Learn the "thermal burrito" for patient packaging

This tip and diagram comes partially from the American Alpine Institute blog. It was written by Jason Martin, AMGA Certified Rock and Alpine Guide, and Executive Director of the American Alpine institute, or AAI. The AAI blog has lots of solid backcountry tips, check it out.

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One thing you can count on with most backcountry medical emergencies: you’re far away from help, and any outside assistance is likely to take a LOT longer to arrive than you think.

So after the initial treatment of your patient, you need to keep them as dry, warm, and comfortable as possible, because you’re probably in for a long wait. Provided you have some basic gear with you, an excellent way to do this is with the “thermal burrito”. (This technique has several names, but thermal burrito is by far the catchiest. =^)

In addition to basic patient comfort, this is also a good treatment for hypothermia. If you're doing this just to warm someone up, you probably don't need the rope wrap as shown in the video.

If treating for hypothermia, the patient's clothing should be removed if it's wet, and ideally replaced with dry clothing.

If treating for some kind of injury, it's important to maintain access to the injured area so you can continually check the affected body parts, so don't wrap them up so tight that it's difficult to remove the packaging.

Good rule of thumb in wilderness medicine: use the patient’s gear when possible. (If your patient is going to be evacuated by any sort of ground rescue or helicopter, the chances of you ever seeing that equipment again are pretty low, so keep that in mind when you offer your sleeping bag. =^)

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Here's a nice article from the American Alpine Institute blog that discusses this technique. Direct quote and image from the article:

1. Lay out a tarp or ground cloth on the ground.

2. Place 1 or 2 pads down on top of the tarp. Two pads are always better than one.

3. Stack three sleeping bags on top of the pads.

4. Place the victim inside the sleeping bag in the middle.

5. Wrap the victim in the tarp.

6. If treating for hyperthermia, provide the victim with hot water bottles. These should be placed under the arms and at the crotch. Additional bottles may be held or placed at the victim's feet.

image: http://blog.alpineinstitute.com/2019/03/the-burrito-hypothermia-wrap.html

And, here's a video that discusses basically the same technique, with the addition of creating a daisy chained climbing rope around the patient. If you think you may have to transport your patient, even for a short distance, this is a nice feature to have.

Note the addition of trekking poles underneath the patient, this can give some rigidity to the rope litter if you need to carry it.

And finally, here’s a longer video from the excellent WildMed youtube channel, where they call it a “Cocoon Wrap”. They describe in detail a few extra components, such as the importance of padding, ways to keep the patient dry, and how to lay out the rope.

How to warm fingers and prevent frostbite

Cold hands are something everyone has endured. (And if you have Raynoud’s syndrome, where the smaller arteries that supply blood to the skin constrict excessively in response to cold, this can be especially problematic.)

Here's a solution - “windmill” your arms. The centrifugal force from doing this moves blood into your fingers and hands.

(Conversely, a lot of people will blow into their gloves, thinking the warmth from their breath will help warm up their hands. It actually has the opposite effect, because the water vapor from your breath chills your hands even further.)

Check out the short video below from the excellent MedWild YouTube channel.

Measure map distance with a twig

Here’s an easy navigation trick to quickly estimate straight line distance between points on a map. This works for maps at any scale, provided you have a scale bar, which most maps should have.

Take a twig and break it to match a convenient distance on the scale bar on your map. For many maps, that might be 1 mile or kilometer. Here it's 2 miles. (Often the mile and km scale bars look very similar and are right next to each other. Be sure you’re using the correct one.)

Now, put your twig on the map to get a quick estimation of straight line distance between real world points. To measure longer distances, “leapfrog” the twig between points.

To measure a curving distance like a trail, road or river, it’s better to use the “finger” scale, learn how to do that here.

Great source for wilderness medicine supplies

If you've ever taken a wilderness first aid class, you learn pretty quickly that the standard prepackaged off-the-shelf first aid kit is pretty useless for much more than a tiny cut on your finger and a headache. If you want quality supplies that can treat more serious injuries, you have to mostly build up your own kit from scratch. But then the question becomes, where can you find fairly priced, small quantities of good quality supplies? (Hint, not at Walgreens.)

Well, here’s one good option - WildMedcenter.com. This is a great online store for replenishing or stocking up your first aid kit with quality supplies. One thing that's especially nice is you can buy small quantities of things, rather than say a 10 pack of expensive dressings or a huge bottle of tincture of benzoin that you are unlikely to ever use up.

They also make very high-quality zippered first aid kits in several different sizes, and have a complete checklist of how to stock each one with the recommended supplies.

I recently went through my own first aid kit, tossed a bunch of outdated or not very useful items, and then spend about $20 restocking from this web store with proper supplies. Now my kit’s ready to go and I’m much better prepared.

Here are some examples of a few goodies from their web store.

For starters, how about four different sizes of sturdy first aid kits, sewn in the USA?

(Note, bottles and supplies not included.)

image: https://www.wildmedcenter.com

Tegaderm microfilm transparent bandages? Yes please. (These bandages are quite amazing, if you have not heard of them.) You can buy them individually, in two sizes, starting at $2 each.

How about lots of handy different sized Nalgene containers for storing just about anything in your kit?

(Tip - A pair of examination gloves or a roll of 2 inch gauze fits perfectly in the 50 mL snap top vial.)

image: https://www.wildmedcenter.com

Every kit should have a few a few extra large safety pins. No need to go to the fabric store, get a packet of 4 pins here.

image: https://www.wildmedcenter.com

Dealing with a shoulder dislocation

image: http://www.recoversportsmed.com.au/Shoulder-Dislocation.html

• Face planting off a mountain bike?

• Taking a hard fall while skiing or snowboarding?

• Getting your shoulder yanked kayaking on a whitewater river?

• Feet blowing off when crack climbing or ice climbing, and your weight falling onto your well buried ice tool or thumb down hand jam?

• Shoulder getting pulled when trying to self arrest with an ice axe?

