UKC

I'm off to Elbsandstein next weekend, 3 days climbing properly, looking forward to it...

The only thing that slightly worries me is the fact that there's no metal gear allowed and the bolts are places in such a way that you don't deck, but thats about it. (Minimum distance between bolts is 4m-ish, and the bolts must be placed on a ground-up first acent...)

The only additional protection allowed are knotted slings/rope, but I'm a bit unfamiliar with that, what do you do - do you knot them beforehand, do you use cord, or slings? And what knots, I've played around at a little sandstone venue close to where I live, and could get some placements, but it wasn't really easy. Figure of 8's seem to work ok-ish.

Anyone from here any experience with knots in slings/bit of rope, or been to Elbsandstein?

In reply to Arjen:

Hi,
it is difficult to advise this way. But I will try it... Most frequently used knot is the overhand knot. Have your slings preknotted, but do not tighten knots. When you put the knot to crack, pull the lower strands of sling and tighten the knot this way - the knot will "sit" better. Leave the upper strands longer for better pulling the knot out of the crack. You will often find the "hourglass" on sandstones and you can use sling there, but don't use lark's head knot! You can also tie around spikes or "iron plates".
Using of knotted slings is not always obvious. Some placements are very good visible and similar to nut placements, sometimes you need to know the right trick...

Take cords of diameters from about 5mm to 11mm and some flat tapes. Have a lot of slings!

In reply to Arjen:
Not much to add to the previous post except its often a good idea to tie another overhand knot lower down to form a loop to clip into, depending on whether the crack flares outwards on inwards you tie this to leave the outer or inner strand looser as this helps roll the knot in the required direction under load.
You know you´ll love it, to start with stay WELL within your comfort grade, for me that was about 2-3 below normal (UIAA).
Jim

In reply to Arjen:

Took a lead fall onto a knot placement on a Czech sandstone route once ... it held. That's about the extent of my recollection as it was ~20 years ago. As already said, you need cord of different diameters to get a proper 'rack' of knots. Enjoy!

In reply to tobyfk:

Just the sort of place to use some of those old frayed or damaged ropes, cut them up and make loops to suit.

To add to Martin's comments, we undid one length of sling, tied an overhand in it and a loop at the other end to get a smaller knot for a crack when using this technique in the IOM when someone forgot their rack and we lent them ours, only needing a few krabs to make ours up. Like a snake sling really.

In reply to tobyfk:

So it was a good knots landing then.

In reply to sutty:


Is's very useful for thinner cracks or shallow placements. Especially when used on the narrow flat tapes.

In reply to Arjen:

4 meters minimum sounds OK ...



... but what is the maximum?

In reply to all

Thanks for the replies, very useful. I'll try to get my hands on some dyneema 5-5.5mm cord, and buy a handful more slings, and bits of tape.

To Robbie, bolts can be as far as 20m apart (as far as I've heard), if there's good natural pro in between.

I'll be leading far within my comfort zone (I'm leading around IUAA 5+/6, so will be only be doing really easy stuff), I think this is the sort of place not to push your grade too much.

In reply to Arjen:

There are plenty of big 'lumps' to wrap slings round so plenty of long slings are good.

I found a few places for really big knots - retired 11mm rope with monkeys fist.

Smaller placements seem to sit well enough in hour glass cracks but I really wouldn't want to test one!

In reply to GrahamD:

Thanks for the post- what is an 'hour glass' though, tried googling with no success... is this one of those holes in the rock where you can thread a sling through?

In reply to Arjen:
It is a natural thread. Hour glass is the literal translation of the German.

In reply to Arjen:

Another daft question, I'd like to sacrifice a sling for the purpose of protection, so I can make a knot in a single-stranded bit of webbing, no one sells 12mm dyneema it seems... The questions are, where to cut the sling (cut through the stitching?), and what sort of knot would I need to make a loop, would a fig. of 8 be ok, or do I need something fancier?

In reply to Arjen:

don't, use line, though it will not hold a decent fall.

grow a set of balls to climb there.

In reply to sutty:

Well, a sling is rated to 22KN, so I presume that a single strand sling has an equal(ish) strength, knots will reduce this, but I assume it all will stay above 7Kn... A overhand/fo8 that is tight is very very hard, and will hold something. I've got line too, but slings are more 'micro protection' really.

Re the balls - all the sandstone climbers here find the protection ok out there actually. I'll be conservative in route-picking though.

In reply to Arjen:

Right, just came back- had 3 days of absolutely fabulous climbing, despite a bad weather forecast.

The climbing was good, everyday some diffent, the first day was crack-climbing, second day was a bit of everything, also some easier stuff, the last day was climbing with a lot of holes in the rock, was ok.
I managed to lead something really easy without any problems, only led one route, though would have liked to second another one after I've done it on second.
The silly thing out there is that the grade of the route does not reflect the protection, and the grade is also given for a 'all free' ascent, meaning that its allowed to rest on your gear.
For the more difficult routes a redpoint grade (which is higher) is given.
Another odd thing is that 60cm extenders are not really in use out there, everyone just uses dogbones for routes that go all over the place, ending up draging the rope behind them- just something I didn't understand really.

The pro out there is simply shite though, on many routes groundfalls are well possible and even on relatively easy climbs are run-outs of 15-m not a rarity.
The easier routes are often even worse protected than the harder ones, and as they're polished the rock is even weaker, the black sandstone is good and very hard, but below this layer its just... sand really.
There are sometimes these 'sand glass' things in the rock (you can either sling or knot them), but I have also seen one failing, and other one I wouldn't even consider 'pro', they're not all that good.
What was amazingly cool was stepping from one pillar to the other (scary step), and then enjoying the wonderful scenery outside, before abseiling down - it was absolutely beautiful out there.

I'll be out there more, and slowly increasy the alloy content in my balls... the best gear you can have!