UKC

In this article top British aid climber, alpinist and climbing funny man Andy Kirkpatrick shares with us his top ten tips for hauling your ass, and your bags, up El Capitan in Yosemite, USA.

El Capitan is one of the most famous granite big walls in the world and is a favourite target for many climbers first (and only!) big wall. Read on to find some helpful hints on how to enjoy and how to succeed on your first trip up The Captain...

Read more at http://www.ukclimbing.com/articles/page.php?id=5674

In reply to UKC Articles: Cool, now all I need is tips for this weeks lottery numbers and I'm set to go :p

Glad you remembered the most important thing...enjoy it!

In reply to UKC Articles: A good and interesting article. One tip I could add is go and climb it with someone who has done it before.

2. Maintain Low Expectations and You'll Not Be Disappointed

Ha! words to live by

I'm a long way from doing anything like this, but fascinating article, thanks Andy

In reply to UKC Articles:

Nice one Andy. Tip one should really have been 'always have a pee before using a poo bag'

In reply to UKC Articles:

Top article. And can confirm that pissing before pooing is extremely wise.

But. Can anyone clear up the two points of contact when dumaring? I understand why but am confused about how?

In reply to sparkass: I've just had a go at explaining this and its quite difficult so I'll leave it to someone else:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rPsiSu2lwpY#at=64


Hope that was what you were after.

In reply to UKC Articles:

I know nothing about climbing El Cap but that article looks like damn' sensible advice to me.

jcm

In reply to Mark Collins:

Thanks for the link.

I'm still in the dark though I'm afraid. The clip shows the climber taking the top dumar off the rope to pass the gear clipped to it - fine. But, he then has a moment when he has only one point of contact and Andy reckons we should always have two points of contact. This sounds to me like a sensible piece of advise and I'm keen to learn the method.

In reply to sparkass:
create a backup knot below the lower jumar and clip back to harness ...when you remove the jumar you are still attached by remaining jumar and the rope with its shortened length(to the knot).

In reply to sparkass:

the second point will be him backed up with a gri gri, or tied into the rope short.

When jugging you should tie in short (tie a know on the bite and clip into harness) so if your jugs come off you wont fall all the way to the end of the rope.

A gri gri can be used instead, so if your jugs fall off you fall onto your gri gri. Gri gri has the advantage that after a while it starts to self feed with the weight of the rope and will automatically start taking in slack and hence your continuously tied in short.

In reply to steveej: down side of gri gri is you don't want hundreds of feet of slack blowing around in the wind below you catching on flakes and getting stuck etc.....so you normally also have to pull up some of the slack and tie off loops to stop this happening which take additional time.,

In reply to UKC Articles: ]

Ah ok. I do remember using knots intermitently during pitches. Not very familiar with GriGris - too expensive. Thanks all!

In reply to sparkass:
I never used that GriGri stuff below the Jumars. Too much fumbling and another piece of gear clanging around on your waist. Tying a knot or two as you go is pretty easy to do and very effective for keeping you alive in case of mishap.

Good stuff Andy!

some more tips here if you guys are bored : http://fishproducts.com/howto/how_to.html