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rckjk
Oct 17, 2002, 5:19 PM
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Years ago when I was a kid and trying to get into climbin we used to climb with a harness we made out of webbing, then we anchor a water ski tow rope to a barbed wire fence post with some loops in the rope. Only owning one cheap bener we'd climb up and clip into the loops as we'd go. Then my first ever rappel was with the water ski rope and a stitch plate. Talk about spooky. Needless to say now I know and now I can afford a real rope.
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frogman976
Oct 17, 2002, 5:24 PM
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When I was growing up, my brother and I climbed up the side of the Parkway Plaza Mall in El Cajon. My dad got super pissed cause the cops caught us and he had to come gets us out of the holding tank.
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wlderdude
Oct 17, 2002, 7:38 PM
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After I did this ropes course at BSA summercamp, I set up my own roped climbing in the trees in my front yard.
I started with just some loops sewn into a T-shirt that connected to a foot loop that actually held my weight.
I used some old nylon rope and some cheap poly rope (96 cents at Walmart) that was also quite old and sunbaked. I left the ropes tied up in the trees where they saw lots of rain and sunshine!
Eventually, I moved on to a swiss seat from cheap webbing from a fabric store. I set up zip lines and thyrolean traverses on a flag pole pulley.
To rappel I just wrapped the rope around a snap link for friction. I got pretty inventive up there.
I did not yet know the figure 8 knot, so I spent lots of time untieing overhand knots I had weighted.
I am baffled to know I did not ever fall, die or hurt myself. I was quite a bit lighter then. I wonder if that is how such crap held me up? Nah.
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totigers
Dec 14, 2002, 5:27 PM
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I found an old nylon line in the empty lot across the way and tied it up on my tree and figured a way to use a couple of welding rings tied to twine and used them to climb the nylon rope. I thought I had invented something new only to find out years later that those knots have been in existance for forever and what I did was a poormans acsenders. It was fun though. I use to jump to the end of the branches and climb hand over hand until I reached the trunk of the tree. I was the only one in my neighborhood who could do that one. I've tought my daughters how to climb that same way.
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hellbent
Dec 14, 2002, 5:42 PM
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Excited upon the arrival of his brand new static rope my friend and I tested it out at a bridge in Rialto Wash, Tucson. I stepped over the bridge and took my first steps of what was to be a beautiful free rappel. 5 feet over the edge and a cop yells at me to get back on the bridge. Hanging there I argued that it was easier to go down , not up. But hell, he pushed me, and for the first and only time in my life I took my brake hand off and climbed up hand over hand (no ascenders )
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climbingjunky
Dec 14, 2002, 6:25 PM
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I wore my harness completely upside down once without knowing, still managed to work. Wheew.
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mccmt05
Jan 3, 2003, 4:14 PM
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The first time that I ever climbed, I was in Acadia National Park in Maine, when i was probably 11 or so. Well I saw some rocks and some cliffs (nothing spectacular though, probably 20 feet at most) and decided, what the heck, i'll climb them. There was one boulder that was set on top of a like plateau, that if I would have fallen, probably about 50-60 feet to the bottom. Probably not the best decision for a first time climber, but hey i'm still alive
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ktwo
Jan 4, 2003, 10:21 PM
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Dude, that has got to be one of the worst ideas i have ever heard. If you want incentive to not fall, slap yourself when you do or something like that, don't risk your life!
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roc-ray
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Jan 4, 2003, 11:03 PM
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Me and my brother scrambled around to the top of a cliff about 500 ft. high.We did some top roping on the side of it and then decided it would be faster to rappel the cliff.We did not have belay devices and knew nothing of double rope rappels so we simul rappelled on the two ropes we had.It wasn't bad except we were just wrapping the rope around our locking gate biners as rappel devices.After my brother soloed 30 ft. up and down to get our ropes unstuck we were faced with what we thought was one more steep rappel.Up until this time we had simply used trees as anchors the raps.Now we only saw the one tree we were at and none until the bottom.Unfortunetly we couldn't exactly see the bottom and couldn't tell if the ropes touched.Panic was starting to surface(we were many miles up a logging road in the monashee mountains and it was near dusk) as we figured out what to do.It was decided I would go down first on a single strand of both ropes while my brother counter balanced.All was well until around 25 ft. from the bottom I had to untangle the ropes and unweight the rap line.Just as I was about to continue to the bottom I realised my brother couldn't see or hear me and probably thought I was off rappel.Luckily there was enough rope that both sides were a few feet from the sloping ground.I decided to slide down on both sides of the rope and do a Commando roll down hillside.It was the safest but the system worked.
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blindslap
Jan 4, 2003, 11:39 PM
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i used to do really technical tree climbing. i remember once i tried to climb the underside of a branch, but fell. my "protection" (half inch webbing girth hitched around a limb that was about two inches thick) amazingly held my fall. If it had failed i probably would have fallen thirty or maybe even forty feet. I did this when i had a dynamic rope and a very faint understanding of leading was i was like ten i think. so only six years ago.
Also, the carabiner i used was some manky old symetrical REI D my dad used about eight -ten years ago.
[ This Message was edited by: blindslap on 2003-01-04 15:41 ]
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newbie
Jan 5, 2003, 12:29 AM
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Jeremiah_the_bullfrog, thats exactly what potter does and his holds fine. (harness building) though i still wouldnt recommend such actions.
2 buddies and myself climbed a 250 ft chimney in glacier park free with hiking boots. that was labor day, and thats when i decided climbing was awesome. climb was probably a 5.1, or 5.2 but it was still scary.
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blackstripe
Jan 5, 2003, 2:07 AM
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Registered: Nov 18, 2002
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when i first started i didn't have a harness so my instructor made me a webbing harness, later my mom got a harness from this guy who was trying to give it away but she convinced him to sell it to her for gas money so she bought the harness for $15 but what really confused us was why would a large man buy a perfectly new xs childs harness with all the tags on it if he in no possible way could fit in it or had any children
also my instructor set a rope traverse across the gym courts right next to the climbing wall and we all went across until we got yelled at by the manager-maybe because we did it during a volleyball game
i was at johnson shutins and there was this climb that is right next to the water and you have to traverse across this little sliver of rock to get to it and then climb a tall smooth boulder and of course i was really young and short and i couldnt reach the top so i had to stand on my instructors shoulders to actually get to the climb-wow an actual disadvantage to climbing at a young age
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