Convert a 1:1 to a 3:1
I learned this tip from big wall ace Andy Kirkpatrick’s excellent aid climbing and big wall book, “Higher Education”. Definitely recommended for all big wallers! Connect with Andy on his website and his Substack.
A few words on hauling, from Andy Kirkpatrick:
“Hauling is potentially one of the most dangerous aspects of big wall climbing. This translates to ultra-caution in all parts of your hauling system and interaction with bags, haul lines, docking cords, and pulleys. If you rush and make a mistake, drop a load or have it shift where it's not wanted, you could easily kill someone or yourself. I try and teach climbers to view their bags as dangerous creatures, like a great white shark, rhino, or raptor that is in their charge. The ability to keep them calm and under your control comes down to paranoia, foresight, and heavy respect for the damage they can do.”
When hauling light to moderate loads on a big wall, you can hopefully use a 1:1 mechanical advantage system most of the time. Yeah, it’s gonna hurt, but it’s usually going to be the fastest. (For bigger loads, you might prefer a 2:1 haul, which we cover extensively at this article.)
However, there may be times when you want to ramp up your pulling power from a 1:1 to 3:1. Typically, this happens when the bags are temporarily hung up, or are transitioning from being pulled from space onto a slab, or something else that introduces evil friction that you need to overcome. Or, maybe you're just feeling beat from a long day and want to make your haul easier, even if it takes a little longer.
Here's one way to set this up fairly quickly. You’ll need a bit of extra gear to do this, but hey you're big wall climbing so you have this with you, right? I’m showing this with pulleys for maximum efficiency. If you don't have those, you could also do it with carabiners at each change of direction, but you're going to be losing about 50% of your pulling efficiency, so pulleys are a better choice if you have them.
The basic idea is to make a 3:1 Z drag, with the pull strand redirected to the anchor point so you're pulling down instead of up. If that didn't make any sense, look through the photos below, and think it through. Once you understand the basic concepts, it takes just a minute or two to set up.
The photos are meant to illustrate the general procedure, and not to specify the exact gear that you should use. Everyone carries different equipment; use what you have.
Like with all big wall hauling systems, you practice this thoroughly until you have it dialed, with a realistic load, in a controlled environment, with the gear you’ll actually have with you.
Safety note: If you think your bag is slightly hung up, you can try this to get it free. However, if it's really stuck, it might be a better choice to rappel down (or have your second pendulum over, if possible) and actually remove the bag from the obstacle instead of putting a really large load on your hauling system.
Here's your basic 1:1 hauling system. The rope goes through Petzl Micro Traxion progress capture pulley at the anchor. There's a toothed cam on the pulley that captures the progress of your pull; if you let go of the rope, the pig does not slip down.
The Traxion is on a locking quickdraw. The quickdraw lets the pulley twist a bit and better align itself with the direction you're pulling, which slightly increases efficiency.
The rope going through the pulley on the anchor does not create any mechanical advantage. It merely changes the direction of the pulling force, in this case downward, so you can pull the rope down with your body weight rather than lifting up with your muscles. For every 1 meter of rope pulled down on the right strand, the pig goes up by 1 meter.
Step 1: Add a sling, carabiner, and pulley to the anchor. This will become the redirect for your pulling strand. Here, I girth hitched a 30 cm sling onto the top carabiner of the quick draw. This extends the redirect pulley a bit below the progress capture pulley so they don't clank around on each other. (If you have a schweet progress capture pulley with a hole at the bottom, like the Petzl Pro Traxion, skip the sling and clip the carabiner/pulley through that hole.)
Step 2: Clip an ascender upside down onto the load strand, add a carabiner and pulley, and clip the pull strand to the pulley. Here I'm using a Petzl Rollclip, an nifty integrated locking carabiner and high efficiency pulley wheel that works great in this application. But any combination of carabiner and pulley will work.
I'm using a handled ascender because that's pretty common gear you would have with you on a big wall. You can also clip a water bottle or two onto the top of the ascender, which can help it reset itself when you give it slack between pulls. However, any kind of a rope grabber would work here.
This is now your “tractor” pulley, meaning the one that's doing the work. If you pull upwards (toward the anchor) at this point, you have a 3:1.
Step 3: Clip the pull strand through the redirect carabiner that's on the anchor. Pulling upwards is a lot of work! We want to use our body weight and pull down. The redirect lets us do that.
Schweeeet! Now we have a 3:1, redirected for a downward pull. Pulling 3 meters of rope through the system will move the pig 1 meter. We have pulleys at every change of direction, which maximizes our efficiency. Again, you could use carabiners at every change of direction, but it's going to make the pulling significantly harder because of the extra friction. (Carabiners are about 50% efficient, a good quality pulley is about 90% efficient.)
Slide the ascender as far down toward the load as you can, and then pull downward, where the glove is. If raising a large load, you probably don't want to actually be yanking on the rope with your hand. Clip the pull strand through a Grigri or ascender, clip it to your harness, and start doing squats, using your bodyweight to lift. Or, you can clip another ascender to the rope where the glove is, clip an aider onto that, and then step down on the aider with your foot to lift the load. Use body weight, not arm strength.
When the ascender and redirect pulley come together, reset the system by sliding the ascender down toward the pig, and continue lifting. To help the blue ascender slide down on its own, you can clip a few cams onto it. The extra weight should help it reset itself.
The previous photos were done horizontally to spread out the gear and more easily see how it works. Here’s the same set up done vertically, so you can see how the ropes hang in (semi) real life.
You can easily convert back to the standard 1:1 at any time, by removing the tractor and the redirect.
