UKC

I recently attempted to ascend with a tibloc but soon realised that there was no feasible way to get down without using a ladder 

does anyone no a solution to this

Don't forget to take a ladder to the crag?

But if I want to go higher than my ladder how will I get down

Take a prussik?

How would that work

Most times, a T Block is an emergency option just for ascending a rope and there isn't usually any need to come back down.  T Blocks can be pretty hard on ropes if used as a routine ascender option !

Incidentally, how do you ascend with just a single T Block ? 

I realise that using a tibloc is an emergency option but it does seem quite firm

i tie in on end of the rope and directly attach the tibloc to my harness and it’s like belaying in mid air

You're going to need a bigger ladder.

Good one 

Anyway it's Monday and this thread just reminded me that it's garbage day. Time to take the garbage out

If you are ascending on a device that only goes up like a Tibloc you would need to transfer to a different device to come down like a belay device or gri-gri. 

I still think a gert big ladder is your best bet though.

I’d suggest you spend some time with an instructor.

Jump up and down on the Tiblock really hard until the sheath cuts. That should get you down a bit

You should extend the tibloc 30cm or so from your harness so you can fit a belay device below direct to your harness. With a little hauling on the rope you should be able to get your weight onto the belay device, after which you should be able to free the tibloc.

Are you trolling? If not, take care, as you don't seem to know your tibloc from your elbow.

The answer, by the way, is that you cannot descend using a tibloc and you will need the knowledge of how to safely transfer your weight to a device you can descend on.

What if you turned it upside down?

(Don't do this!)

Descend to the bottom of ladder, fasten yourself to rope, hang ladder below, repeat. Charlie Chaplin must have done this, or perhaps fred dibnah in reverse ascending chimneys.

PS. Don't go anywhere near steep ground without a responsible person. 

Buy a Petzl Shunt? Should be a bit safer and you won't need a ladder.

Only if they can unweight it.

Didn't stop some eejit trying and trashing an abseil rope I'd left in place at Saddle Head once.  Needless to say they hadn't hung around to explain the shredded rope sheath.  I'm guessing they thought they could use a tiblock instead of a cord auto stop.

start with the basics. Buy some 6mm chord and make a couple of prussics. It's hard work, but you can travel up and down a rope with prussics.

Once you've got this technique down, you can start making life easier using a belay to descend (with prussic as backup).

I personally wouldn't use anything with teeth on a dynamic rope (static is fine)

Buy a book on climbing techniques, you might like learn something else. 

Reminds me of an incident with a friend back in the distance of time, we’d set an Abseil rope up at Gogarth and just before heading over my friend mentioned he’d forgotten host stitchplate and was going to abseil on a hitch, I offered him the use of a shunt as a backup ( and I did use the words backup)

Any faffing at the bottom had the unnerving sight of my friend dropping down the rope in 10ft increments, thus proving shunts are not a descending device.

One takeaway from this is never make assumptions about someone’s base knowledge, hence I rarely offer technical advice on here ( but there is much good information exchanged on here which I do read but for personal and professional reasons I generally dip out)

so in light of that and the OP’s obvious gaps in knowledge some face to face instruction from a qualified AMI instructor either at the wall or crag, would be my one and only piece of advice. Share the cost between a couple of friends, consolidate skills and you’ll not regret it.

Can people save the unhelpful comments for https://www.reddit.com/r/ClimbingCircleJerk/ please?

I'm nitpicking a bit but it is possible to 'ascend' downwards, albeit a bit of a faff, the same way you ascend upwards: transfer your weight to device A, move device B, transfer your weight to device B, move device A, rinse and repeat.

No good for descending a long way obvs, but if you overshoot by a small amount it might be easier to take a couple of steps back down again before continuing up the way than to change over onto a descender.  You need to be very careful about moving a Tibloc down the rope because it's extremely easy to shred the sheath with one of those.

(I'm highly sceptical that the newly registered OP is genuinely interested in this btw.)

I appreciate this is personal choice, but to me this seems like an odd personal choice with no good justification I can think of. Toothed devices can be used on dynamic ropes in lots of different scenarios, with no damage as a result.

Why do you think devices with teeth shouldn't be used on dynamic ropes, but are fine on static ropes?

I was too but IP address and email looks OK. We'll keep an eye on it.

Are you still hanging there?

Just something I've always assumed I think.

I know static ropes can handle assenders all day long and don't appear to wear at all from my years of caving. Never had a sheath slip etc.

I've always assumed, quite possibly wrongly that dynamic rope's sheath is a little more sensitive. I've not read or been told this, but avoided it nethertheless.

I guess a part of it is I'm never (or at least shouldn't) be taking big falls on a static rope, but I will on a dynamic rope, so stabbing it with a million teeth makes me uncomfortable. My static ropes get a bit abused, I look after my dynamic ropes a bit more.

Agree about dynamic ropes needing more care but If you are seconding aid routes, the ascenders are on a dynamic rope. If you are getting back onto the rock after a fall on overhanging  terrain with a tibloc you are climbing a dynamic rope. If you are escaping the system or assisted hauling an injured second with toothed devices they are on a dynamic rope.

I'll second Offwidth's answer.

It is possible that on average dynamic ropes are less robust than statics (I don't know), but dynamic ropes are more than capable of handling toothed devices without sustaining an unreasonable level of damage. I've never noticed any tooth related damage on any of my dynamic ropes I've used toothed devices on (though of course it must be possible in certain circumstances).

