Q&A: Iced up climbing ropes and back-ups
Q&A: Iced up climbing ropes and back-ups
Hi Andy, and sorry for the potentially very silly questions.
I'm a beginner climber/mountaineer in the Carpathians, which, in winter, means a lot of raps in wet and relatively warm gullies aka iced up ropes no matter the quality of the anti-wet rope treatment.
Routes are mostly quite short. I've seen multiple pros I trust recommend that people get good and comfortable with non-backed-up raps, since:
a: They're faster, and if you're on a big foreign wall in shit winter weather at altitude it's going to add up.
b: Machard's not going to help you on an iced up rope, apparently.
I've read your "Down" book and it makes sense, but what these guys are saying also makes sense, but I'm not sure how much of the difference in opinion is due to difference in circumstances.
So I guess my questions are
a: Back-up hitches on iced-up ropes, how can that be made to work, if it can?
b: How to best speed up the back-up hitch process.
Thank you
Thanks for the question. When I wrote Down I tried to scrape every speck of knowledge from my brain, every experience of value, every trick and tip I’d learned, including remembering the stuff I’d chosen to forget, or had just gone out of fashion (some ideas come too early, while other come too late for some). I also tried to talk about bad advice, fuck ups, near-death experiences, and escaper some of the dogmas (like a back-up has to be below the device), the sorts of things that restrict a climber, as having room to think, and explore solutions, is often the key to getting out of the shit!
I tried to cram it all into that heavy book but after reading your message, I think I missed something important. So let me try and put forward some thoughts.
The difference between icy ropes and ICY! ropes
Although ropes can get covered in snow, pick up a little water along the way, perhaps a gleam of ice, maybe even become a little stiff by the end of the day, I’d not consider them as being really icy until the amount of ice they hold, or holds them, stops the rope functioning probably.
Just as with an aeroplane and ice, when you’re travelling at 35,105 ft, with a windchill of - 55 degrees, you might get a bit of ice on the airframe, but it’s only the ice gets so thick that makes you crash that you’re really worried about.
In both cases, ice is not going to be a problem at -55, but rather at either the freezing point boundary or if moisture can suddenly become a factor in sub-zero temperatures.
How do ropes get really icy?
A few typical climbing scenarios where this can happen include:
Climbing a semi-frozen water course (ice fall/gulley) in sub-zero temperatures, and somehow breaking through into the underlying running water, or pools. This can be done by breaking through thin layers of ice with picks or screws, or falling into pools when the ice breaks. You can also get spray from exposed waterfalls.
Moving from above zero temperatures to sub-zero, where rain turns to snow, and wet ropes turn to ice. This is a common factor in big wall climbing fatalities, where a storm hits a team with rain and hail, they push on, and their ropes freeze, resulting then being trapped, unable to go up or down (see the death of Sadatamo Keiso and Kenji Yatuhashi on the Nose in 1985). In any winter storm on a big wall, the main two things to protect from getting wet and then freezing are you and your ropes.
Very keen and enthusiastic climbing teams will often tackle climbs in bad weather, meaning in marginal cold temperatures, which can result in frozen ropes.
Temperatures will generally rise on a winter’s day, in direct sunlight, or in heat traps, leading to increased moisture for the ropes to soak up, which will then freeze when the day cools off again.
The actual number of ways to get an icy rope is obviously endless, but at least we’ve set out the main reasons.
What happens when ropes become iced?
Ropes will become increasingly stiff, to the point they’re impossible to pass through a belay device or even knot, and even when you try and coil it, it’ll look like a garden hose. They can also become very bloated, both thickening up with ice, but also with snow, which tends to stick to ropes when wet.
If you’re moving together up a gully at midnight, the rope getting heavier and heavier, you can often find when you get to the belay it’s impossible to employ the rope and get it to play with your device. Even a body belay can be impossible, the only option being a ‘snap’ belay, where you sort of bend the frozen rope until the ice breaks, then keep repeating.
Ice build-up on the sheath also blocks the teeth of eccentric and wedge ascenders (Petzl ascender/croll style, and Tibloc), which is dangerous, as the teeth are actually an important part of the action (along with the spring, shape of the cam), and can cause the ascender to fail. This tends to result in the ascender slipping until it grabs, or not grabbing at all, only the back-up knot saving you. This is important to understand if you want to belay up a second with some form as ascender or locking pulley.
The only half dependable ascenders to use on frozen ropes are lever arm devices (Gibbs, Petzl Rescue ascender), or Rocker style, as the former has no teeth, and simply compresses the rope, and the latter bends the rope itself. Neither style of device is commonly used in any climbing environment in which it might be needed, but it’s good to know.