These are all consequences of having fun in the mountains, and they are also all things that can easily lead to a dislocated shoulder. Chances are pretty high that sometime in your outdoor career you're going to have to deal with one, either yours or somebody else's. (And yes, I have some personal experience with number three and four listed above!)

Knowing how to diagnose, examine, reduce, and splint this injury can be extremely important in the backcountry, taking a situation from an “immediate evacuation” to “great relief and minor pain” in literally a few minutes. I think this is something every backcountry user should be familiar with, but often it’s not taught in entry level wilderness first aid classes.

Well good news, because this terrific video series from the MedWild YouTube channel walks you through every step. (The splinting technique shown in the last video is especially clever.)

There are several field techniques that work to reduce a dislocated shoulder. The one shown below is simple and effective.

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Note that the examination portion of this process is very important, as is the mechanism of injury (MOI).

If the MOI involves a traumatic sort of fall, such as bike crash, there's a chance that there can be some broken bone involved, which can complicate reducing the shoulder. This is mentioned in video number three. If you do have an impact sort of injury and possible broken shoulder, it might be best to evacuate and not reduce the shoulder, because reducing the broken shoulder over a small chip of bone could cause problems. This is why, in a hospital setting, an X-ray is almost always done before a dislocated shoulder is reduced, to determine if it's a shoulder fracture, dislocation or hopefully not both.

However, if the injury comes from something less impactful, like big whitewater pulling your kayak paddle, or crack climbing with your hand thumb down and having your feet blow out, (me on both), it's probable that there is no underlying bone chips or other damage, and a simple reduction technique as shown in this video is going to solve your problem quickly.

Also, there is a possibility for nerves to be compromised in a shoulder dislocation. As mentioned in video number two, an important part of the patient exam is testing for good CSM (Circulation, Sensation, and Movement). This means a good pulse at the wrist of the affected arm, proper blood perfusion to all of the fingers, and for good sensation and movement in all of the fingers.

And, here’s a direct quote from the video producers: “The distal neurological exam is mostly done to protect yourself from being blamed for any neurovascular compromise following the reduction. If you speak with the patient about it prior, or preferentially document it, there will be no question that any deficit was due to the injury and not the reduction. Neruovascular injury is virtually always due to the traumatic injury itself and not the reduction procedure.”

The big question is: how close are you to a medical facility? If you can protect the injured shoulder as best you can and be in a medical facility within a few hours, it might be best to walk out and have them take care of it. But, if you're in a more remote location, knowing these proper steps could really help you out.

Watch these videos carefully, learn the steps, and take a wilderness medicine class.

Video 1 - Shoulder dislocations, field diagnosis (2:17)

Video 2 - Dislocated shoulder exam (2:25)

Video 3 - How to reduce a dislocated shoulder (5:07)

Video 4 - shoulder splinting (2:54)

Why “triangulation” to get unlost may be a bad idea

Many navigation books, videos and classes teach a slick-sounding technique known as “triangulation" to locate your position on a map if you’re lost. (Technically speaking, the proper term is “resection”, but triangulation is more commonly used in many books, so we're going to go with that.)

In theory, it works like this:

From your position, you take a compass bearing on two or more visible landmarks, which you can recognize and locate on your map. If you then plot these bearings correctly onto your map, the intersection of the lines is your approximate position.

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This sounds great practicing on your cozy kitchen table. But, for triangulation/resection to work in the real world, you need THREE variables to ALL line up in your favor.

Here are those three, and some reasons why this technique often fails in practice.

1. It requires that you can actually see two or more features on which to take a bearing. If you’re lost in heavy tree cover, at night or in low visibility, you’re out of luck.

2. It requires that can match the feature you see in the field to your map.You’re lost, but it’s daylight and you’re able to see several nearby peaks. Trouble is, you are not sure of their names. Being able to see and take a bearing to a peak, lake or other feature is useless unless you can positively identify the feature on your map.

3. It requires that the feature you see in the field actually be ON your map. You’re lost on Mt. Hood, but you can see Mt. Jefferson, 50 miles away. Too bad, Mt. Jefferson is not on your map, making that feature useless to help determine your position.

You can see that this technique has a host of flaws. There are rare times when it works, but don’t rely on it alone to get you unlost.

Plus, this might be blindingly obvious by now, but it really only is a helpful technique after you get lost. And ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, it's always better to stay found in the first place.

So, what can you do? Always have a quality GPS app on your phone, such as Gaia GPS, they can show you your current position overlaid on a base map. Or, at the very least, have an app that can tell you your current position in UTM coordinates, which you can then plot onto the paper map you’re carrying, which hopefully has a UTM grid printed on it.

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To close on a slight positive note, sometimes just getting a single bearing to a feature and maybe plotting it on your map can be a big help. At least you know you‘re somewhere on that plotted line.

I heard a story from a Search and Rescue (SAR) guy about a lost hunter who called 911. They put him in touch with the local SAR team. The rescue team asked him if he had a compass, and if he could take a bearing to any landscape feature around him he recognized. “Sure thing”, the hunter says, “from where I’m standing, I can take a bearing of 240° to Peak XYZ.”

“Great” says the SAR team, “stay right there and we’ll come get you.” It may not sound like much to know that you’re on a specific bearing to a known terrain feature, but by definition, that excludes every other line that you could be on. All the rescue team had to do was walk on that same bearing toward the peak, until they found the hunter.

The story came from a decade or so back when people did not have good navigation apps on their phone. These days, everybody who goes into the backcountry should have a way to find coordinates from their phone and know how to transmit them to emergency services.

Two clever ways to transition from aid to free climbing

The transition from aid climbing to free climbing can range from slightly awkward to semi-terrifying, but with the right techniques it doesn't have to be.

I REALLY wish I knew about these techniques on my first couple of walls!

Fortunately big wall expert Chris McNamara made a great YouTube video showing how it’s done. 

There are two methods shown here.

• Method #1: clip a sling and stand in it. This works well when you have a few moves of free climbing followed by more aid. 

