Took to the great outdoors today to learn about setting up toprope systems. For the sake of reference, here's the summary of what we learned.
- Bowline knot
- Single bowline
- Bowline on a bight, which can be used to make an extra safety knot
- BFK (Big Fat Knot), which is effectively just a figure 8 on a bight on a bight.
- BFK placement
- Carabiner placement:
- Opposing gates
- Don't put them on a rock edge
- Anchoring
- Placing angles: Less than 90 required. Less than 45 ideal.
- Where to anchor: to live trees, rocks with good features, etc.
- Tying two ropes together using a Flemish knot or a fisherman's knot
The big thing, though, is SREANE. Solid (where to tie anchors), Redundant (at least 2 anchors, BFK, 2 biners), Equalized (so the force is minimized on each anchor piece), Angle (above), No Extension (if one piece of the system fails, then the other won't go very far).
OK, that was boring for the non-climbers. It was probably boring for the climbers, too, but I'm excited and I needed to write it down somewhere. Just after lunch, the skies opened up and poured down rain in bucky-wuckets. That was fun, or at least as much fun as swimming along walking trails can be.
The girl took pictures and started a picasa page, in case you'd like a brief look at the excitement.
