UKC

Hey,

Looking at "Pirates of the Caribbean" Parle (6a+) in Spain, and the approach is a ~50m abseil. Various guidebooks recommend leaving the abseil line in, but also recommend re-rigging off a anchor under the lip:

"there is a two bolt rappel anchor. Below this, just inside the lip of the hole there is another anchor (so you can rap in, and then re-rig your rappel".

My question is, how does this work with 2+ climbers? For one I would assume I could abseil, get on the anchor with my PAS, then tie a clove hitch with my abseil line to a locking karb, then continuing down. But obviously the second wouldn't be able to follow?

Am I missing something obvious? 

Probably using 60m rope, thus could leave a bit of slack before clipping into second anchor sufficient for following person to attach and use abseil device before using PAS then reattaching device on other side of lower anchor?

What he said - leave a decent length of slack in the rope above the clove hitch (you'll have to anyway or it'll be very awkward for the second to attach themselves at all) then they just ab down to the re-belay point, clip in, transfer to the low side and carry on.

The bigger question is how you plan to get the rope back, presumably the route comes up past the re-belay point?

Right, makes sense, guess it's the difference between seeing in action or not! Thanks guys. 

Yeah, its an abseil into a "cave" and a climb up and out. You leave the ab line there for emergency. 

I remember abbing on a single 60m half rope and climbing the route on our sport rope. We did the re rigging thing but it was a faff and I'm not sure it was strictly necessary. You can see the anchors and single bolt from the top so you can decide what to do before committing. I would certainly consider just abbing off the top bolts if I was doing the route again, at least based on what I remember. Maybe take a rope protector if you have one. 

Use a rope protector (rope bag works well) and just use the double bolt anchor at the top. Have used this method numerous times on the route, works well and saves faff when at the lip of the cave and no rope retrieval faff later.

Ah thanks guys. Was thinking that's an option as well, I guess abbing down doesn't put much wear on the rope, but if we were ascending (probably worst case) then it would be nice to know I'm not putting unnecessary wear on the rope!

What oldie days. Retrieving the rope isn't difficult, the second bolt isn't far down. Using the abseil rope as a back up will be difficult, it's a way over the other side of the hole.

I had another thought about this- whilst re rigging for the abseil is probably more trouble than it's worth, if you needed to jug out you'd probably wish you had....