• Method #2: clip the rope to your ladder, and leave your ladder behind. This may be a better choice if you have free climbing with no more aiding, such as when you’re approaching an anchor. 

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Aid to free transition #1 - Use a sling as a ladder 

• Place a piece as high as you can.

• Clip a 120 cm / double sling to the gear, clip a carabiner to the sling, and clip your lead rope into this carabiner.

• Key move: step into the bottom of the double sling. The sling effectively becomes a ladder step.

• Reach down, unclip your previous ladder, roll it up to get it out of the way and clip it to your harness.

• Stand up in the sling and start free climbing.

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Aid to free transition #2 - Use a ladder as a sling

• Place a piece as high as you can.

• Clip ladder to the gear.

• Clip a carabiner onto the ladder pretty much anywhere, and clip the lead rope into that as protection.

• Step up in your ladder, start free climbing, and simply leave the ladder behind. This is easier if you don’t use a tether on your ladder.

• You can reach down and remove your lower ladder before you do this if you want to, or simply leave that one behind as well.

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Check out both these transition methods from big wall ace Chris McNamara.

3+ ways to avoid factor 2 falls on multipitch routes

This tip was written with the assistance of Richard Goldstone, thanks Richard!

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image: German Alpine Club

Scenario: You’re on a multi-pitch sport route, leading the first pitch. You arrive at the anchor bolts, and look up ahead to the next pitch. You notice that the moves to get to the runout-rather-far-away first bolt on pitch 2 look pretty hard, about at the the edge of your partner’s ability.

Avoiding a potential factor 2 fall on your anchor is of course critically important. How can you do this?

Assuming you have a few meters of rope left after your lead, here's a Crafty Rope Trick (CRT) that may make things quite a bit safer for everybody.

Don't stop at the anchor. Clip one of the bolts with a quickdraw, and keep on climbing to the first bolt on the second pitch. Check to see that it’s stout. BACKCLIP it (see diagram), call for a take and lower, and lower back down to the belay. Now build your anchor and bring your partner up. You will probably be belaying off of your belay loop (not directly off the anchor), with the rope to your follower redirected through the first bolt on pitch 2.

(According to the image, this may be known in Germany as a “plus clip”; Can any European climbers verify this?)

So, how does this reduce your risk?

The rope is now already clipped through the first bolt on pitch 2. When you swap leads and your partner begins pitch 2, they begin climbing with a “toprope” through the first bolt. (Note, because you backclipped and lowered, when your second gets up to the bolt, the rope will be in the correct orientation through the carabiner. So clever!)

This is a good thing for everybody, because now they can never take a factor 2 fall on to the anchor. (If YOU had fallen when you climbed to this bolt on the second pitch, it should be no problem, because you would have had a large amount of rope in the system to absorb the force.)

And, assuming you’re swinging leads, there’s another small benefit. There's no moving the belay device from one position into another, it stays on your harness in the same configuration, which is a minor time savings and one less thing to do at the belay transition.

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Now, the obvious potential downside to this, as with any redirected belay, is that if for any reason that upper bolt were to fail when you are bringing up your second, it's going to introduce an amount of slack two times the distance to that first bolt. That’s probably going to cause one hell of a drop and shock load! In addition, the redirect has introduced a pulley effect on the top bolt. Granted, any bolt in a reasonably decent condition should be able to hold this force just fine.

If you keep a pretty snug rope on your second to minimize any slack, the top bolt should not take any kind of significant load, but it's still something to keep in mind. Even so, you probably should not do this when you’re trad climbing.

If you're not too excited about redirecting through that top bolt, keep on reading, there's a solution.

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Now, if you forget to do a “plus clip”, or don't like the condition of the bolts and choose not to, you still have a few options.

The “chariot belay”

Lower yourself below the anchor with at least 3 meters of rope and have the climber clip the anchor as the first piece. Doing this puts more rope between the belayer and leader, eliminating the chance of a factor 2 fall. This is referred to by some as a “chariot belay”.

Keep in mind the chariot belay has a few downsides:

1. It might involve some tricky rope work, both for you to lower yourself and for you to get back up when it's time to start climbing, depending on the terrain. A prusik loop or Tibloc might be helpful to ascend the rope.

2. The terrain below your anchor might make this impractical, such as if the anchor is just above an overhang.

3. It's going to put some potentially large forces on your anchor. You have the force of the falling climber countered by the belayer holding the fall, which creates a 2:1 pulley effect on the anchor. Yes, you've technically avoided a factor 2 by having more rope out, but you're increasing the force on your anchor, which the thing you want to avoid in the first place.

In this case, it's probably best to do a fixed point belay. This solution does not prevent a factor 2, but it gives you a much greater chance of catching the fall, along with less force going onto your anchor. The fixed point lead belay is a new concept for many people, we cover it extensively here.

image credit: Derek DeBruin http://staff.weber.edu/derekdebruin/fixedpointbelay/Fixed%20Point%20Belaying%20Slides.pdf

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Tie a “catastrophe knot” so you don't drop your leader

The second pitch goes straight up off of the belay. If the leader falls, they could hit the belayer. To be sure you maintain control of the rope if this happens, you can tie a “catastrophe knot” clove hitch in the brake strand of the rope, as we cover in this tip here. This does not prevent a factor 2 fall, but it's probably going to keep you from dropping your climber to the ground. (Yes, this has happened, in one tragic and fatal accident I know about at Smith Rock in Oregon.) But, that's why you do whatever you can to avoid the factor 2 in the first place, right?)

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The Crafty Rope Trick (CRT) described below comes from the excellent book, “The Mountain Guide Manual”, by Mark Chavin and Rob Coppolillo. Highly recommended!

Here’s one more option. This is a clever rigging method that avoids the redirect / pulley effect from belaying your second through the high bolt, but still makes it available for a “top rope” through the first bolt on pitch 2.

You start things exactly as you did before for the “plus clip”: climb past the anchor, backclip the first bolt on the next pitch, and lower back to the anchor.

