ACA Leader/Guide Rendezvous: Day 1
October 14, 2016
This is just a short summary of some of the things we covered on the first day of the Leader/Guide Rendezvous.
After a few brief items of business Rick took the Pro Guides and Rich stayed with the leaders and aspirants.
Retrievable Guide Line
We started with a demonstration on how to set a retrievable guide line.
Traversing across – the rope is tied to the harness, looped to the rapide and back to the rappel device. As the guide backs up, the rope is fed out of the bag.
Because of the extra friction from the rope going through the rapide, the guide should consider rigging their rappel device with less friction to compensate.
Once the guide crosses the hazard, he clips his safety tether to the anchor on the other side. He clips thefigure 8 on a bight to the anchor, and ties the bag end of the rope to the anchor as well. If the anchors can handle it, consider tightening the rope with a Munter hitch on the bag end and then muling it off.
Once the guide secures both strands of rope, the clients clip into both strands with their safety tether to cross.
When all clients have passed the obstacle, the guide releases the bag-side rope, undoes and flakes the figure 8 on a bight, and retrieves the rope.
Descending with two ropes of different widths
Imagine Rich’s right hand is the rapide. The two ropes are secured with a flat double overhand bend. The canyoneer rappels on both strands. The thicker rope (tan rope in picture below) goes through the rapide. When on rappel, the thinner rope will tend to pass through the rappel device more quickly and the thicker rope will tend to pass through the rappel device more slowly. Consequently, the thicker rope will be pulled down and the thin rope pulled up. With the thicker rope going through the rapide and the thicker rope pulling through, the knot will eventually get caught by the rapide and the ropes will stop sliding.
On Rock Practice
We then left for on-rock practice and split into two groups. My group practiced converting a static block to a lower, hauling someone up on rappel, and pick offs. I only have a couple of pictures since I was helping with a station.
Static block to lower
Using a block and tackle and mariners hitch to lift a rappeller. The block and tackle is attached to the rope with a Valdotain Tresse. This allows the rescuer to release the static block and add a belay device. Then the rescuer can just leave the mariners hitch/VT on the rope as a hands free backup and lower the rappeller with the belay device.
