No.54 2 Rope Demonstrations
Beginning the journey into two rope in 2020 I didn’t realize how important it would become for me, and it’s all thanks to K san for pushing me into that.
When I began there were several questions on my mind, new things that seemed important to consider.
I was unsure what to make of the terminology, should a second system be a mirror to the first, to be passive and act as a ‘back-up’?
Or could it be an active part of a first system?
Would it work best as a Moving Rope or Stationary Rope System?
How should the systems be tied into the tree?
Should they be tied in separately?
How can friction be managed for retrieve?
What kind of devices will work best together?
Prior to this period I had worked hard on creating a systematic and safe way to anchor one line for access and work and decided that it would be counter productive not to use these ideas.
From the start my 2 Rope investigation was clearly not going to be an investigation in how to install and use a ‘passive back-up system', like one would see in rope access.
It seemed obvious that a second rope would clearly be able to help a climber manage working positions.
Ordinarily a second system acts like a long lanyard, an short Moving Rope System that is installed and retrieved as needed.
I decided to redefine this and try to anchor both lines centrally at the start of each climb and use at least one of them as a redirection system.
This would be thrown in front of the climber to approximate where they are intending to move to, helping them transition in and out of the pendulums.
This was initially labelled a ‘Positioning Rope’, similar to the short MRS would be used when needed.
The ‘Positioning Rope’ quickly became so useful that the next phase of investigation was how to run two devices together.
How to connect them at the bridge, how to climb with two, descend with two, redirect the lines easily.
My Unicender came out of deep storage as a lightweight, midline attachable solution.
The Unicender was originally used (circa 2006) with an adjustable tether, it functioned more like a hand ascender.
Using it like this meant that the second device didn’t clash against the first.
It was a simple solution to a relatively complex problem.
The last piece of the puzzle was finding a functional anchoring solution for two canopy anchored Stationary System’s.
The American Clacker was born out of this solution finding.
In 2021 we began running Level 3 workshops at ODSK.
Wanting to spread the knowledge of this elegant solution to anchoring safety I designed a demonstration format of the 2 Rope workshop and have been traveling to various locations in Japan and internationally.
In January we visited Yokohama, May was Matsumoto, Scotland, Oxford (UK) June was Stockholm (Sweden).
More locations are planned throughout the year, please check homepage for details.
The demonstration involves relearning to look at trees by doing a drawing exercise.
When the climber understands the trees true shape, strength and weakness they can begin to design rope work solutions.
They were asked to offer a ‘dynamic’ climbing solution, and then a ‘static’ rigging solution.
I describe an efficiency matrix that is used as a tool to reflect on previous work, and can be used as a tool going forward to help choose correct solutions.
The Knot Block concept is introduced and then the American Clacker anchor.
I demo climb, retrieve the anchor, reset and climb again.
I show how climbing can be more of a design led activity, rather than a dynamic athletic one.
I choose to ‘rig’ my body in and out of pendulums, rather than balancing on pendulums.
It is finished off with a question and answer session.
• Drawing trees
• Designing climbing and rigging solutions
• Efficiency matrix
• American Clacker
• 2 Rope climbing demonstration (x2)
• Question and answer
They install a second system that mirrors the first. It is not used to oppose and control pendulums.
Listening to climbers it seems that less than ten percent have taken the legislation on board.
The most common complaint being that friction management is too fatiguing.
The UK scene feels stagnant, with more complaints than positivity.
it needs a number of different solutions written into legislation.
The fundaments of the 2 Rope system requires that 1 anchor is substantial enough.