This time, rather than re-directing your belay through the high bolt, you tie a “Big Honkin’ Knot” (aka “BHK”, double strand overhand on a bight) through both strands of the rope going to and from the high bolt. This makes a double-stranded bight knot with two loops, which you then clip into the anchor. (You can also tie a clove hitch on the strand of the rope returning from the top bolt, and clip that onto your anchor.)

You now belay your second normally directly off of the anchor in front of you, NOT redirecting through the high bolt.

When your second arrives at the anchor, you untie the BHK or clove, pull through the entire rope through the top bolt until it goes tight on your partner (yes, this is a bit of a hassle) , and then put them on lead belay. They are now “top roping” through the first bolt on pitch 2 just as above, eliminating any possibility of a factor 2 fall.

Yeah, this might be a little hard to visualize, but go set it up in the rock gym or in a tree in your backyard or something and you'll figure it out pretty fast.

See the book below for a few illustrations on how to do this, pgs. 35-36. (There’s a LOT of other first class material in this book as well, highly recommended! Go buy it now!)

Reminder, Alpinesavvy does not have any advertisements, affiliate links or paid product reviews. I only recommend this book because I think it's great, not because I make any money because you buy it.

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Which Way Wednesday - Map Scale

This week, learn navigation skills from the Wilderness Navigation Challenge - a series of about 80 questions and answers/explanations that cover beginner to intermediate wilderness navigation skills.

It's designed as a teaching tool and for self-evaluation. Every question is followed with an answer and explanation, so you can learn as you go along.

Below are a few sample questions and answers from the challenge. If testing your knowledge and learning more about navigation flips your switch, you can check out the entire navigation challenge here.

Note - at the bottom of the answer slides, you may see a reference for a “Lesson number”. That refers to a youtube video series that covers that topic in detail if you’d like to learn more.

Here’s the video that covers today’s topic.

This week - map scale. Understanding scale lets you calculate real world distances on a topo map.

• What’s considered a “small scale” and “large scale” map for backcountry use?

• You have a map with a ratio scale of 1:50:000. One cm on your map equals how many km in the real world?

• Would a 1:100,000 scale map be a good choice for a technical climbing trip?

• How can you use a twig to measure distance on your map?

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Break a twig to match a mile, kilometer, or multiple thereof on your scale bar. Then, leapfrog the twig along the map to measure real world distances.

A simple belay back up on multipitch

Scenario: You’re on a multi-pitch sport route with your partner, and it's right about the upper edge of your abilities. You arrive at the anchor bolts for pitch 1, build an anchor, connect to it, catch your breath, and look ahead to the next pitch.

You notice two important things: 1) the moves to the first bolt on pitch 2 look pretty hard, and 2) the first bolt is straight above the belay anchor.

You start running a little “what-if” scenario in your head:

• What if my partner starts to lead pitch 2 and falls before they clip the first bolt?

• What if they fall directly onto me?

• If this happens, can I keep control of the brake strand of the rope? (and no, you're not using a Grigri or other similar auto locking belay device, but you probably should be.) 

No, you’re not overthinking this. This exact tragic scenario happened at Smith Rock sometime around 2005. The leader fell onto the belayer, the belayer lost control of the brake strand, and the leader then fell to the ground and died.

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Here's a simple tip that can make the situation a lot safer.

After putting the leader for pitch 2 on belay, the belayer pulls up enough rope for the leader to reach the first bolt, ties a clove hitch, and clips the clove to the anchor as a backup “catastrophe knot.” If the second were to fall onto the belayer, and if the belayer were to lose control of the brake hand, the clove hitch would prevent the second from falling to the ground. 

(Now, this is still a factor 2 fall onto the anchor, which is never a good thing, but at least the leader will never be dropped and fall to the ground.)

As soon as the leader clips the first bolt, the belayer takes a moment with one hand to untie the clove hitch, and continues to belay normally.

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There’s another approach to lessen a potential harsh fall in this situation. The belayer could lower themselves a few meters below the anchor, the leader for pitch 2 could clip the anchor for their first piece, and then they head for the first bolt. Because of the belayer in the lower position means more rope out, and the leader already has a bolt clipped at the anchor, any fall before the first bolt will be less severe.

Keep your eyes open, look ahead, thanks, and have a few Crafty Rope Tricks.

Oh, and next time, please bring your Grigri.

Which Way Wednesday - Topo reading, Saddles, knolls, summits

“Which Way Wednesday” features a navigation or trip planning related post every Wednesday.

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This week, see some questions from the Wilderness Navigation Challenge - a series of about 80 questions and answers/explanations that cover beginner to intermediate wilderness navigation skills.

It's designed as a teaching tool and for self-evaluation. Every question is followed with an answer and explanation, so you can learn as you go along.

Below are a few sample questions and answers from the challenge. If testing your knowledge and learning more about navigation flips your switch, you can check out the entire navigation challenge here.

Note - at the bottom of the answer slides, you may see a reference for a “Lesson number”. That refers to a youtube video series that covers that topic in detail if you’d like to learn more.

Here’s the video that covers today’s topic.

This week - contours and terrain. Understanding these lets you “read” a topo map.

• What’s a saddle look like on a topo map, and why are they useful for climbers?

• The contour lines are bending. Does that show a ridgeline or a gully?

• I see a closed circle on a topo map. Is that a mountain top, or just a small knoll?

• How is the summit of a major mountain indicated on a topo map?

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Andy Kirkpatrick - Tips on staying alive on a big wall

British hardman Andy Kirkpatrick has not only climbed El Capitan more than 30 times, he’s also climbed remote big wall expedition routes in some extremely cold and harsh conditions all over the world. He knows a LOT about staying warm and coming back in one piece.

Most of the tips below are from his excellent big wall book, “Higher Education”, definitely recommended reading if you want to climb the big stuff.

image: “Higher Education” book cover, by Andy Kirkpatrick

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Some solid big wall / aid tips from Andy:

• This is hopefully painfully obvious, but always bring a rain fly for your portaledge, no matter how cheerful the forecast.

