"Riding the Pig" - rapping with your haul bag
Note - This post discusses techniques and methods used in vertical rope work. If you do them wrong, you could die. Always practice vertical rope techniques under the supervision of 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.
Descending with your haul bags is the sort of opposite of hauling them, but many of the same principles apply. Here are a few words on hauling, from the excellent big wall climbing book, “Higher Education”, by Andy Kirkpatrick (Buy it here):
“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.”
Left: Light to moderate pack or haul bag, hanging from the belay loop. Right: Seriously heavy haul bag, hanging from master rappel carabiner (and definitely not hanging from you!)
Learning to safely rappel with a moderate to heavy haul bag (or pack) is an important big wall skill. You may use it if you have to retreat, and you may do it as part of the normal descent, such as the East Ledges of El Capitan.
With a light to moderately heavy pack or bag, you can get away with clipping it to your belay loop. (In terms of weight, that's roughly the amount you can haul up with one arm.)
However, when you're dealing with a larger load, you do NOT want to attach it directly to yourself in any way. This is much harder to control and much less comfortable; yes, I’m talking sensitive groin area anatomy here!
For a heavy bag, you essentially put the bag on rappel, and then attach yourself somewhere to that system. This puts the weight of the pig on the rappel carabiner, and not on you.
(This is similar to a rescue style “spider” rappel, when you might have to rap with an injured partner.)
Here's a story that provides a great example of why you do NOT want to have your haul bag attached directly to you.
“Two climbers attempting the West Face of Leaning Tower in June decided to descend after arriving at Ahwahnee Ledge (the top of the fourth pitch), due to excessive heat and sun. While rappelling the very overhanging first pitch with the haulbag, Climber A rappelled over a small roof and got too far away from the wall to reach the ledge at the bottom of the pitch, despite clipping some directionals during his descent. With no way to anchor the haul bag, he could not detach it from the ropes nor reascend the ropes to reach the ramp.”
Let's have a closer look at one method in the photo below. There are lots of different ways you could set this up, but this photo shows the main concepts. Some elements are removed for clarity.
Grigri and dedicated HMS carabiner. This is a good place for a triple action or Magnetron carabiner, you absolutely do not want that puppy coming open. There are pros and cons to using a Grigri, more on that below.
ATC works also. You can also rappel on a tube style device with one or two strands of rope. This can work better on old / crusty / large diameter ropes. If you do this, an autoblock backup hitch is mandatory.
Adjustable daisy chain (purple). Used to attach and release the haul bag at anchors. Having an additional longer docking cord could be a fine idea to back up this daisy. Whatever system you use, it must to be releasable under load.
Haul bag master HMS carabiner (gold). Here there's only one bag, but more bags and gear could be attached to this single point.
Adjustable daisy chain (green) and locking carabiner (blue). This is your primary connection to the system. The daisy is attached to your harness and clipped to the Grigri carabiner (#1) with the blue locker; this lets you easily separate yourself from the haulbags if you need to. Note that this connection is very short, so you can reach the Grigri handle. (If you're tall, you can lengthen the connection. If you're short, you could skip the daisy entirely and clip a carabiner from your harness directly to the rappel carabiner.) Not shown, some kind of additional tether for attaching yourself to anchors as you reach them. You can use this additional tether as a backup to the green one after you leave the anchor. (This adjustable daisy is optional, but very handy to fine-tune the length of your connection. If you don't have one, try a locking quick draw or something similar.)
Notes:
As with all critical climbing skills, practice this in advance in a controlled environment before you ever have to do it for real. Small variations in the system can have a big difference in comfort and function.
Wear gloves.
Descending with a Grigri (or similar device) can work well. However, be sure and practice this. Sometimes large loads on a Grigri can be difficult to control, plus your hand can get tired from constantly holding the handle open.
With a standard tube style rappel device, gravity does the work and the rap is generally smoother. If you use a tube device, use a third hand auto block below it as a backup.
Keep any slings connecting you and the haul bag to the master carabiner fairly short. Keeping the slings short means you can easily reach your rappel device. This is of course mandatory if you use a Grigri, slightly less important if you don't. A 60 cm / single length runner works well. Feel free to double up the slings for redundancy if that makes you comfortable.
You need to have a way to dock the haul bags at each anchor. With a heavy bag, this needs to be releasable under load. Hopefully you've been using docking cords on your way up, so you can continue to use them on the way down. Learn more about docking cords here. You can also (as in the photo) use an adjustable daisy chain, such as a Yates.
If you have a lighter bag and don't need a docking cord, have a 60 cm sling with a locking carabiner attached to the bag to secure the bag to anchors.
Depending on your rappel device, you may want some extra friction. To increase friction, clip an additional belay device on your belay loop, and put the brake strands of the rope through that. You can also put two identical carabiners on the master point, and clip the rappel device through both of those.
In a two person team, the haul bags usually come down with the second person.
Have both you and your partner take a close look at your rigging before you start heading down. Keep things as simple and streamlined as possible. Haul bags have been dropped and people have been hurt from doing this incorrectly, so sure and double check your systems.
Begin heading down. Have the bag between your legs so you can kick off the rock as needed and guide it around obstacles. If you have things set up correctly, this should be a pretty relaxed and straightforward process. If you find yourself fighting the pig or straining with your brake hand to hold the extra weight, you're doing something wrong.
Pig riding is relatively easy if your rappel goes straight down. If it starts to traverse, is overhanging, or both, things get more complicated. Check out this article on negotiating over hanging or traversing rappels.
Finally, here's a great video from the always amusing and informative Ryan Jenks, from HowNot2.com, showing different ways to rappel with your haul bag. Yes, it's long, over an hour, but lots of good stuff if you have the time.