Deffo - more than. 

The function of the teeth isn't to hold the load, it's to enhance the cam's grip on the rope (especially if the rope is wet, muddy or frozen) - but the hold is still primarily generated by the camming action, squeezing the rope in the device.

Because a Tibloc has no cam as such, just an angled slot, it's more reliant on the teeth to get an initial grip.  Which is why it's so much easier to trash the sheath of your rope with a Tibloc if you're not careful to ensure it's seated correctly than it is with a full-sized ascender.  It has a much less powerful 'positive feedback' effect than teeth on a cam, so it's possible to 'drag' the tips of the teeth across the sheath, and It's actually the failure to properly stab those teeth in through the sheath that causes the damage.  In effect it's because they're insufficiently aggressive, not excessively so.

Nevertheless it's perfectly possible to use a Tibloc on a dynamic rope without damaging it, and that's mostly what they're sold for.  (Nobody sensible plans to ascend on a Tibloc - they're a 'just in case' device, less versatile but easier to use for that one thing than a prusik.)

As it happens, in tests done a good few years ago when the Wild Country Ropeman was a relatively new thing, the Mk1 (which did not have teeth) did much more alarming damage to ropes under high test loads than the Mk2 (which did).  [citation needed - but I can't be arsed to search it out, soz.]

If you're ascending a dynamic rope, it's rather more important imo to worry about what's going on above you - whether the loaded rope is moving over any edges etc. as you bounce your way up.  (Also a potential concern with a static rope, obvs - but I'd say that's something that using a dynamic rope should focus the mind on much more than anything to do with the details of ascenders themselves.)

Simple to unweight, just put a belay device below the shunt take the slack in and release shunt, assuming you want to descend; if not a shunt releases as soon as unweighted to carry on climbing as soon as you get back on the route. Works perfectly well on vertical rock. 

Yeah, completely agree. There is a common misconception in climbing circles that "toothed device = rope damaging", but it isn't the case.

Correction: not necessarily the case.  Tiblocks have to be seated and weighted very carefully.  It's not something I'd plan to use routinely on dynamic rope.

Also the bounciness of dynamic rope, even if you have a rebelay/y-hang or some other rigging keeping it all free-hanging have you tried jugging up 50m free-hanging dynamic? The bouncing of the rope seems to perfectly anti-syncronise with the sit-stand action of frog ascending to be as unhelpful as possible. Thoroughly nasty. Got to be a semi static every time.

Even on my occasional above ground misadventures when I have two ropes, I'll use a dynamic rope for protection and pull a semi static up on the back of my harness for abseil, haul, jumaring etc

Eh, I think we're just into semantics. I said it's not the case that toothed device = rope damaging device (which I still think is a valid statement), I didn't say if a device has teeth it won't damage the rope (which would be wrong).

Anyway, to clarify (hopefully) what I meant was:

Just because a device has teeth it doesn't mean it will damage the rope through routine use. E.g. you could haul 100 pitches with a pro traxion and a person weight load and I doubt you'd be able to tell the difference in rope damage compared with a rope used to climb 100 pitches. This doesn't mean that another toothed device (e.g. a tibloc) couldn't damage a rope through routine use.

Yes I have, I didn't find it a problem, though I wasn't using a frog system.

Ah ok.. for us frog walkers it's hideous!

(probably baffled half the readers there 😁)

I'm sure you're faster than me, even with the bouncing problem! I imagine bouncyness problems depend on at least a few factors like weight, rope properties and ascent method.

Possibly I'm plump enough to be a good mass for the spring

It's a absolute pain in the ar$e, but you can down-prussik a short distance with a tibloc. At least you can on the new one with the orange plastic sleeve. The previous one may be even easier. You need to unload it, by loading your other ascender or worst case clove hitch your foot into the rope and stand up on it. Then lift the tibloc sleeve, pull the teeth away from the rope and slide it down a few inches. Re-load it, lower your other ascender/foot and repeat. 

This is the principle cavers use to descend a fully loaded rope e.g. to rescue someone stuck on it, if other hoisting or lowering options aren't possible (bottom of rope fixed or no spare rope). Also used to just to come back down a short distance, without doing a full change-over. 

For climbing scenarios, you're much better using the tibloc for the footloop/moving/loose/top ascender and use something more flexible on the belay loop (grigri for ease of descent, reverso in guide mode because you most likely have it with you, or a micro-traxion for tiny size to carry and pulley/sliding efficiency )

Speaking from experience, do not practice this free-hanging from a tree, by yourself, on Boxing Day with your shiny new gear with no one else around. Also take a knife. 

As it happens, a few of us experimented with this only a few days ago. It seems to work well in the Youtube videos, but I suspect they're using newer, thinner and slicker ropes than the fat old furry things we habitually use for abbing. We found it was difficult to get the ropes to pass freely, and on at least one occasion it completely jammed in the device.  When we could get it to move it was much harder work than the usual alternative methods, even with the redirect for a mechanical advantage.  A friend who tried it separately with his new static rope reported the same experience. 

The videos show this technique clearly works, but it may be dependent on your rope.  I recommend anyone thinking of using this to try it out beforehand under controlled conditions before using it for real.

wise advice

All this stuff usually looks so easy in some video or when you think it through in your head, but so often it becomes a tangled #@$^* struggle when you practice it the first couple of times.

Which circle of hell did you just link to?

And there I was thinking UKC forums were full of low-grade dreck...