Need a rope bag? Go to Ikea
If you’re planning on getting in a lot of routes in one day at the crag, using a rope bag is a great idea. There’s no need to continuously coil and uncoil your rope between routes, just flake it into the bag and it’s ready to go, feeding out perfectly and (mostly) kept out of the dust.
There are a lot of fancy and a bit expensive rope bags ad tarps out there, but the $1, big, blue, sturdy plastic bag from IKEA works great. It’s big enough to easily hold a 70 meter rope, has stout handles, and has a huge wide opening so you can quickly stack your rope.
Bonus: just that touch of dirtbag to give you a few style points.
A tip on closing the system: for a top rope session, rather than tying a knot in the end of the rope, you could clip it onto a pack or your rope bag. This will pretty much ensure that you will never accidentally pull up the night out of reach when you pull your rope.
For a big wall rope bag, you need something stronger. Solution: Tape two smaller bags together. I like the ones from Trader Joe's. Put one inside the other, Gorilla tape the handles together to form a single clip in point, and then seal the two top edges together with Gorilla tape.
(This “double bag” trick is from the excellent big wall climbing book, “Hooking Up”, by Pete Zabrok and Fabio Elli, highly recommended for a big wall climbers.)
