that
both strands of the rope reachall the way to the ground.
It looks like you're setting updouble strand technique, but
it's not.
to finish turning it into agesture.
You clip a carabiner to thewebbing right next to the quick
link.
And when you do this, you clipthe rope too.
Then you use that same carabinerto attach the stitch plate
device to the anchor.
(02:55):
Last, you'll pull up two strandsof rope and put a bite from each
of the strands through thestitch plate and clip them off
with a second carabiner.
We prefer the second carabinerto be a round stock carabiner
because the two strands of ropethat go through the stitch plate
are going to run around thespine of that carabiner when you
release and lower.
So it's nicer on the rope not tohit a hard edge of like the 3D
(03:17):
type carabiners.
Carma (03:18):
What we like about the Jester is that we find it easy
to rig and easy to inspect.
It also requires less gear thanthe Joker, which is the other
option we're going to talk aboutnext.
The jester has a little bit morefriction than the Joker, and in
order to release and lower on ajester, you have to pull out
some slack between the stitchplate and the anchor, and then
(03:39):
kind of feed it through thestitch plate.
That can be kind of difficult.
Katie actually learned a greathack for that though.
If you want it to lower a littlefaster and smoother, you can
clip another carabiner onto theslack and loop and help it slide
a little better.
Katie (03:54):
I also like that cuz then my hand isn't just right in that
loop.
My one hand is on the carabinerand one hand is still my break
hand, but I'm prote.
It from, if it were to go tight,I don't crush my hand.
Carma (04:05):
Good call.
Katie (04:06):
Now we're gonna talk about the Joker.
It's the other twin releasablesystem that we wanna share with
you today.
The Joker can be rigged on atotem as well.
If you take the totem from itsvertical position and turn it to
a horizontal position, thenyou're ready to rig the joker.
A joker can also be rigged ontwo figure eight descenders.
And that makes it pretty coolbecause if you're sharing gear
(04:27):
in the group, then you can, passthat around.
To rig it, you simply take thetwo descenders and overlap the
big opening on each of them andclip those big holes with a
carabiner up to the anchor,you'll have the two big holes
overlapping and the two hornssticking out to the left and
right.
Next.
You grab a bite of rope from theleft hand side and pull it
through both large holes on thefigure eights, and then pull it
(04:49):
up and over the horn on the lefthand side.
You do the same thing with theright hand side of the rope.
Take a bite of rope from theright hand side.
And pull it through both bigholes of the figure eight
devices, and then over the hornon the right hand side to safety
off the setup clip both thehorns with a locking quick draw.
People sometimes call the jokera mickey because it looks like a
(05:11):
Mickey mouse when it's rigged.
This.
The joker's a little morenuanced than the gesture and
it's set up.
It's a little tricky because youhave to attach the carabiner to
the anchor in a certain way sothat the rope sits on top of the
carabiner and doesn't getpitched underneath it.
If that happens, you won't beable to release the system.
For that reason, you see a lotof variations on the Joker
(05:32):
Mickey.
Some people will click thecarabiner to the webbing and
mirror the quick link to avoidany pinching at all.
Other people will add a secondcarabiner to that setup to help
correct the orientation.
Still others will use a lockingquick draw to add space and fix
the orientation problem at thesame time.
I think that's pretty cool.
All of these are great solutionsand it's your choice based on
(05:52):
what gear you carry and whatyour particular situation.
Carma (05:56):
The biggest benefit for the Joker is that it's smoother
to release than the jester.
You unclip the quick draw andactually take the rope off of
one side of the setup.
So this creates less frictionfor when you're lowering, so you
can do things a little smoother.
Katie (06:12):
Twin releasable systems have some special
considerations.
The twin releasable systems thatwe just told you about, rely on
counterweight to stay fixed.
So when someone gets off at thebottom, you need to make sure
that there's still counterweightat the top.
We usually just assign an anchormanager at the top on these to
be handing ropes to the nextperson, do load and go, things
(06:32):
like that.
Um, and with their hands onthose two ropes, they're just
making sure that there's noslippage through the anchor.
If one side gets it's unweightedas someone's getting off.
Carma (06:42):
If you are only sending one person down at a time and
your anchor manager wants to behands free, you do have the
option to tie a knot on theopposite side from the repeller
to prevent the rope fromslipping through the totem.
In our experience with thejester, it doesn't slip very
often.
We've only seen it happen once.
and it was when the anchor wasvery low to the ground, so the
(07:04):
totem was situated in a morehorizontal position rather than
a more vertical hangingposition.
Our friend on repel did a jumpto clear the edge of an
overhang.
Katie was manning the system andreacted immediately, but the
rope still slipped a few inchesthrough the totem.
It definitely started our friendon repel, and it surprised us
(07:25):
how much more effort it took forthe belay in that horizontal
position because we had justnever seen it happen before.
