UKC

Hi all,
We are planning a trip out to the bugs in august and I'm not sure what rope choice to go with!

We are planning on getting on some of the classics like the becky-choudinard but we are also perhaps going to get on some of the harder routes, which we wil need to aid parts of.

Therefore I was thinking about climbing on a single 9.8mm so that the second can jumar on it, and also use a 7.8-8.2mm half rope as a tag line/ back up/haul line.

That will work fine for the hard climbing (i think?) but I'm wondering about the easier objectives? where we will want to do long pitches and move together over sections. having a 60m rope in someones pack will be heavy and having it trailing as a tag line could potentially be very anoying!

Ideally we would just have a very lightweight tagline for these but as most of the decsents involve abseiing I dont think this would be that efficiant.

would it be worth lugging another half rope up to apple bee to make set?

Any other tips or information would be greatly appreciated.

Cheers all!

In reply to Ginger McGrath:
I prefer skinny halfs for the Bugs. Lots of abseiling, lots of shortish walk-ins, lots of wandery routes. And its onsight alpine climbing; you need the redundancy unless you've climbed the routes before. The tag line logic escapes me, especially in the alpine. Carrying a rope that isn't a rope for the sake of a few grams just seems bonkers to me. I suppose there's an argument for it on big walls where escape is more vertical and more established.

For the easier objectives, just use one and switch between full length for proper pitches and doubled up for moving together.

If you're twitchy about using a half as a single, then get one that's rated for both.

In reply to Ginger McGrath:

I remember many descents and easier routes/spires can be done with a single 60m rope. (We did bugaboo traverse, pigeon spire and snowpatch spire), so single + tag will work fine.

Pigeon and bugaboo are better with single, snowpatch easier/faster with 2.

In reply to Jonny2vests:
I agree that halfs would be better, except perhaps for the Jumaring part. Jumars are supposed work on 8mm ropes, and with one Jumar on each half rope it shouldn't be too scary...

Another option is to go really old school and have the second just follow the aid pitch. It's a little slower, enough so that you wouldn't want to do it on a wall, but if you're thinking of a pitch or two of aid then just following it would be fine. If you've only Jumar'd aid pitches it might be worth a practice session to dial in the following techniques.

In reply to Jonny2vests:
Cheers for the Info, not too sure if its all going to be straight up crack cimbing or wandery as you said.

The tagline idea is purely so we can climb with a single rope for jugging on
happy to climb on one half

In reply to rgold:

mmm following aid may work, Not that I've done a huge amount of aid, but jugging on stretchy half ropes sounds like a recipe for a ruined rope and worst case senario a bad accident....

Anyone done any signifigant jugging on halfs?

In reply to Ginger McGrath:

Here's another option: Use both halfs to jug on. In principle this seems safer than jugging on a relatively thin single line. The leader on aid pitches would have to use the halfs as twin ropes, both ropes clipped to each biner.

For jugging, use a Petzl shunt above and a Reverso or ATC-XP Guide in "autolocking" guide mode on the harness. Problem: moving the Shunt past gear would be a PITA. To get around this, I'd use a daisy to hang from the piece and unclip the ropes while the Shunt is still below the piece. You'd have to set things up so that the Shunt isn't too high.

As someone who learned aid climbing and did some walls in the pre-jumar days, I'd say just following the odd aid pitch is the simplest solution.

In reply to rgold:

I have the hugest amount of respect for rgold and am fully aware of who I'm talking to but that's not a great idea. It assumes that the ropes will be even and moving as one which they likely won't be (unless used as twins and even then I'm not sure). It will end up a mess.

My feeling having climbed a little over there would be a pair of light weight halfs or if you really want to aid/jug a skinny full and a pull line or half rope of similar diameter.

Why are you sold on the second following on jumars or equivalent? It's faster and lighter for most people to climb and haul on gear at the cruxes.

Beta go light.

In reply to Ginger McGrath:

Also the rock is super sharp in places.

In reply to seaofdreams:


Good point.

" Problem: moving the Shunt past gear would be a PITA. To get around this, I'd use a daisy to hang from the piece and unclip the ropes while the Shunt is still below the piece. You'd have to set things up so that the Shunt isn't too high."

When jugging+cleaning aid I always try to keep the tension in the rope(s) constant.
Unclipping before you pass the piece should be OK if the pitch is not too steep and longer quickdraws are used.