• Always try to stay dry, or at least as dry as you can. “You will always be wet in a storm, but there’s a difference between damp and warm, and soaking and shivering.”

• If you’re already warm and dry, do everything you can to stay that way. That means, don’t leave your nice dry portaledge to go out in the rain and fix a pitch. If you’re leading and starting to get wet, really think through whether you should be pushing on in the storm, or retreating back to your dry ledge.

• Even in summer conditions, bring clothing like you’re on a winter alpine route. When you’re hauling 100 kg of gear, and you’ve got a 170 liter haul bag, bringing some extra warm gear that you already own is really not that big a deal. 

• What kind of warm gear? Synthetic sleeping bag, (never down) with a minimum rating of 20 Fahrenheit. Long underwear, top and bottom, at least one pair of warm socks for sleeping, fleece top, Das Parka type synthetic belay jacket, balaclava, gloves. 

• Use a bivy sack over your sleeping bag, in addition to the fly on your ledge.

• Do everything you can to keep your sleeping bag dry. It's your largest piece of warm “clothing” and last line of defense. If all of your clothes are truly wet, consider wrapping the sleeping bag inside of a bivy sack over you like a blanket rather than you being inside the bag.

• Avoid getting into a dry sleeping bag with wet clothes. Change into dry clothes first, or take off all your clothes and get into your bag.

• Bring a small sponge to mop up water and condensation. 

• If you know a storm is coming in, make sure you have everything you need in or accessible to your ledge, so you don’t have to go out in the storm and burrow through your haul bag.  

How to descend with a damaged rope

Thanks to expert canyoneer Kevin Clark for technical advice on this post. Check out Kevin's book, “Canyoning in the Pacific Northwest”

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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.

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While out on a long multi pitch climb, your rope gets damaged by rock fall. What can you do to get down quickly and in relative safety?

Here are a few Crafty Rope Tricks (CRT) to help you do this. And no, you should never have to “pass the knot” on rappel!

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Ouch! How do you deal with this?!

If you doing a standard rappel on two strands of rope, and you have a knot in one strand, you should pretty much never need to do any shenanigans to get past the knot.

Having to rappel past a knot in the real world is exceptionally rare. About the only time you might need to do it is on a big wall climb, such as descending fixed single strand ropes that you might find on El Capitan.

Many people think you must rappel past a knot if you have a damaged rope and have to isolate the nicked part in a butterfly or similar knot. Well, that's not the case.

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First off, if you have to keep going up, cut the rope at the damaged part and continue climbing on the longest strand. (Hang onto that other part that you cut, you're probably going to need it on the way down.) Be ready to climb shorter pitches and look for alternative anchors.

This will require a careful reading of the route topo map, perhaps some alternative intermediate belay anchors, and maybe some simul-climbing, which is hopefully doable if you’re on a moderate alpine route.

However, if the damage is more in the middle part of the rope, it's quite likely you can’t continue upwards and need to start rappelling. Hopefully this is painfully obvious, but if you were to tie a knot to isolate the damaged part and try to keep going up, that knot will get stuck in the gear placed by the leader.

(Now, there’s an advanced way to bypass even this problem - The leader could continue by rope soloing, feeding the rope out through a clove hitch on their harness. Because they are not being belayed in the normal manner, the knot will not get stuck in the gear. But, this is an extremely advanced technique! Here’s my article about it.

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First, assess the damage.

Is the core of the rope (white part) severely damaged? If yes, you may want to actually cut out the damaged part and retie the rope with a stout knot. (A Flemish bend is a good choice.) And you do have a knife with you, right?

If the rope has mild damage, mostly to the sheath, you can probably tie a butterfly knot to isolate the damaged part. The butterfly knot is a great choice for this, because it retains pretty much the full strength of the rope (minus a bit for the knot, of course) and can take a pull in any direction. Tie the knot so the damaged part is isolated in the loop.

Here’s a post with more uses of the butterfly knot, and a video on how to tie it.

Butterfly knot isolating the damaged part of the rope.

So, you've isolated the damaged part and now need to head down. What now?

The more traditional old-school approach is to start doing standard twin strand rappels with the knot in the rope, and have everyone “pass the knot”. This can be time-consuming, dangerous, and, if you have two strands of rope to work with, probably completely unnecessary.

There are actually very few situations in which you really need to pass a knot for real, but they pretty much all involve tying two ropes together for a long single strand rappel, and not when you're doing a normal double strand rappel. For example, cavers on a very long rappel, big wall climbers fixing a rope to the ground or rapping back to a high camp after fixing two pitches, or descending some fixed lines someone else left that turn out to be in lousy condition and have knots in them . . . basically, situations recreational climbers will rarely face.

You can read more on those scenarios, and learn a great technique to pass a knot joining two ropes, at this link.

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But, you may be thinking, what if you DO have two rope strands to rappel and there IS a knot in one of them?

No problem, you should never need to deal with passing the knot. There are several ways to approach this problem.

One way to tackle this is to use a carabiner block or rope block (aka “Reepschnur”, Google it). This is common in the canyoneering world but not so much in rock climbing. This method essentially uses the damaged strand of the rope as a pull cord. You use a carabiner or knot tied near the anchor to “block” the damaged side of the rope from pulling through the anchor, and rappel on the “good” side of the rope.

This is definitely a valid technique if you’re experienced with it and absolutely know what you're doing. However, there are some downsides to consider:

• Most climbers have never done this. Trying it for the first time way off the deck with a damaged rope is Less Than Ideal.

• You need an anchor point with a very small diameter connection, such as a chain or quicklink. It probably won't work if you’re rappelling through a carabiner (as in the example below). With a small diameter rope, it may not work if you’re going through even a rappel ring. If you rig it wrong, the blocking knot could pull through your anchor and you could die. This has happened. Or, maybe you won't die, but the knot could pull through and your rope will be hopelessly stuck on your backup carabiner, which only sucks slightly less.

• You're introducing a second knot (and maybe a carabiner) into the pull strand in addition to the butterfly. Now there are two potential things that could snag when you're pulling the rope instead of one.

