Rapelling Ranralpaca

Rapelling Ranralpaca

Heading home after summitting Ron the Alpaca. Brilliantly, we took only one 60m rope in order to save a bit of weight, so the descent took...somewhat longer that we would have liked. The in-situ rap anchors were text-book wtf: thin tattered cord tied in knots set in (seriously) razor sharp cracks; single No.2 nuts rattling around in bad horizontals, slings girth-hitched through rusty wires, and my personal favorite, rotten cord through single No.2 angle pitons that popped out when we looked at it too hard (we pulled them out with our fingers) Could we have used any or all of those? Sure. Did we? No flipping way! We gladly left a ton of gear building new anchors, which we later found out another party stripped two days later and used the old anchors. How many times can you roll the dice before you lose?
sharperblue
on Aug 25, 2012 2:31 pm
Image Type(s): Alpine Climbing
Image ID: 808815

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rgg

rgg - Nov 26, 2013 6:07 am - Voted 10/10

Thanks for the story

I guess that some parties are less responsible (and more stupid) than others. I wonder, if you had actually removed the bad old anchors altogether, would they have left your new gear on the mountain or taken it too, and climbed down instead of rappelling...

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