In reply to kingjam:
> Ok to make it clearer and lets use your example of broad gully , a rope of 2 and the 2nd climber doesn't feel confident heel plunging down a long relatively steep slope. Short roping isn't an option as you said so if you are to down climb can it be pitched safely , assuming just snow based protection ?
In this situation you might have a confident leader and a nervous second. If the leader is confident and knows what they are doing the second can be short roped down. The leader being heavier would be a massive advantage and the nervous or weak climber should be descending first on a tight rope with the stronger leader coming behind preventing a slip.
The usual caveats being that like any other method you need to know what you are doing and there needs to be little no no chance of the leader taking a fall. I would hapilly rope someone down broad gully in such a way in soft snow conditions. If it was bulletproof neve or somewhere with a longer or more dangerous runout I wouldn't.
I would be equally as happy stamping a platform and giving them a waist belay with a tight rope and then telling them to stamp out a platform till I joined them again.
If the ground is serious enough to warrant the leader being concerned or nervous then it certainly wouldnt be the place to be improvising if there was another way down (which there usually is).
I have never needed to use one in anger but you could use a boot axe belay which works better in harder snow and if you can get an axe driven in spike first (going to be difficult or impossible with some more technical axes of course). Which you can do without digging out bucket seats and big holes and if the second fell it would act to drive the axe in deeper. You would need to have the axe in at the sort of optimal angle that you would place say a deadman. Again, never actually needed to use one in a real situation myself.