Friction knots will also struggle on frozen ropes, as they require some initial friction between the rope and knot material (your Prusik loop), to ‘grab’. If they don’t grab, they’ll probably just slip. This is a problem if you’re forced to ascend a rope via your Prusik loops, but even more of an issue if you’re trusting one as a back-up. If you let go, they may well not catch you!
What about dry treatment?
A Goretex jacket is waterproof, but fall in an icy plunge pool and see how waterproof it is (I have, and it isn’t). Although the fibres of the rope may be treated to make them hydrophobic, the spaces between may well not be. The fact that these treatments can wear off, and those gaps (leak points), get bigger with use (the rope gets softer), means older ropes are worse than new ones. But run any rope past a spouting screw placement at sub-zero temps and the thing is going to get icy.
When a rope begins to really freeze, which can happen slowly, in a day, or multiple days, or rapidly, in minutes, you will find it from a slinky, supple and compliant ally, to a bloated steel cable foe.
Options?
The number one way to avoid this issue is to avoid it. Don’t climb around wet stuff in winter. If you’re caught out in a winter storm on a summer wall, either go down fast or stay where you are and protect your ropes from getting wet and then frozen (that also goes for you).
If you know you’re going to have to get wet, say you have to climb out through a waterfall, or a very wet pitch, then put one rope away and keep it dry, so at least you can use that afterwards. On the descent you could just use your one good rope, or employ some blocking method, using the frozen rope to pull down your good one (ropes freezing in place on a rappel can happen, or at least make pulling ropes almost impossible).
Just as a thimble holds less water than a pint glass, a 7.5 mm rope will not hold the same weight of ice as an 11 mm rope. This means they will remain usable for longer and can be more easily bent and forced through devices.
In some cases, you might need to manually remove ice from the sheaths of a rope, such as when climbing a rope with an ascender, and this will need to be scraped off by hand (don’t use anything sharp!). Rappelling on a semi-frozen rope can remove some surface ice, and will melt some of the core ice, but it will refreeze as soon as your past, so can be both a course of a blessing.
The best way to use a back-up on an icy rope is above your device, as the device should remove/melt the ice enough for the hitch to catch if need be. And rather than skipping a back-up due to an icy rope, it’s probably when using an icy rope that you might really need a back-up. The reason is that an icy rope can often be very hard to grip (depending on glove material), and it’s best to increase the friction on your device as well if you can.
Speeding up the process
When you’re in a rush and jump in your car, do you forgo a seat belt? What about parachuting? Maybe it’s faster to not use a reserve chute, after all, you’ve not needed one so far? How about when rappelling in a mad dash to get down, do you use snap gates instead of lockers, or maybe ditch the belay device and just go for a body rappel?
Probably knot, the reason is that generally, the faster you go, the more cautious and by the book, you need be. The reason for this is obvious, the faster you go, the more mistakes you make, and the ‘rules’ tend to be written in the blood of people who made mistakes. There are also rules that can be broken, such as not using a back-up, or not closing the system, but only a fool would break both at the same time.
People also need to understand that employing as many things in your favour, things that require a few seconds to set up, cannot make things more dangerous, only less. The more you find yourself pitched against things you cannot control (the storm, the night, the exhaustion), the more you have to control what you can (the back-up, the stopped knots, the correct call and responses).
Most of the time these concerns are more down to habit, in that some people are not used to using back-ups, or they’re just lazy, or a liability, and will try and convince everyone else why they should join them (like when you’ve given up heroin, but all your addict mates think you’ve just gone soft, and their way is more rock-and-roll).
The more you employ a back-up (I just use a strand of cord rather than a loop, and can attach it to my rope and harness in less than 30 seconds, even less for every other rappel), the more you’ll grasp its utility. You’ll also better understand when it will, and won’t work, and have already learnt other ways of doing it (VT Prusik above the device rather than auto-block below).
What’s really dangerous is never really having committed to a back-up, and then using one - incorrectly - that time you really do need it, and fucking it up.
I suppose I’ll finish with the story of Rick Allen, the drummer from the band Def Leppard, who once tried to overtake a car, lost control, hit a wall, and was flung into a field. When he woke up, he was staggering around in a daze, unhurt, apart that is from his missing arm (not good if you’re a drummer). The reason he’d lost his arm, and maybe the reason he wasn’t still in his car, was instead of wearing his seat belt, he’d just threaded his arm through it.