While certainly a valid technique, knot blocks fall into the category of Advanced Ninja Rope Tricks. Here's my detailed article about rope blocks. Practice it in a safe environment with a qualified instructor before you ever try it for real.

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Here's another method: the “ground anchor”.

Here's a diagram of how the ground anchor works. Secure one strand of rope around something solid on the ground, and rappel on the other strand. In some circles, this is known as a “counterbalanced rappel”. In the diagram, the rope is tied around a tree. In the real world it could be an intermediate anchor, or even the harness of your partner.

It's simple, fairly intuitive, easy to check, and pretty hard to screw up. It also doesn’t rely on any advanced knot blocking techniques that you may not be familiar with, and that may not work depending on your rope diameter, anchor hardware, etc., and it doesn’t introduce an extra knot and carabiner into the system that could potentially get hung up when you pull your rope.

source: Bruce Wyse

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Step 1: Rig the rope through the anchor as for a normal rappel.

Note 1: The tape on the butterfly knot indicates the damaged part of the rope.

Note 2: A fine use of the “cheapskate locker”, a standard carabiner with the gate taped shut, equivalent to a normal locking carabiner and perfectly fine as a rappel anchor. (Yes, it's not redundant, and no, it's not going to break.)

Note 3: Because of the wide mouth carabiner, you can’t tie a standard knot block here, because it would pull through.

Note 4: For the purposes of these photos, the butterfly knot is very close to the anchor. In reality, the damaged part of the rope could be anywhere within a 30+ meter section, and is very unlikely to be next to the anchor. So, you can’t use that butterfly knot as a block.

Step 2: Fix the “good” side of the rope.

There are various ways to do this. Here, we choose simple: clip a locking carabiner to the two anchor slings and clove hitch the rope to it. (If you’re a crafty canyoneer and are very familiar with the Stone hitch, you could use that here as well.)

Because the damaged rope is on the right strand, everyone can rappel on the left strand. Sweet, no knot to pass!

Note: When you rappel on one strand, you'll have less friction, and the rappel will be faster. You may want to use some simple techniques to add more friction so you can rap in complete control. Wear gloves if you have them.

If you're doing more than one rappel to get to the ground, be sure and keep control of the strand with the knot in it, don't let it blow away from you. One way to do this is simply clip it through a quickdraw on your harness.

Step 3: Make a ground anchor for the damaged side of the rope.

OK, so what about the last person? No problem. Make what's called a “ground anchor” (aka counterbalanced rappel) to secure the right hand / damaged strand, and the last person raps on the left strand. When the last person is down, pull the right strand of rope and you're done. Never had to pass a knot, nice!

When the first person down arrives at the next anchor or the ground, they can tie off the damaged strand of the rope (right strand) onto an anchor, a tree if they're on the ground, or even themselves. Everyone else in the group continues rappelling on the left strand. Yes, the last person down is absolutely relying on the knot tying capabilities of their partner down below.

Note: Clearly communicating this plan, having everyone in solid agreement on how it's going to work, and confirming to the last person that the rope is properly fixed to the ground anchor, is critical!

The last person removes the carabiner and clove hitch so the rope is running normally through the rappel anchor. Then, the last person raps on the left, undamaged strand of rope, and is counterbalanced by the ground anchor.

Note that this puts a load on the top anchor that’s about twice the weight of the last person, just like if you were toproping. So, the anchor needs to be reasonably strong. If the top anchor is less than perfect, ideally the last person is fairly lightweight, does not have a heavy pack or a lot of gear, and knows how to rappel slowly and smoothly, without a lot of bouncing.

If you have the misfortune to be doing this from an extremely marginal rappel anchor, it might be best for the last person down to avoid the ground anchor, and just deal with passing the knot. However, most of the time this should not be an issue, because the maximum force you can put on a rappel anchor is about 2 kN, or about 440 lbs, and that’s if you are really jumping and bouncing around.

When the last person is down, untie the ground anchor, pull the damaged (right) strand of the rope, and you're done. Repeat if necessary until you get to the ground.

Doing this avoids all of the mid-air shenanigans of having to pass a knot on rappel.

(And, the next time you’re at your local mountaineering club’s training to “rappel past a knot”, you can ask the instructor to tell you in what situations you might ever have to do this. Who knows, you might just teach them something. =^)

Carabiner inside the master point knot

Now, if you've been at the game for a while, you may know this Crafty Rope Trick (CRT). But it seems to be new to a lot of folks, so it's worth a mention.

When you're tying off a runner or a cordelette for a statically equalized anchor, that master point knot can be very difficult to untie, especially if you’re using skinny webbing, or it gets wet, or if it takes a big load, or all of the above.

To make untying it a lot easier, clip a carabiner in the master point knot after you tie it, and before it’s loaded.

Important: This carabiner is not load bearing at all, and you should not clip anything to it. It’s only purpose is to make untying the knot easier when you break down your anchor.

Try to use a notchless / keylock carabiner with a small nose on it so you can easily unclip it from the loaded knot. In the photo below the carabiner is a locker, but it doesn’t have to be.

The black locking carabiner inside the master point knot will make untying the sling a lot easier.

Try a “racking sling” for slings

Anytime if you want to carry slings longer than a quick draw, you need to choose how to carry them. The choice is pretty much boils down to on your harness, or over your shoulder somehow.

It’s very much a matter of personal preference, but many climbers like to have the gear they are actually using on the route over their shoulders, and not on the harness. This can be especially true when you’re alpine climbing and probably wearing a backpack, where the waistband can limit access to your harness gear loops.

Having your gear on a shoulder length sling can make it easier to rack when cleaning, slightly easier to place when leading, and easier to hand off gear to your partner when changing leads.

However, if you put the slings one by one over your head and a shoulder, odds are they’re going to become a tangled mess when you try to pull one off over your head, and even more so when you’re pumped and need to place gear fast.  

A better system is using a designated “racking sling” to carry your other slings.

