Page 137 - Rappelling

Here my double-length (48-inch)
Black Diamond 18mm nylon sling
is rigged as a tether/extension.
I girth-hitched the yellow sling
through both harness tie-in points.
I’d previously tied an overhand
knot in the sling, and I then
clipped the locking carabiner of
my rappel device (a Petzl Reverso)
into both loops in the sling. I
rigged an autoblock backup with a
Sterling Hollowblock and clipped
it to my harness belay loop with a
locking carabiner. After I double-
check everything, I’ll unclip the
locking carabiner from the anchor
and clip it back to my harness
belay loop, adding redundancy to
the sling.

For me it just feels unsafe (and unnerving) to A simple and safer solution is to tie stopper
be high off the ground on a rappel with the free- knots in the two rope ends, then butterfly coil each
hanging end of my rope swaying in the breeze rope separately, drape over a sling, and clip in at
and no stopper knot in the end. My philosophy both hips, holster style, letting the coils out as you
for multipitch rappelling is this: Always tie stopper rappel down. While this may seem time-consuming,
knots in the ends of the rappel ropes as your rou- good rope management practices will save you time
tine practice, and only leave them untied if there is in the long run.
a very, very compelling reason, like the high prob- The first person down a rappel should be pre-
ability of the stopper knot getting jammed in a situ- pared for rope tangles, especially if there are ledges
ation where a jammed knot would be catastrophic. or bushes on the cliff. Rigging an autoblock backup

126 RAPPELLING

Rappelling_i-174_3pp_CS55le.indd 126 7/24/13 10:18 AM