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Help Dr Piton - It's Eating Me Alive!:
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passthepitonspete
Aug 27, 2002, 8:27 AM
Views: 9818
Registered: Oct 10, 2001
Posts: 2183
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{Dr. Piton lowers his stethoscope from Fishypete's chest, purses his lips, shakes his head sadly, and slowly removes his glasses to speak in earnest as he renders his diagnosis} Dear Fishy Pete, It would appear that you are indeed correct - your wank factor is spiralling out of control. As entropy is defined in the Second Law of Thermodynamics as "a spontaneous tendency towards disorder," each movement that you make on the rock further scatters the molecules of your big wall system. There is a synergistic effect whereby additional pieces of gear added to your arsenal actually enhance, rather than reduce, the unparalleled and utter chaos in which you now find yourself immersed. The harder you try, the behinder you get. [Aside: This is frequently the case in Dr. Piton's relationships with women.] Your co-efficient of wank is approaching 1.0, and all indications are that you may indeed BE a Big Wall Theorist. Furthermore, the possibility exists that you may also be a wanker! This, in Dr. Piton parlance, is not a Very Good Thing to be. But I am Dr. Piton, and I offer hope to the lonely, the brokenhearted, the unloved, and yes - even the stupid. And here is the hope that I bring to you, Pete: I - Dr. Piton - was once a Big Wall Gumby! And for a period of about a week and a half in 1988, I was also a B.W.T due to two consecutive failures on Grade VI attempts, though fortunately I progressed fairly quickly through this stage with a successful ascent of El Cap. [By definition, there are no B.W.T.'s on the summit] Some years later after having climbed the Vest Face and the Salathe Vall with Thomas ["yes, I haf climbed ze Valker Spur in a day - vee bivid one pitch from ze summit, it vas the coldest night I haf ever spent...."] I next embarked on an attempt to climb Zodiac with another partner of similar [in]experience. While we managed to reach the summit on Day 7 of our four-day ascent with no food, water nor light remaining, it was the most clusterf*cked ascent of my life. Which just goes to show you, that if you simply keep on keepin' on, you will eventually reach the summit. [Being stubborn rather than talented is of paramount importance in this regard] While your prognosis may appear to be terminal, FishyPete, there is indeed the possibility of a full recovery if you are prepared to pay attention attention to a few key areas which I outline below. STEEL YOUR MIND Let's get something straight here, OK? Climbing big walls is just a different kind of suffering. This is going to hurt, and it is going to hurt big time. Expect pain, and you will be less surprised. If you are to be a big wall climber, then you must be a man or woman of passion. If you are "plain vanilla", chances are you will not succeed. You must be bitchin', and you must know it. [Or at least you must suspect it before you begin. Once you reach the top, then you will know it.] You heart must burn for the summit - your goal must be focused. You cannot be distracted. I am possibly the most easily distracted person you will ever meet! Especially if she's a twenty-one-year-old hardbody. Or even nineteen. But somehow I manage to set these thoughts aside for the time being in order to focus on climbing the wall. It is amazing how focused you can become when your very life is in peril! You should be an accomplished outdoorsman, familiar with camping in the wild in all kinds of weather. If you are not, then you probably do not belong on a big wall, and should go home now and save us all the bother saving your sorry ass when you get in over your head. You must understand that climbing big walls is a problem solving experience. You must activate your brain cells to the max - it is a thinking man's game. You must become a problem solver - it helps if you are a left-handed right-brained engineering type. If you are not, you had best learn to become one, at least while you are on the wall. Expect stuff to go wrong - nowhere is there more opportunity for clusterf*ckage than two thousand feet off the deck. And when stuff goes wrong, YOU are the person who must solve the problem. Unless you're really stuck, in which case you can telephone me at the phone number on my profile - if I'm home, I can offer suggestions. And if you're going to die, we can pray together. Problem solving requires four steps: Gather the data Identify the problem Determine alternative solutions to the problem Implement the best solution It should come as no surprise that the most commonly missed step is Step #2. Make darn sure you have figured out what is actually wrong! There is no point in trying to solve the wrong problem. [Note: This advice about Step #2 applies to all of