Knowledge Management

can you guys add the video for:
one handed clove hitch
alpine knot on a vertical rope

coool

Have you played with the new gri gri plus?
i want to use those as an option for newer guys on 7.5mm rope too

How do you drill anchors into stone? I remember you mentioning there are certain considerations and methods.

Sal - The gri gri plus has the anti panic feature - it has the same specs as the Gri Gri 2 - as far as rope diameters - the only difference is that when you pull the handle all the way down you slow down / stop instead of decking out. It still sucks with wet ropes - it is really made to be a belay...but safer if you use it for a DCD. If rigging on a 7.5mm put an extra change of direction just like we did with the Gri Gri 2 - so you will be breaking upward...

Sal - I will post some info on placing bolts - and which bolts to place in which stone - I know you will be traveling - but will try and get some info up tomorrow... Also - I have some new voodoo for you - wish I knew it last week when I saw you - but will try to at least post a few phone videos up here...

Yo lowered a dude with SCBA down a 400ft shaft. To get to a casualty. We used the 7.5mm kevlar rope. Wanted to use a double Carabiner munter hitch but ended up using a totem on vertaco for the lower. What would have been the disadvantage of using the munter?

Sean its jeff, as Sal said we lowered casey with scba on a tubular nylon basket hitch anchor attached to the front of a ford explorers tow eyelets (sal has pictures of everything) with totem in vertaco to a pulley redirect just above the shaft entrance, we used 7.5 mil kevlar rope. We then raised the casualty with the vehicle i was at the bottom so i did not see if there were any changes to the system. The biggest thing we dealt with was other peoples 2 cents. Even though the team was prepared to deal with a few hard headed individuals there was many opinions and it even got a little distracting to where Chazz wasn't hearing my commands from the bottom. Anyway, can we have a myth busting section to deal with nay sayers? The biggest thing we had to answer from everyone was our type of anchor and our number of anchors. its apparent people do not understand the safety factors of equipment, or why back up anchors are needed. This is the first time we have ever put something out in front of all the climbing teams in the squadron and it was interesting to hear peoples gripes. the main one was the anchor I am sure you have heard quite a few from our unit or maybe even Toms unit you just trained with? My thought behind this is that we are armed with the important knowledge and can answer people concerns so if we decide to present this minimalist approach again to the masses we have the facts in one spot that we can study on, you can tell some people are unwilling to hear us due to what they have learned and who they hold in high regard even though it may be antiquated, but if we can convince the guys that arent hard headed or that do have an open mind it would be a win for us and all us to bring more guys into the fold and progress our unit. Sal can elaborate much more. It was funny that the one guy that was the biggest voice for multiple anchors used standard army tubular nylon with an EDK.

Another thing i am thinking of is when i'm off the team and sal is off the team, we have instilled the knowledge in more people so when we are gone this lives on. I want to avoid the hard headed old school thought winning over and we just looked like a team that was unsafe because we did not have 65 backup anchors. The battle of the minds has begun in the squadron and i want us to be prepared with the facts.

As far as the munter hitch we were prepared to use a double carabiner and devin advised against it due to the heat that would be generated with the kevlar rope and he said you advised against a munter being used at that height, again it was in front of 20 people So we went with totem in vertaco.

Sal did i lay this out right?

Hey Jeff and Sal-
Sean became ill and I have him all hopped up on cold meds so David gave me the run down on the lowering issue, and Sean can get more in depth with you when he is healed of the sick.

Per the double carabiner Munter hitch- when using for a lower, the heat generated wouldn’t be significantly different than using a totem in vertaco. So on a lower either would be fine.
However when using a Munter hitch on a rappel, you lose the ability to easily add and take away friction. So using a totem on a rappel at that height would be a better choice.

As for the myth busters, I’m all for getting the knowledge management side setting up in a way that can be referenced easily. That may be just a matter of making the materials searchable by categories so if you want to look up support material on munter hitches, or rappels vs. lowers, yada yada, it will automatically find all relevant materials? We can talk more about that.
Thanks, J

Hey All,

Just some of my thoughts and experiences with the "old school/naysayers"... I experience this on a daily basis within the urban search and rescue community (Fire dept side), see it on its extremes with my team in Pinellas County, FL. I just ran a 80 rope technician class over the last two weeks and its ugly head reared in every days training. My take on this is the levels of training and information the "old school" rescuers have been given. They are taught to the least, less thinking, and the most safety factors... to dumb down the rescuers thought process. By doing this it leaves the rescuer with a one way, only way mentality, only relying on the bomber way of doing things and not considering the actual patient and environmental pathology. The point is what is your actual weight of the load, what is the actual friction, what is the capability of our chosen anchors? If your load is 300lbs and two anchors are good for 20K lbs each and you rig a death triangle, you have edge or COD friction... Your anchors are seeing 200-210 lbs, with a 90 degree bend on your edge friction maybe 100 lbs per anchor. Whats your safety factor... 100:1?? isn't that enough lol? So my point is when is redundant needed, only when you evaluated your anchor and its needed, not because the book says so.
This is a great feed, this is the type of conversation we need to have! Lets keep this one rolling!!
Dominick

I like it, it is strange when dealing with different people they really want to prove you wrong almost to the point where they will block out what you say no matter what. but cant logically argue with the facts and testing.

Sean,
saw the rock exotica unicender in use the other day. the guy had that rigged with a rope grab on his foot. so it was the unicender attached to his arctyrx belt and a foot loop and rope grab attached to foot. he ascended fairly quickly and was able to change to a descent faster than anything else i have seen by taking the rope out of his foot grab and putting a wrap on the unicender. the one thing with the unicender is it does not work on rope smaller than 10mm. what would it take to get Rock exoticas R&D to make a unicender that works on the smaller rope 6mm type?

the mas tension and pulleys section link is broken. it wont allow you to see the PDF for 1:1 2:1 etc

All, I typically use Firefox or Safari as my web browser and all the links work fine using those. I looked up the error message you received Sal, and, it looks like a Google Chromecast issue- I downloaded Chromecast, and am looking for solutions to any breaks in links.
Thanks,
J

Problem solved- Basically Chromecast doesn't like when a file name includes commas or semicolons, won't allow you to open them, and will give you the ," err_response_headers"... message. I fixed the "Updated auto-locking hitches" doc on this page, and will go through the website and fix any other issues I encounter. Sorry for the trouble, and if anyone uses a web browser other than Firefox, Safari, or Chromecast, please let me know and I'll go ahead and download it to check for functions.
Thanks,
J