UKC

Morning all,

Quick quezzie- is anyone able to recommend suitable crags for single rope climbs in the Lakes? Ideally multipitch? Got plenty of time off coming up and the family have moved to cumbria… rude not to! I'll get around to buying halfs, but for now suggestions would be great

Many thanks!

To be fair, multipitch and one rope don't really go well together, likely to lead to lots of friction, gear pulling out and limited options if you have to bail from a route.

Cheaper than buying two half ropes, just buy another single to then make two full ropes, or presumably if you are climbing with someone else, get them to invest in a rope.

Have a look at how direct the lines look in your guide book and make a decision based on this, and extend your runners more than usually. Some routes wander and some don't but this isn't dependent on the crag per se.

If it's long enough just fold the rope in half and voila you have half ropes!  Most pitches in the lakes are no more than 20m. Just make sure you don't need to do any big abseils! 

I don't believe that, happy to be proved wrong though

It's a lot safer on doubles, more gear options, less gear getting dragged out of slots, true even for 'straight routes'. As someone has already said just buy a half and team with your single.

Double ropes certainly help, but at the grades you appear to climb at most of them will originally have been climbed on a single rope.  You might have to climb shorter pitches where now they might be run together.  If you can find older guidebooks in your local library these might show shorter pitches and intermediate belays.  You might have to extend some runners more than you might with double ropes.  As long as you check the line and avoid long traverses you should be OK.  Bear in mind you'll have less rope if you have to bale out for any reason.

Thanks a lot for the advice. Update- the missus wants to split it so looks like I'm getting a fresh set of halfs ha 

Have a good bank holiday chaps!

Contrary to most comments, I'd say pretty much all of them.

Most British climbers use double ropes as the default option and many become wrongly convinced that they are necessary rather than just useful. Unless you are really pushing your grade most routes can be climbed fine on a single if you are confident and competent.

It's definitely more committing heading up to a high mountain crag with just a single rope but with a conservative approach to route choice it's nothing to be afraid of.

Last time I climbed at  White Ghyll and  Gimmer Crag the only rope we had available was a 40metre 8.7mm single. As such, we just got on with it and probably climbed exactly the same routes up to E3 that we would have done if we'd had doubles.

With thoughtful gear placements and use of extenders a single rope will be fine for most crags. Worth checking what your descent options are though as if there's an abseil point you may prefer to use that and a single may not be long enough.

Not that easy to say if this is correct but I suspect not. Although it's rather irrelevant to the discussion (or possibly what you wrote isn't what you meant). What's pertinent is the length of the LONGEST pitch on a route, the length of other pitches is much less important.

Using Lake District Rock, 2005 edition (not including the sport routes at St Bees) as a representative sample of routes, only 20% of them have pitches no more than 20m.

However what is extremely interesting is that 70% of routes have pitches of no more than 30m and only 7% have pitches over 40m.

As such, the suggestion of folding a 60m (or 70/80m) sport rope in half is actually a perfectly reasonable option for the majority Lakes of routes.

Feels pretty unreasonable if the belay is at 31m 😮

Love that you've crunched the numbers 

There are obviously routes which don't fall into this category, however there are a vast majority in my opinion you could get away with this method. However care should obviously taken to read the guide fully and make your own judgements! 😊

Occasionally if second is fairly competent and there are plenty of runners its often safe if they start climbing to enable you to reach belay anchor (if you come back down to stance from it you're giving them a direct belay). I believe simul climbing whole routes is popular with some. Long slings/possibly cordalette quite useful too.

With a bit of thought to how the rope runs, I'd say nearly every crag could be climbed with a single rope. I'm biased in that I do the majority of my climbing on a single - but it really isn't as bad as many people make out. You just need to be diligent with extending gear to avoid rope drag, and accept that you won't be able to - for example - bail by abseil as easily.

Just a comment to support the idea that apart from the shortened abseil length, a single rope should be fine if climbing within your comfort level and thinking about runner placements and extending them to avoid rope drag. 

My memory of the MIA scheme was that all the climbing and rescue training and assessments took place with single ropes. (1996) Incidentally ropes were 50m .