life's problems, especially relationships.] Becoming a proficient problem solver is key to reducing your wank factor. So be good at it. Climbing this wall may be the most difficult undertaking of your life. Understand and accept this. And tell the whole world what you are going to do - this will make it that much harder to bail. [Or at least it should....] CHOOSE YOUR PARTNER WISELY You choice of partner is even more critical than your choice of route! I will paraphrase Chongo here and say that climbing a big wall is like being marooned at sea. Imagine yourself in a tiny lifeboat with your partner, and that you must live with this partner for the next week through stormy seas and unknown turbulence. Can you do it? Can you love and respect and accept your partner unconditionally, even when he or she does something really stupid to clusterf*ck your system? There is no worse place for a clash of personality than on a big wall! You MUST, above all else, respect your partner, even when you did not have the good sense to choose the right partner in the first place! There must be no yelling or screaming at each other on the wall. Voices travel. I have been told this on more than one occasion. Don't do as I do - do as I say. Besides being able to get along with your partner, you must be confident that your partner is competent. If you have doubts, then you must be prepared to do everything yourself anyway. It is always a good idea to know that you are capable of leading every pitch on your route - partners have a way of chickening out when the going gets tough and scary. Which it frequently does. PRACTISE! PRACTISE! PRACTISE! It is not a good thing to discover that you do not know how to hook when you are a thousand feet up and facing several hook moves! You had best make sure you know what you are doing ahead of time. Have you practised setting up your ledge while hanging from your aiders in a tree in the dark while it's raining? It's easy when you're setting it up standing in your garage - try it while hanging in space! Do you think I'm kidding? I sure as hell am not. You will have to set up your ledge in the dark while standing in aiders, so you had best make this second nature before you find out how incredibly difficult it can be. Get out your aiders and ledge and headlamp, and start practising. [Note: Dr. Piton usually "flags" his ledge on his haul line - this is a way of leaving your ledge permanently set up and on routes that overhang is clearly the Better Way.] Do you know get your rain fly onto your ledge after your ledge has been set up? Do you know how to place heads? Do you know how to operate your systems? Have you practised your 2:1 Hauling Ratchet by hauling an enormous bag of rocks for a couple hundred feet? Your Hauling Ratchet should positively "SING" - you should have that little bastard so dialled that you can whiz up those rocks in a heartbeat. Do you think I'm kidding? I'm not. Go haul some rocks. Do you know how to clean a traverse? If there is any climbing operation on the wall that will mess you up, it's this one! Make sure you know how to do this! Make sure you have adjustable daisies and an adjustable fifi, and that you are cleaning with a Grigri and a jug. Knowing how to clean an aid pitch is FUNDAMENTAL. How to do this correctly is a frequently-asked question of Dr. Piton. THINK about the myriad of operations that you need to know to climb a big wall, and make sure you know how to do them! If this sounds fundamental to you, it bloody IS! But you would be surprised how many Big Wall Theorists begin a wall without knowing how to do stuff. Thinking that you know how to do stuff is entirely different from knowing it because you have practised. One other thing: Be sure you know how to climb aid! Sheesh. DO YOUR PREPARATION ON THE GROUND Halfway up the wall is no place to be doing needed repairs that you could have done ahead of time! Does your rain fly leak? You think it doesn't, but are you sure? Do you want to find out the hard way? I hope not. That would not be cool. Instead, set up your ledge against your house and hand the garden hose to a friend with a good sense of humour. You should find out quickly enough - diagnose the problem and solve it. Have you collected all your water bottles ahead of time? I travel to Yosemite with a bunch of comprimed two-litre pop bottles, so I don't have to hunt around the well-scrounged Camp 4, or hit the recycle station behind the Village Store. I have my clip-in loops for the necks of the bottles pre-tied and ready. Do you have a clip-in loop on EVERYTHING? You'd better, "cuz if it ain't clipped, it's gone!" This is not Big Wall Theory - this is Big Wall Fact. You should have assembled a veritable army of big wall bags. I particularly like the ones that Fish makes - they come in various sizes and are indispensable. You can make big wall bags from any robust and dependable drawstring bag - get your local shoe