The purple racking sling is just a length of about 4 feet of 9/16 inch tubular webbing, tied in a loop with a water knot. It could also be a distinctly colored sewn single length / 60 cm runner (ideally wider webbing so doesn't cut into your shoulder. )

Below we see several different styles of slings you might be carrying. From left to right:

1. The ”alpine quickdraw”, a 60 cm runner with one carabiner passed through another to shorten it up. A crafty alpine trick that every climber should know, read more about it here.

2. A standard sport climbing quickdraw. Not so common in the alpine, but hey, you might want to have a few if the route goes straight up.

3. A double length / 120 cm runner, twisted around itself a few times to form a nice bundle. Another good trick and you can read more about here.

4. FInally, this is a clever way to rack a single length / 60 cm runner. Pass one end through your racking sling, and re-clip it to a single carabiner. To deploy, unclip one strand and pull. It should extend to full length with one hand and no tangles. If you're on a route with lots of cam placements that wanders a bit from left to right, this can be a good racking strategy, because you can use the racking carabiner on your cam to clip to the sling.

You can keep a few spare carabiners on this racking sling as well, to clip gear like stoppers where you typically need two carabiners.

Use this same system when you’re cleaning gear. Have a designated racking sling on one shoulder for slings and spare carabiners, and another racking sling over the other shoulder for rock protection. When you get to the top of the pitch, changeover with your partner is fast and easy; just hand them the slings with the gear mostly sorted, and they should be pretty much ready to lead.

Which Way Wednesday - Topo reading, Gully or Spur?

“Which Way Wednesday” features a navigation or trip planning related post every Wednesday.

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This week - contours and terrain. Understanding these lets you “read” two key features of a topographic map.

• When contour lines cross a gulley or ridgeline, which way did they bend?

• Does a stream flow into or out of a lake?

• How can you tell higher vs. lower elevation areas just by looking at stream patterns?

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These questions are from the Wilderness Navigation Challenge - a series of about 80 questions and answers/explanations that cover beginner to intermediate wilderness navigation skills.

It's designed as a teaching tool and for self-evaluation. Every question is followed with an answer and explanation, so you can learn as you go along.

Below are a few sample questions and answers from the challenge. If testing your knowledge and learning more about navigation flips your switch, you can check out the entire navigation challenge here.

Note - at the bottom of the answer slides, you may see a reference for a “Lesson number”. That refers to a youtube video series that covers that topic in detail if you’d like to learn more.

Here’s a video that covers today’s topic.

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Back up that single point rappel anchor

Every climber will someday find themselves at a rappel anchor that's set with a single Less Than Ideal rappel point. Maybe it's a skinny rap ring, or maybe it's a small diameter hardware store quick link, like this example.

(Note: You can buy quick links properly rated for climbing that are fine to rappel from, such as these from CAMP. These are just $3, CE rated, and around 40 kN - a much better choice than one from the hardware store.)

You have a choice: Rappel on that one point, or back it up somehow.

Now, lots of people are going to be just fine rappelling from a single quicklink. For canyoneers it’s common, and it's probably going to work great 99.9% of the time. But, if you're a more conservative climber, for whom redundancy in anchors gives you a warm fuzzy feeling, especially when you are completely reliant on them when rappelling, you have a few options.

Note: It's best practice to close the sleeve of the quick link by screwing it down toward the ground. This means that gravity is helping keep the sleeve closed. A little pneumonic to help remember this is: “Screw down so you don't screw up.” If you have a link that you want to fix it more permanently, give it an extra turn with a pair of pliers; a multi-tool is your friend.

If you want to back up that one point, the easiest thing to do is sacrifice a carabiner off your rack and just leave it. Unless you’re a serious cheapskate, this is typically the best option.

Or, you could back it up with a carabiner for everyone who is rapelling except the last person, and then that last person removes the carabiner and raps on the single quick link. (The traditional rule of thumb for this is that the lightest person goes last. I have a feeling this rule was made up by heavy people.)

But, for the frugal climbers out there who can't even stand to part with a $5 carabiner, here's another option.

Cut about a bit under 2 feet of cordelette, sling, or whatever reasonably strong cord you have with you. (Yes, that looks like it's going to be too much, and no it won't be, ‘cuz water knots always take up more webbing than you think they will.) A rule of thumb in the field: measure about three hand spans, my hand span is about 7 inches. And yes, you do need to have a knife for this.

This is yet another reason to bring along an '“alpine runner,” a 9 foot length of 9/16” tubular webbing, tied in a double runner length loop. It's very inexpensive and easy to cut up and leave behind for little projects like this.

Tie it in a loop (here with a water knot) through the anchor point, and make the loop a little bit longer than the metal connection.

Now, thread your rappel rope. Because the backup webbing is slightly longer than the quicklink, when you weight the anchor and pull your rope, any friction is going to be on the quicklink, not the webbing backup. However, if the metal were to somehow fail, the webbing will catch the rope.

Doing this of course, takes a knife, and some sort of extra sling material, and the time to rig it. Like I said, faster and probably a bit safer is just to leave a carabiner. Don't be a cheapskate. :-) Or, if you want a little extra security even on top of that, put some tape on the carabiner gate to make a cheapskate locker.

Bring a few long tied runners for alpine routes

For alpine climbing, it’s often handy to have one or two double length / 120 cm tied runners. Why are these helpful?

• Inexpensive. 11/16” (or 5/8”) tubular webbing is about $0.30 per foot from the bulk spool at the climb shop. You need 9 feet for a tied double runner, so $2.70. A sewn double length / 120 cm Dyneema runner costs about $15. You can have five tied runners like this for the cost of one Dyneema runner. (Frugal climbers, unite!)

• Plenty strong. 11/16” tubular webbing is rated to about 13kN, plenty strong for just about any climbing application. More on the climbing gear strength ratings page.

• Easy to cut and leave behind for rappel anchors. Always get double duty out of your gear - don’t bring extra “just in case” webbing for raps. And, as mentioned, it's inexpensive. You're not going to think twice about leaving behind $3 worth of webbing at a rap anchor, But you may not be too thrilled about cutting up your $25 cordelette. (And you DO have a knife, right?)