If the pitch is steep, unclipping will be a PITA as rgold pointed out.

In reply to seaofdreams:

I don't understand the part about the assumption. The ropes aren't moving at all when you are jugging, and I said the leader would have to clip them both as in twin rope technique for the aid pitches.

Still, it may well be a bad idea---unlike other things I've suggested I've never done it. But I have almost done it, because I've used a prussik and Reverso in autoblock mode on the harness to ascend half rope rappel lines and that works fine---no messes at all. The Petzl Shunt is to make things go faster and smoother than the prussik, but the process is the same and I don't see why there should be any issues with it beside the one I described about passing placements, and it is not insignificant. One would obviously want to try the system out at the local crag or gym or neighborhood tree first.

As for following the aid pitches rather than jugging them, pulling on a few pieces is fine but if you have a full pitch of aid, a bit of technique (there isn't much to it) is going to help a lot. BITD when we followed all aid pitches, I saw people tire themselves out and slow everything down because they thought they could just pull on the gear.

In reply to rgold:

Sorry I'm not explaining myself well. Of course the ropes are not moving but they are loaded and approaching gear or traversing will create situations were one strand is loaded and the other is not. My limited (unplanned and not with a shunt) experience of ascending doubles is that both strands need to be equi' tight and moving through the reverso at the same rate for it not to be a pain the ####.

I also wasn't suggesting some heroic free of a big aid pitch but most easy aid sections or short sections (roofs etc) could be hauled passed, stood in slings or cam jugged in slings while being belayed. It would totally depend on the route.

Jugging and wall methods tend to be slow. There is merit in speed is safety. Which is going to be faster for the op will depend on loads of factors.

In reply to rgold:


An interesting option, one of those things I can't quite predict without actually trying it. I've never jugged halfs but I have used a Reverso like that with a skinny single, quite hard work and quite a bit slower than normal jugging.

In reply to Ginger McGrath:

Sounds like you want to take a pair of skinny halfs and a single that is thick enough to jug on (9.8mm).

You wouldn't take three up routes but you can leave the third rope at your camp and mix and match accordingly.

In reply to Ginger McGrath:

I was out there a couple of years back and all we took were two 8mms. We didn't regret that choice - as others have said there is a lot of wandery easy ground to cover and almost every summit requires an abseil descent. But most of the North American climbers out there are not interested in double ropes and seem to get by fine with singles plus taglines.

Which routes were you planning on doing that require some aid? There were lots of climbers in Applebee when we were there, so borrowing a rope would be a possibility for something specific.

Carrying three ropes up will be a real pain unless you are in for a few weeks. You'll have enough to carry with food and camping gear.

In reply to Ginger McGrath:
Take whatever you'd take to the alps for similar routes to those you want to do. A couple of 8s as Adam says would be a good choice. Why burden yourself with all the disadvantages of a single and tag line just because most Yanks do?

In reply to Ginger McGrath:

mmm, Cheers all. Going to sit and have a think. halfs make sence for 95% of what we are doing, but i think that for that 5% a single would be super usefull. Orginally we might not have had a car, but I think now we might so we will probably just bring a single and leave it in the car just in case. We're planning on being there for at least 10 days

In reply to Adam Long:

I'm pretty keen to get on 'all along the watch tower'.... although dont know if my mate is. In all likely hood we would french free the big 5.11 dihedral pitches and mabey properly aid the crux traverse. The main reason for jugging would simply be speed on the big dihedral, so the leader could climb with a vey light pack and the second could just jug with all the weight, rather than following which I think would be slower ( for us!)

In reply to Ginger McGrath:

this may be of interest:

http://www.wildsnow.com/13769/bugaboos-part-1-climbing/

In reply to Ginger McGrath:
I don't really have any beta as we only did easy things but I would say the weather forecast in the hut was accurate for the ten or so days we were ther. I just used approach shoes and flexible crampons, at the start of the week this was fine going up and down the Snowpatch - Bugaboo Spire col but it got quite icy towards the end of our stay. I think it is one of the nicest places I've ever been.

In reply to Ginger McGrath:

In case you haven't seen them, some good beta for the Beckey-Chouinard route.

https://sites.google.com/site/stephabegg/home/tripreports/britishcolumbia/b...

http://www.supertopo.com/tr/South-Howser-Tower-Beckey-Chouinard/t12222n.htm...