repairman to sew on a clip-in loop for you. Pay attention to all the little details - you can find a complete list of everything you would ever even think of bringing by clicking here to read my ULTIMATE BIG WALL CHECKLIST. This checklist is meant to be a template for you! So use it as such. It is already a four-thousand hit article! Even more interestingly is that one "hit" is generated not per page view but merely by article view. These pages have been read over ten thousand times! Do you have your knot protectors and wall flower sussed? Do you have the right kind of clothes? A synthetic sleeping bag and bivi sack? The right rain gear? Have you determined what spare gear you will be bringing? Have you made the modifications to your lead rack and cleaner's rack? Do you have the suspension system on your pig sussed? Do you know precisely how it will be attached to your haul line? This is fundamental! Do you know how to dock your pig? Have you made up an internal daisy for your pig? How about your catch lines? Look - this isn't the stuff you do at the base of the wall for cryin' out loud! Do it at home! Is all your gear marked? More importantly, make damn sure your PARTNER'S gear is marked! You do not want the booty you find to become your partner's by default! How about your racking labels on your wires and hooks? Have you made up your tie-offs and keeper loops for your pitons? Camera, film, lighting, first aid kit? Check my ULTIMATE BIG WALL CHECKLIST. The key point here is to do EVERYTHING you can ahead of time! Don't wait til you're at the wall! Note: I have already written how to do virtually everything mentioned above and below. You know, stuff like how to rack your rack, or how to organicize your Catch Lines. If you need to find something, or you don't understand what I'm talking about, please consult the Index to Dr. Piton Stuff. One day, I will link all these posts directly from here, but this is not that day. You will have to use the Index for now. UNDERSTAND YOUR SYSTEMS Is it crystal clear to you and your partner EXACTLY what you will be doing together? Will you lead in blocks, or swap leads? Do you have your racking system organicized? You must know how to rack your rack. If there is any SINGLE Big Wall Tip that I can give you to minimize your wank factor, it is this: Rack your gear on your cleaner's rack AS YOU CLEAN, and rack it in exactly the same way as you rack it on your leader's rack. This is a one-step operation that you do as you put the stuff on your rack. This way, when you get to the belay station, you are ready to go. If you wait until you reach the belay station to rack, then racking becomes a three-step operation, and you will waste ten minutes or more. Racking as you clean, along with using rope bags, are the keys to efficient changeovers. KEEP YOUR ROPES UNDER CONTROL! After you have climbed many many big walls, you will be able to look at a belay system and immediately visualize what goes where, and what needs to be moved or changed. You will even be able to do it without untying any ropes! It used to be a goal for me to try to manage a changeover or bivi without untying ropes - like this was supposed to be some mystical rarely-achieved nirvana. Nothing could be further from the truth - you should NEVER have to untie ropes! BUY YOURSELF SOME FRICKING ROPE BAGS! It is emphatically NOT the Better Way to flake your ropes on a sling. This is totally not cool, and is just plain stupid. If you are climbing with a partner, you will need one rope bag for each lead rope. After the leader has led and the rope bag is more or less emptied, the seconder will bring the lead rope bag up as he cleans. He will be tying backup knots beneath his Grigri, and when he gets to the upper station, the first operation he will perform is to stuff the lead rope back in the lead rope bag. This is something that takes practise, too! You should always run the rope through a carabiner directly above the bag, and pull the rope down into the bag, untying the backup knots as you stuff. The photo above is a link to itself, so be sure to click on it. As you stuff, put your hands inside the bag and pull the rope into it in a smooth hand-over-hand motion. You should not require more than a minute or two to do this! Practise this, damn it! Become good at stuffing ropes into bags, not only after finish cleaning, but as you haul, too. If you are climbing with a partner, you will need two rope bags for each haul line. After the leader puts the top of the haul line through the hauling system, and after you tie the pig in short with an alpine butterfly knot, or if soloing after you have tightened up on your inverted compound pulley that comprises part of your Far End Hauler, then you have no further use for the haul line bag. You might as well clip it to the top of the pig so you don't have to jug with it when you clean the pitch. Incidentally, you should send everything you can up with the