UKC

When building an anchor at the top, I'll often have a sling connecting a piece of gear to the main crab thats too long. How do you go about shortening a sling? (obviously not by so much that you could just double it up)

Methods I've used include:

Tying a fig 8 on a bight in one strand of the sling, however this is then pulling the fig 8 in opposite directions and fig 8's flipping was trending quite a bit on these forums a while back. Also can be a pig to undo if loaded.

Putting a crab somewhere along the length of the sling and put two clove hitches on it, and then adjusting the length of the slack between the hitches to control the length of the sling in use.

Hope that makes sense, please let me know what you do

In reply to ledifer:

>"please let me know what you do"

Construct the belay using the climbing rope. :¬)

In reply to ledifer:

As far as I'm aware, people mostly just use a single overhand knot to shorten a sling.

In reply to ledifer: If you intend to use a sling then tie a knot in the sling.

In reply to ledifer: I just use an overhand. Top tip if you think it's going to be loaded and be hard to undo - clip a krab through the knot itself. Load teh know, remove the krab and hey presto - you have a loose knot.

In reply to ledifer:

If you clip the bit of gear with the sling, you can then hold the sling with both hands forming a triangle. Twist both corners you are holding in the same direction as far as you need. Then clip both bights you've formed into the second krab.

In reply to AdrianC: That should say "Load the knot" of course.

In reply to craggyjim:

not sure i get whats happening here,

are you forming a clove hitch (a twist from each strand clipped)
or putting lots and lots of twists into
each 'strand' to shorten it ? couple of pix would be good ?

In reply to ledifer:
by the way I avoid putting clove hitches in dyneema, I think a lot of the modern thinner slings have a very low proportion of nylon and I think they are a bit slick for clove hitches.

In reply to ledifer:
if the sling is the piece of gear (ie over a spike or somethings) then tie a figure of eight (or fig 9 or put even more twists in it), overhands are a pain to undo (unless you are equalising mutliple strands).

You can also just double up the sling.

Your question does sound somewhat like you are going about building your belay in a manner that could possibly be improved though. I would generally use the rope to attach to the anchors or use a long sling to all the anchors and equalised with an overhand.

In reply to ledifer:

First choice: Use the rope.

Second choice: Adjust the rest of the belay slightly to use the full sling length.

Third choice: Tie an overhand in the sling, clip the loop formed. Best done with someone else's kit as they're a pig to untie.

For very small adjustments, basically just tweaking for comfort or perhaps equalising a pair of side by side nuts to work as a single piece you can take a couple of turns of the sling around the krab.

jk

In reply to jkarran:



Is there anything wrong with a round turn and a few half hitches (clip loose end back into crab for security)? That's what I do. Easy to adjust and easy to untie.

In reply to ledifer: http://www.ukclimbing.com/articles/page.php?id=2592

Video near bottom, about 2mins in shoes shortening the sling, as well as general anchor building advice.

In reply to lithos:

No clove hitches. You twist the sling to shorten it. Clipping the two bights together means its impossible to untwist. Before you clip the bights to the same krab it looks a bit like the letter 'A' where the two legs are the twisted part of the sling (if that makes sense).

I don't have any pictures and to be honest I usually tie to anchors with my ropes, but it can be useful.

In reply to ledifer:
thanks all,

yeah usually it's when the sling is the gear, ie. Round a boulder but I don't want the anchor krab too far away.

I use a 10m length of 10mm static to link all my gear together. Although sometimes you make a bomber two piece anchor and they nearly perfectly line up to be perfectly equalised. Although like a few of the replies above said, it's really not that much effort to just use the climbing rope and make merry with the clove hitches.


Thanks for all the comments and I'll watch the video at work tomorrow

other possible ways to shorten imo (shoot me down if its bad!)

- twisting the sling a few times slightly shortens it
- add a few extra loops around the binner can shorten it quite a bit without weakening it. - not sure if this is obvious but take 1 strand of the sling and loop it back through the gate. If you have an HMS you can do this more times. If you have a binner on each end you can shorten it quite a bit!

Stephen