Retreat anchors - sport climbing
Note - This post discusses techniques and methods used in vertical rope work. If you do them wrong, you could die. Practice vertical rope techniques with a qualified instructor, and ideally in a progression: from flat ground, to staircase, to vertical close to the ground before you ever try them in a real climbing situation.
Takeaway:
Dos: Lowering off of a single snapgate carabiner is probably gonna be fine. If you're not comfortable with that, use a locker or put some tape on a snapgate.
Don’ts: Avoid using quicklinks, because they can be hard for the next person to open and complicate others using the route. Don’t lower off the hanger, nad for sure don’t lower off a sling!
Not comfortable lowering off of a single snap gate carabiner? Make a “cheapskate locker” with a few wraps of tape securing the gate. Stick the tape end to itself to make a tab for the next person to clean more easily.
Is this a little harder for the next person at the route to clean? Yes.
Is making it convenient for the next person more important than your comfort and level of acceptable risk when lowering off one bolt? No.
Ever bailed from a sport route? If not, it's probably going to happen someday, and when it does, you’ll need to have a retreat strategy.
When you bail from a route, be at a one pitch sport climb or an alpine multipitch, the objectives are similar: Get to the ground in one piece, with each anchor point strong enough but not overbuilt, and leave a minimum of gear behind.
Reasons to bail on a sport climb include:
“Ambition exceeding ability” - the climbing is too hard for you to complete
It’s getting dark, rainy, lightning, etc.
The route is longer than the rope you’re using, meaning for a one pitch sport route, the middle mark of the rope goes through your belayer’s device before you make it to the anchor. Hopefully you have both an attentive belayer who notices this, and a good middle mark on your rope. (Next time, bring a longer rope and read the damn guidebook!)
Hopefully, you’re on a modern sport route that has properly stout bolts and hangers. If you trust a bolt to take a lead fall on, you should certainly trust it to be gently lowered from, right? One encouraging thought: the maximum force possible on an anchor when lowering is not much more than double your body weight, 2 kN (about 450 lbs), which should be well within the strength rating of even a poorly placed bolt.
If you happen to be on a bolt that looks sketchy, you can reduce the force on the bolt by rappelling instead of being lowered. This puts only your bodyweight on the bolt. Because of the pulley effect, lowering puts approximately two times your bodyweight onto the anchor. Hopefully the next bolt lower down inspires a little more confidence.
What if you’re bailing from one pitch sport route, and more than half of the rope has already been used? Well, that means you can’t lower off from that point and make it to the ground or the previous anchor.
First, make SURE your belayer is tied into the rope end or at the very least has a knot in the very end (aka a “closed rope” system) so they can't drop you. There are a few different ways to handle this, but this is probably the easiest one: Lower to one bolt fairly close to the ground, tether yourself to that bolt, pull your rope, and then lower off again from that lower bolt. Yes, this requires you donate one more carabiner.
Are you bummed you're leaving gear behind? Of course you are. Think of it as the price of a lesson in humility and judgment, and try to do better next time.
Safety note: Do not thread the rope directly through a bolt hanger for either lowering or rappelling! The sharp edge might damage your rope, and if you rappel, the extra friction might make it impossible to pull your rope down. Please, never consider doing this and always leave behind a $5 carabiner instead. (Scroll to the bottom to see one possible solution if you come across anchor bolts with no hardware.)
You can lower from basically four gear options:
regular carabiner
locking carabiner
quicklink / maillon
taped gate carabiner
1) Regular carabiner. Most of the time you can pilfer a carabiner from one of your quickdraws, leave it on a bolt, and lower off that.
This is probably going to be fine most of the time, because if you have a smooth lower under a constant load, it would be quite difficult for the rope to do anything weird in the carabiner. But the load may not be constant: you may have to start/stop, bypass ledges or vegetation, stop and clean gear, etc. All of these could cause some strange carabiner jiggling, cross loading, or some other unwanted some rope/carabiner weirdiosity. So because of this, many people are more comfortable with something that can be locked.
If the bolt you’re lowering from doesn’t give you a warm fuzzy feeling, then leave another carabiner on the next bolt down. In the highly unlikely event of the top bolt failing, you should be caught by the next one. Yes, this does involve leaving behind a second carabiner. (That's never happened in the entire history of climbing as far as I know, but hey, it's cheap insurance.)
2) Locking carabiner. Not only is this a secure option, it makes it easy for the next person up to clean and remove it. That's a big bonus, so this is a fine choice. (Don't crank the gate down too hard.)
3) Quicklink / maillon. These offer an inexpensive locking lowering point, but they have a couple of downsides. The locking sleeve on the quicklink is probably going to cinch down, maybe get rusty, and be hard to open without pliers, which makes cleaning it problematic. It's more courteous to leave the route in better shape for the next person by lowering from an easy-to-clean carabiner instead.