Katie (07:31):
Yeah, it surprised him and it surprised.
another consideration with thesetwin releasable systems is that
the last person is gonna have toconvert that gesture or joker
into something else before goingdown the repel, because you
don't wanna leave all that gearat the top.
Carma (07:45):
Yeah, you can't pull the rope down when it's rigged in
either a jester or joker becauseboth strands of the rope are
going through the setup.
So that last person has to takeit off.
And we found one of the reasonswhy we like the jester so much
is because it's super easy asthe last person down to unclip
the totem from the anchor andflip that over to your harness
(08:05):
and just go down on throttlemode.
At this point, when the lastperson is going down, there's
really no more advantage toreleasable rigging cuz there's
nobody at the top to release itfor them.
And by going down on a stitchplate device, that last person
is cleaning out all of thetwists that the other repellers
have put into the rope by usingfigure eight descenders like
(08:25):
critters.
The stitch plates actually helpclean it up.
And help to prevent the ropesfrom getting stuck when you go
to pull them.
so we really do like the jesterwhen we're willing to carry a
totem, Something we should notehere too is that while these
twin systems allow two people tobe on rope at the same time, you
can only release a twin systemwith one person on the rope.
(08:48):
You need to have one strand freein order to lower.
If two people are on rappel atthe same time and one of them
gets stuck, then the otherrepeller would need to finish
the rappel and get off ropebefore the stuck repeller can be
lowered.
Katie (09:03):
to finish out the topic of releasable rigging in general
and touching back on our, partone as well, we just wanna talk
about some overallconsiderations and cautions for
releasable rigging.
The first thing we wanna talkabout is do you have a way to
communicate with the personwho's on repel?
So this is gonna go for both ourreleasable blocks and the
(09:24):
releasable twin systems that wejust talked about.
If you don't know why they.
exercise.
Some caution before you gostraight to lowering.
You have no idea if they'realready solving a problem on
their own, like doing a selfrescue and they're depending on
the rope to hold still.
You also don't know if loweringthem could cause an injury or
make a bad situation worse.
(09:45):
For example, if you lowersomeone whose foot is stuck,
you'll most likely make thingsworse.
You need to know if there's areason that they stop too.
Like maybe there's a rattlesnakeat the bottom of a pothole or
there's a pool filled with logsthat they don't wanna go into.
So don't assume and just jumpstraight to releasing.
Carma (10:02):
It would be super scary to be suddenly lowered on repel
if you didn't expect it to Likeyou, you would initially think
you were just falling.
Katie (10:13):
Something broke like.
Carma (10:14):
right?
Yeah.
Especially when releasing ablock because when you release
the lock off, there's some slackthat needs to be quickly pulled
out of the system.
So ideally you're gonna warn theperson on rope that they're
going to feel the rope pop whenthat happens.
Cuz if they're already in astressful situation, having the
rope move like that is probablygonna make them panic.
Katie (10:36):
It really could.
And ideally the person who's onrappel can lock off their device
before you start lowering themso that they can use their hands
to navigate things on their waydown or, they just have more
options that way.
So being able to communicate, isreally key.
So you don't make a badsituation
Carma (10:52):
Right.
Another thing you wanna considerwhen you're setting up a
releasable rigging system is howfar do you need to be able to
lower someone?
So the ideal situation whenrigging releasable is to have
one rope that is double thelength of the repel or longer.
That way you have half or morethan half of the rope in reserve
(11:12):
at the top, and you couldpotentially lower someone from
anywhere on the repel all theway to the ground.
In reality, we know that thatdoesn't always happen like often
in canyons.
We need to tie two ropestogether or tie a rope in a pool
cord together to be able to haveboth ends of our system reach
the ground and be retrievable.
(11:33):
So if you're tying a pull cordonto one side, you don't have as
much space to lower someone.
Katie (11:39):
You wanna know how far you have until you reach the
knot that you tied, because thatknot is not gonna pass through
the rigging.
So you wanna think about thatahead of time or put the knot on
the other side and make surethat is a safe knot for load
bearing, holding the full weightof a person, kind of a knot
basically what we're saying isthat it really depends on how
far you need to lower someone.
(12:00):
some options here are that youwant to lower them all the way
to the bottom of the repel.
Maybe their hair is caught inthe device, maybe their glove
got sucked into the device andtheir whole hand is crunched up
in there and you just wannalower them all the way at the
bottom.
Or maybe you just wanna lower'emto a shelf where they can fix
the problem themself.
Or maybe you, threw down anotherrope and you're gonna go ahead
(12:20):
and switch their weight over tothat other rope.
It really just kinda depends onwhat your game plan is and, you
know, before you even send downthe first person how much you
have in.
Carma (12:31):
Right.
And you really don't need that.
Length to be able to shiftsomeone over.
So it still is worth rigging,releaseable, even if you can't
lower someone all the way to theground.
Now, An example of a time whenwe had to figure out how to deal
with the knot when we wanted torig a releasable system was when
we did Mystery Canyon in Zion.