• With a little work, you can untie it, thread it around a large tree / chockstone / icicle, and retie it. You can’t do this with a sewn sling. (And, it's difficult to tie a secure knot in Dyneema; that's why you can't buy it in bulk like you can tubular nylon webbing.) Yes, untying a knot in webbing after it's been loaded can be difficult. (Needle nose pliers on a multitool are your best friend.) If it's really welded shut, don’t fight it; just cut out the knot and use the rest of the webbing.

• Or, you can rig it “rabbit runner” style, with an overhand knot loop in both ends; see photo below. (If you rig it this way, buy 6 feet of webbing rather than 9, because you get about the same usable length with less material. Use 18 inches of each end to tie the overhand knots. Adjust shorter as needed by cutting off 1 inch at a time from one end and retying one overhand loop. It should be about 4 feet end to end when you’re done.) This lets you easily pass the whole loop around large trees or boulders, and also use it as a standard sling if you want to. Read more about the DIY rabbit runner here.

• Pro tip - Whenever you're buying bulk webbing, ask the shop to cut the webbing on their hot knife at a 45° angle. This makes it a bit easier to thread when tying a water knot or double fisherman’s.

If everyone on your team carries a tied double runner or two, you should be equipped to make safe raps off most any route.

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About 6 feet of webbing tied “rabbit runner” style.

Which Way Wednesday - Topo reading, Contours & Elevation

“Which Way Wednesday” features a navigation or trip planning related post every Wednesday.

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This week, see some questions from the Wilderness Navigation Challenge - a series of about 80 questions and answers/explanations that cover beginner to intermediate wilderness navigation skills.

It's designed as a teaching tool and for self-evaluation. Every question is followed with an answer and explanation, so you can learn as you go along.

Below are a few sample questions and answers from the challenge. If testing your knowledge and learning more about navigation flips your switch, you can check out the entire navigation challenge here.

Note - at the bottom of the answer slides, you may see a reference for a “Lesson number”. That refers to a youtube video series that covers that topic in detail if you’d like to learn more.

Here’s the video that covers today’s topic.

This week - contours and elevation.

• What’s an index contour?

• Are contour intervals the same on every map?

• How can you use them to determine elevation of a point on the map, or vertical distance between two points?

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Knife options for climbers

YUCK! A rat’s nest like this is confusing and dangerous. Cut out the old slings and pack them out, and maybe add a new one of your own to make it simpler and stronger.

image credit: Silas Rossi, @silasrossi

Carrying a blade of some sort can be a smart thing to have on alpine climbs. No, you’re probably not going to pull a Joe Simpson (see below) and have your partner slice the rope and drop you to free themselves; the normal cases for knife use aren’t nearly as exciting.

What are some uses for a knife when climbing?

• Cleaning up ancient, sun baked webbing from rappel anchors, and cutting some of your own new webbing or cord to enhance existing anchors

• Some sort of self rescue situation, when some piece of rope or webbing is loaded and it needs to get unloaded, and the only way to do that is to cut it loose

• Maybe your rope gets damaged and you want to cut away the bad part

• and, maybe prepare the occasional peanut butter sandwich

There are three general approaches to climbing knives: razor blade, tiny cheap lockblade, or nice designated climbing knife.

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Razor blade

If you want to carry a blade for strictly emergency use, it’s hard to get much more lightweight than a single edge razor. Put a few layers of athletic tape over the blade to cover it. I’ve heard of people taping a razor inside their helmet, or keeping a zipper pocket on the chalk bag, but to me that sounds a little sketchy in case of a fall. Keeping it inside a small first aid kit in your pack sounds like a much better idea. Are you in the fast’n’light camp and want something for emergencies only? This is a good choice.

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Cheap tiny lock blade

This is my personal pick. I got one for under $5 next to the hardware store cash register. It’s tiny, has a wicked sharp serrated edge, and it’s a lock blade. The serrated edge can be especially helpful for cutting webbing. Be sure there is a hole in one end of the knife so you can add a little keeper loop to clip to a carabiner. Make the loop with a bit of of bank line or 2 mm cord. If you find yourself doing more alpine routes, where your liable to find funky anchors, this could be a good call.

(I keep this knife on a small locking carabiner, along with a mini ascender, and call it my “Oh S**t Kit”.

Whatever knife you choose, it needs to be absolutely secure so the blade can never open accidentally, to cut you or your equipment. You can tape it securely closed with athletic tape, and or add a thick rubber band cut from a discarded bicycle inner tube, or both. Below, I’ve added a stout rubber band from an old bike tube to secure the blade.

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Carry a “real” knife

A definite step up in quality from the hardware store lockblade is this nice little knife, the Trango Pirana. It folds, and has a clever design that prevents it from opening if a carabiner is clipped through the large hole.

image: backcountry.com

If you think you’ll be using your knife for more day-to-day things, such as slicing bagels or making that peanut butter sandwich, you’ll want something with a longer blade. Petzl makes a popular model called the Spatha. Personally, I don’t feel the need to carry a blade this big for occasional use, so this is not my choice, but it could be an option for you. (Note the large hole that can take a carabiner.)

image: backcountry.com

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If you really have to cut the rope in an emergency situation with no knife, you can take cord and saw it rapidly back-and-forth with your hands through whatever needs to get cut, and the rope will eventually get cut by friction.

I've tried this and it works remarkably well. Here's of an article and video about it.

One of the most harrowing climbing epics of all time was endured by Joe Simpson in his classic book, “Touching the Void”. On a challenging climb in Peru, Simpson was being lowered by his partner down a steep face, was lowered into a crevasse, and his partner above was stuck. He made the agonizing choice to take out his knife, cut the rope, and drop Joe to what he thought was a sure death. A classic read it if you haven’t.

image: https://www.amazon.com/Touching-Void-Joe-Simpson/dp/0435017055/