Canyoneering 108a - solo canyoneering scenario

Not at all, but spotty beta means they haven’t run it before so I figured it didn’t fit this category. Nothing against soloing as long as somebody knows the person is out there!

Depends on how good your memory is, I've run canyons before and when I went back thinking I knew what I was in for I found my beta to be more than a little spotty.

Good point @Tom Collins
I forget parts of canyons by the next day haha

Just for grins adding a different technique.

Tie ropes together. Tie 120' end to your belay loop and a Munter on the anchor (carabiner preferred for munters, so you will be leaving it behind for the next schmuck who comes along unprepared). Now you are a self-belaying down (get a good grip on that rope). I've done this before, not on a 80 footer, but it would be doable.

If it's 90', get creative with your pack straps, shirt, belt...hair... you can probably make up most of the difference. If not, try to land on the softest pointy rock...

Depending on the specifics of the actual drop you may have the option of getting down with multiple raps.

Or

If you had a fiddlestick with sufficient toggle cord you could rap down both ropes tied together, passing the knot of needed.


Sent from my SM-G950U using Tapatalk

Can a person pull the rope through with a munter at the top, from say 80 feet?

Tom

Just thought of a possibility that could maybe work, although i'm not sure its something I would do. Join your 2 ropes. Find the center point. extend the non-knotted rappel side by 10-20 feet to give you close to 90-100' to rappel down (or more if you think its needed). attach a biner to an 8 on a bight on the end of your pull side. Fill up your pack with rocks and/or sand. start rappelling down and hopefully the bottom starts becoming clearer and you see your rope reaches. lock off and attach your weighted pack to the end of your retrieval rope mid rappel. Get to the bottom, get off rappel, and get out of the way of a pack that should hopefully start flying down.

I doubt this is the best solution, or even a good one at that. it really varies on the rappel. It doesn't make a ton of sense for a multi-tiered rappel, but I can see it working on a free hanging rappel. Your bag could just end up on a ledge or your rope might still be too short and you might be stuck ascending a rope with a bag full of rocks (although you could drop it assuming nothing of value to you is in it). Looking forward to getting this idea completely decimated by you guys.

Yes, but... how can you arrange it, so this works for any length of rappel up to the length of your rappelling rope (120 feet)?

Depends on how motivated you are!

Munters are bidirectional (as I know you are well aware) the restriction would certainly cause some issues and honestly I can't think of a good user story for this method, but it is an option. Next time I'm at an 80 footer I'll do a field study and report back.

Unless there is some sort of benefit of having the bag weight lower (there is a ledge 45ft down, but its a straight shot down past that), id just use all 120ft on the rappel side, biner block and tie it to my pull cord, attach my bag when I get to it on rappel. you could also secure a biner from your bag to the rappel strand so when you're at the bottom, you can pull the rope outward before letting it drop so it'd convince the bag to fall further away from the wall or any ledges

There are times when it would be a clean drop for the pack, and times when it would not. So the general case is to get the bag as low as possible.

Tom

Haven't read any of the other answers (takes the fun out of it.) Here's what I would do. I would make sure I had sufficient gear readu to reascend in case it turns out to be longer than 80 feet to the ground. I would rig the rope with a stone knot/fiddlestick on the longer rope. Then use the shorter rope as a pull cord. I would tie the bottom of the ropes together before chucking them off, then after touching down, pull the fiddle using the other side of the loop.

That's an interesting trick. Needs to be a pretty heavy pack or a very frictionless system though. Put some extra rocks in it before beginning or leave a pulley at the top. Probably better not do any of that with a fiddlestick.

Cut the pack (or your clothes) into strips, tie the strips together and add to the pull rope to lengthen it.

That would make for an interesting story once you got back in to civilization. (Last rap in mystery)

If you're in the last rap in Mystery, just hang out for a minutes, wait for someone coming out of Orderville or Imlay to come by, lower your rope, pull up theirs, and rap down! Or wait until the group behind you gets there...

and the compelling reason to use the FiddleStick is ???????????????

Well since this hypothetical person made several mistakes already (solo, bad beta, no webbing, not enough rope) lets just add to the pile and say there's a storm coming and he can't wait.

Maximize efficiency. It's faster to pull the fiddlestick and have both ropes fall into your lap than to have to pull one of the ropes all the way through the anchor. Saves rope grooves too.

You have a 120 foot rope and a 40 foot rope. You come to a rappel that looks to be about 70 feet, but you cannot see the bottom of the rap from above, so you don't really know the length.

How do you efficiently descend this rappel and recover your rope?


Tie two ropes together lower your pack tied to the bottom of the 40 foot rope with the 120 once pack is down rap on whats left of the 120 using the pack as you counter weight ??? or maybe lower yourself in a similar fashion.

Also liked the Beal Escaper answer