(12:51):
When we got to the mysterysprings repel, we wanted to be
able to rig releasable and to beable to lower someone all the
way down if we needed to.
We had a mixed group of canyonyears from beginner to advanced,
and we just wanted to have thatoption.
So the mystery springs repel isabout 200 feet.
Katie (13:08):
But I didn't wanna carry a 400 foot rope.
I death protest
Carma (13:14):
too heavy and too much money.
So we needed to tie two 200 footropes together in order to make
this happen.
And we had to put the knot onthe repel side of the releasable
system.
That meant that the pull sidewas completely clean so that we
could use the pull side to belaysomeone and lower them all the
(13:35):
way to the bottom if we neededto.
And the knot was right up nextto the ring so everyone could
easily get on rappel below theknot and have a clean ride all
the way down on the rappel sideas well.
Like Katie said, if you're goingto do that, you need to make
sure that the knot that you areusing is one that is safe to
repel on.
(13:56):
And also that the second ropethat you're using is also a
reparable rope because it willbe holding the full weight of a
person and you need to have likea thicker repel rope running
through your releasable system.
It won't work.
The friction won't work the sameway if you're trying to use a
pull cord in a releasablesystem.
Katie (14:16):
And that's it for today,
Carma (14:18):
we've covered a lot of ground today.
tell.
Tell us what we learned, Katie.
Katie (14:25):
All right, so we're gonna do a little summary just cuz we
have gone through a lot here.
We've talked about severaldifferent releasable setups in
the releasable blocks category.
We covered our favoritereleasable blocks, including the
compact secure eight block andthe E M O or the eight mule
overhand.
In the twin releasablecategories, we've covered the
(14:46):
gesture, which can be done withanything with a stitch plate,
but a lot of times it's thetotem gesture that's pretty
popular.
And the Joker, which can be donewith a totem device or a couple
of figure eight descenders.
These are all great optionsunder the right circumstances.
I'd say it really just dependson the Canyon geography and the
needs of your group.
(15:06):
The conditions.
It's one of those skills that wethink is really essential for a
Canyon leader to know so thatyou have options.
Carma (15:14):
when you know how to rig releasable, you can really be
prepared to simply andefficiently deal with the
situation if one of your buddiesgets stuck on repel, if you need
to adjust the rope length on thefly, or if you need to slip the
rope over a sharp edge.
So when you are trying to decidewhat setup you wanna use, just
know that there are a lot ofreleasable options out there.
(15:37):
You can go and research theseoptions that we've talked about
to learn more about how to rigthem and how to safely release
them.
They are more complex than justthe static rigging options we
talked about last time.
So it's best if you have morethan one person on your team who
knows how to use them and how toinspect your rigging and yeah,
Katie (15:59):
when Karma and I were trying to expand from just
knowing how to rig releasable onthe gesture and trying to add in
figure eight blocks, there wereso many confusing things out
there that I didn't rig thatreleasable rig for a group for
over a year until I absolutelyknew that it was perfect and I
could confirm it with a pictureand that karma could check that
same picture and make sure thatwe are completely safe before we
(16:21):
sent any friends down over onit.
Carma (16:22):
Yeah.
And you wanna make sure topractice releasing your setup
before you actually go in acanyon and have to use it on
another human in an emergency.
You don't want that to be thefirst time that you ever release
someone.
You want to be comfortableknowing how it feels to release
the system safely, and how thefriction setting feels as you're
(16:44):
lowering so that you can stay incontrol when you do that.
Katie (16:48):
You don't want any surprises, uh, when you're doing
something like that.
And I started just in thebasement with a 12 pound weight,
and then I moved to my ringsetup over in our carport and
worked with some friends, youknow, three feet off the ground.
Carma (17:01):
yeah, definitely wanna learn it in a controlled
environment.
If there's something that youlove that we haven't listed
here, share it with us.
So we are nerds, right?
We're gonna go look up anyrigging that someone's gonna
tell us about So if there'ssomething that you love and
you're using it all the time andit's working great out there,
(17:22):
let us know.
Cuz we love to learn new waysto.
Katie (17:25):
yeah.
Share a picture on our Facebookpage.
Come talk to us, we're gonna bekeeping the trolls off and try
to keep it a fun atmosphere ofjust actual learning and people
sharing ideas.
Carma (17:37):
If you're totally hooked on canyoneering like us,
remember to subscribe, so youdon't miss any episodes and you
can also reach out to us onFacebook.
with questions, comments, topicsyou wanna talk about, or just to
say, Hey, cuz We would love tohear from you.
Thanks for dropping in with usand we'll catch you on the wrap
(17:58):
side.
Popular Podcasts
United States of Kennedy
United States of Kennedy is a podcast about our cultural fascination with the Kennedy dynasty. Every week, hosts Lyra Smith and George Civeris go into one aspect of the Kennedy story.
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com