Plus, depending on the size of the hanger, the next person on the route may have a hard time clipping their quickdraw past the quicklink. If you come across a quicklink (or something similar) on a hanger and you can't remove it, it's best practice to clip your quickdraw directly to it or under the link, as shown below.
Plus, quicklinks are a bit heavy and a single use piece of gear, and for that reason alone many people choose not to carry them.
If you clip a quickdraw on TOP of a quicklink in the same hanger, it can lever the carabiner and actually break it yikes! See this Instagram video of it actually happening in real time.
Photo from instagram.com/zacwronski/ showing a carabiner that broke after being clipped on top of a quicklink, yikes!.
image: instagram.com/zacwronski/
4) Taped gate carabiner (aka cheapskate locker). Here's a simple and inexpensive option that only requires a bit of forethought. If you have a tiny roll of tape on your harness, a strip or two stuck inside your helmet, or a premade “bail carabiner” with some tape already wrapped around the spine, you can tape the gate of the carabiner closed. This is known in some circles as a “cheapskate locker.” (Thanks to IFMGA Guide Jeff Ward for the “pre-made bail carabiner” idea, wish I thought of that one!)
Although you might think this looks a little sketchy, the cheapskate locker has been used by big wall climbers for decades, and is “super-good-enough” as an improvised lowering point. Provided you have the tape, this is a low cost, secure, and easy-for-the-next-person-to-clean method.
Please be courteous for the next person up the route who is going to clean this: fold over the end of the tape on itself to make a little tab, so it’s easy to unwrap.
When I posted this on Instagram, I had a fair number of comments criticizing it for being “hard to clean”. To those people I say:
Someone’s right to choose the method and level of risk tolerance when lowering off a single bolt is more important than slightly inconveniencing the next person up the route, IMHO.
If you seriously think this would be hard to clean, perhaps you need to work on your clipping skills.
Dealing with this carabiner should not be a surprise in most cases, because you hopefully spotted this from the ground before you started.
I’ve come across a taped gate, quicklink, etc. on hangers many times. I’ve never had an issue. Simply clip a quickdraw under the quicklink / carabiner (most all modern bolt hangers have room for two carabiners.) Keep on climbing, and clean it when you lower off and have two hands free.
If you want to clean it on the way up, clip the rope to your draw, and call for a take. Remove the tape or locking carabiner. Again, hopefully the previous person was courteous and left you a little tab of tape to easily unwrap it.
Did your redpoint get ruined? Boo-hoo. (Look on on the bright side, you bootied a carabiner. =^)
Pre-made bail carabiner: Wrap a few inches of athletic tape around the spine. Use it as a regular carabiner for any purpose; the tape is always there when you need it for a cheapskate locker.
Make it easy for the next person to remove it by folding the tape onto itself to make a little tab.
A suggestion from Petzl:
While a bolt failing during a body weight lower is very, very, unlikely, here's one way to reduce your risk if you're concerned about it.
If you add a friction hitch to the rope going down to your belayer, and slide this along as you’re lowered, it might prevent you from taking a ground fall if the top piece fails (extremely unlikely) in some way. If you're doing this, you should only take a fall down to the next piece/bolt below you, because it isolates the increasingly larger loop of rope that’s being created as you descend. One more reason to carry a prusik when you lead.
Would a fall on this be terrifying? Yes!
Might the prusik melt and damage your rope? Possibly yes!
Are both of these better than the alternative? Yes!
This may be little hard to visualize, so have a look at the nice illustration below from Petzl and hopefully it’ll make sense. According to the diagram, Petzl has tested this, and it works. (Note the diagram shows a quick link on the top bolt, but as mentioned above, a carabiner is recommended.)
image: petzl.com
Finally, a tip on not exactly bailing from a sport route, more about what to do if you come across a pair of bolt hangers that don't have any rings / chains / rappel hardware.
This happened to me at Smith Rock. My partner and I climbed a route that was brand new; so new that the route developer had not yet put chains at the top. We finished the route, and found just a pair of bolt hangers. After some head scratching, we decided to clip one carabiner to each hanger and lower off. This got us to the ground, but the rope was very difficult to pull, and we had some nasty rope twisting, because the carabiners were lying flat against the rock instead of perpendicular. Lesson learned! (Here's a longer article that explains this phenomenon.)
Here's one of many ways to deal with this, assuming you have a cordelette.
Pass a bight of your cordelette through each of the bolt hangers, making a big letter “M”.
Bring the loops together, tie them off in an overhand knot, and add a cheapskate locker. The cord is doubled up going through the hangers, which should give a little more peace of mind. While certainly not ideal for a long-term anchor, it’s definitely strong enough, and fully redundant, to rappel on. The cost is about $10 for the cord and $5ish for the carabiner; less than leaving behind two quickdraws.
Here’s a close up of the cheapskate locker.