pig(s) so you don't have to carry them when you jug and clean! Duh. You should begin jugging and cleaning with little more than the cordalettes and carabiners from the belay station you just dismantled, and perhaps a few slings. The reason you need two rope bags per haul line when climbing with a partner is because your leader must stack the haul line in the other [upper] haul line bag as he hauls. You do NOT want to flake the haul line on a sling and then restack it when the pig comes up for two reasons: Firstly, you are having to manage the rope twice, and secondly, when you stack as you haul, the bottom of the haul line goes to the top, and you can switch ends of the haul line every time you haul, thus depreciating each end of your haul line similarly. If you are soloing, then you only need one rope bag per lead rope AND per haul line. Do not, under any circumstance, allow your ropes to escape from your control! NEVER trail a rope while cleaning - tie backup knots to keep it under control. ALWAYS make sure that when you cut the pig free, the excess haul line that has become your lower-out line is hanging free beneath the pig with no knots in it to catch. If it is very windy, then you should consider using a second designated lower-out line that you use to lower out the pig on a 2:1 - put a carabiner on the haul line above the pig so that as the pig rotates across the wall as you lower it out, the lower-out line doesn't twist around the pig. After the pig is plumb with the upper station, you can release one end of the lower-out line [remove the knots, eh?] and then recover your lower-out line. NEVER allow your ropes to dangle beneath the pig! This is a recipe for disaster! The ropes will tangle in your wall flower and in your catch lines. This is not Big Wall Theory - you know the rest. Tom allowed this to happen one miserable night on Excalibur - I was freaking furious and clearly violated the "respect your partner rule" cited above! [But at least he didn't let it happen again....] And never allow your ropes to hang free ever - they will be blown horizontally, catch on a flake, and then you will have to spend the next day bolting horizontally across the wall to retrieve the rope you need to reach the summit or the ground. By using rope bags at your belay, your ropes are neat and tidy, your visible clusterf*ckage is minimized, and your belay is hugely easier to manage. MAINTAIN DEGREES OF FREEDOM Always leave yourself a choice. This means that you never clip something into something else, and you never share carabiners. If you do not have scores of free carabiners, then you have no business being on a big wall. Without free carabiners, the wank factor in your belay and your bivi will grow exponentially as you clip two things into the same carabiner, then realize that you need to unclip the first thing, but can't, because the second thing has weighted it! This is especially important on your Power Point. Once you have set up your cordalettes and constructed your Power Point, you should never open that carabiner! This is because you never clip anything directly into that carabiner - you have used Transient Carabiners on your Power Point. Your Power Point may have three or four transients on it. This goes double for the carabiners going into your anchor bolts, or you anchor gear. The carabiner that attaches the cordalette to the bolt should have the cordalette, and nothing else, through it. If you want to attach anything else to that bolt, do not open the carabiner that holds the cordalette. [This may be difficult anyway since it will be under considerable load.] Instead, clip a transient carabiner to the anchor crab. BRING LOTS OF SLINGS! You should have at least twenty shoulder-length slings, or better still thirty, and at least six double-length slings. Your bivi will eat nylon, and by the time you get everything organicized, you will be glad that you brought plenty of nylon. Never EVER use your ropes as part of the belay! This is just plain dumb! This is why you bought cordalettes, for cryin' out loud! Don't be frickin' tying your rope into the anchor bolts with clove hitches! What the heck are you thinking?! Whatcha gonna do when it's time to climb and use those ropes that are irretrievably part of your belay, and have everything hanging from them? Sheesh. If you want to construct a clothes line to hang stuff from during your bivi, then use some of your double length slings, and NOT a rope! Using ropes as part of your belay system is the quickest route to irreversible clusterf*ckage I can imagine. Having plenty of slings will substantially reduce your wank factor. [ This Message was edited by: passthepitonspete on 2003-01-14 10:46 ]
(This post was edited by cliffhanger9 on Mar 26, 2013, 12:54 AM)
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Post edited by cliffhanger9
(Moderator) on Mar 26, 2013, 12:54 AM
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