How to rappel with NOT enough rope

How would you tie two very different diameters of ropes together???

[watermelonman]

3:59, word to the wise for anyone that plans on bringing dyneema pullcord, if at all possible never ever ever throw a bundle of dyneema pullcord down the rappel. That stuff is infamous for turning into the worst knotted, tangled, gordian knot you've ever seen. On our first outing when it was still a fairly new concept, I tossed it down and it did just that. I spent 30min on rappel trying to untangle it to no avail. Keep it with you, or what us canyoneers have found works best, get a small pullcord bag to keep it in. A small chalk bucket, or anything with an opening that can be cinched shut, works very well.

[ipodviewer]

Arborist trick coming in: Two different size ropes tied together, use your smaller rope( blue in video) to tie a clove hitch at least 8 in up your bigger rope (Black in video). With the remaining 8in of black tie half hitches with blue rope along every 2 in till you run off the tail.

This keeps the rope in line with out bends and moves in the direction of the pull. It greatly lowers your chance of getting caught as its widest point is only slight thicker then the diameter of the black rope. I doesnt get caught in trees and is we have really reefed on it with any issues.


I would love to know if there is slippage and if the cord is weaker then the knot. (testing opportunity wink wink)

Also thanks for making great content as always and showing faults when they happen its makes the rest of us average humans feel like we still have an idea what we are doing even when we make mistakes.

[paulm]

This video makes me realize how good life is. What a great feeling it is to be up in the mountains.

[ferbusch]

As a professional tree climber/arborist I constantly connect thin throwline to my climbing rope to pull the rope through the tree. The throw line is not made from dyneema but still pretty slippery because its waxed.
We use a clove hitch and 2-4 half hitches to connect the throwline to the rope

[nilsschenkel]

For some work I did I needed to mark soft material in all kinds of colors; The go-to pen for that was silver. Didn´t come across a color that wouldn´t show up on. So maybe you can mark the middle of your rope with some silver Sharpie, too.
Regarding the knot, I´d expect an Albright knot or a Nail knot to hold well; They work for fishing, so I wouldn´t see why they shouldn´t work for climbing.
Edit: A Marlspike hitch in with the spine of a carabiner as handle would give you a good grip on the pull cord. I guess you could also clip a sling to the carabiner and loop it around your chest/ over your foot if for some reason you really wanted to get some weight on it.

[floriansilbernagl]

I come from professional canyoning so we use this all the time. When combining two different ropes, we normaly use a simple flat overhand and then a second flat overhand right behind to stop the knot from moving. Works perfekt.

[steelonius]

For the middle of ropes you can thread a piece of heavy duty sewing machine thread. I just went over and under a few strands in the sheath in a spiral pattern with a normal sewing needle. Pick any color you like! It takes a little time to install but it lasted me a full season of climbing and then some. Also if you're paying attention you'll feel it too, which can be nice in low light settings.

[harlanstockman]

I always have a spliced eyelet in one end of the dyneema, and use a 3/16 (0.7 oz) quicklink only if needed. I have also just included the dyneema all the way in a bfk. My pull tests occasionally had the dyneema break at 1100 lbs, if it crosses itself. Amsteel can get stuck in small cracks, so i spool the amsteel out of a small bag attached to my chest. Best oprion is to put the spliced eyelet over the rope in the middle of th bfk, where the bfk gets its bulk from the main rope (say two triple overhands).

[kylen]

Uncoiling the amsteel on rappel is always the crux. I find using a light plastic "line winder" used for spooling kiteboarding lines works perfectly. I also put a fixed eye in the end of my amsteel that I can just run the climbing rope through for a quick bowline.

[CheapFlashyLoris]

Hey, we were the folks who said hi at the lake on our way up to do the other ridge! Sounds like the South Ridge parties had more fun; we ended up bailing halfway through the second pitch. If our cordellete is still up there, you're welcome to keep it 😅

[Hypknos]

We use this same concept in arborist settings for retrievable canopy anchors. In some cases using throwline (very thin dynema) or another climbing line for retrieval

[MarkE]

Good video. I tie 1.5mm dyneema/nylon cords to big ropes often for tree work (throw balls to set anchors, string to leave out to preserve anchor points).
What works for me, is to clove hitch onto the bigger rope, with an overhand stopper on the cord, so that the clove doesn't need any tail. This has the advantage that it will easily go through tight unions in a tree without snagging, or through a pulley, and is very quick to tie and loosen.

[paulgreenwood]

Two concerns for using this in the mountains. One is that the carabiner in the knot will make it out more likely to get snagged on something (tree root, crack in the rocks or flake sticking out, etc.)pulling it down. The second is that a thin string is much more likely to tangle (and this happens in the video): he mentions flaking it in a bag and I imagine that would help. If you (or anyone) have used this technique regularly, I'd be interested to hear how you avoid these two problems. Thanks!

[alan_long]

Putting in my vote to test the Gibbs Knot. Ive used this to join two ropes of different diameters with pretty good success. Used it on a 9.5 and the Petzl Pur Line. Would LOVE to see this tested!!!

[TheScottaboy]

For my pull line I use a 5mm accessory cord, so it bites a lot more than the Dyneema, but I've had good success with a flat overhand to join the two, then clove hitching the rappel rope onto the spine of a large carabiner. The flat overhand only gets loaded when you're pulling the rope, not when you're rappelling (the load is taken by the clove hitch on the carabiner).

[BlckKnght]

The Zeppelin bend is supposed to be a good non-jamming knot for joining slippery ropes. I'd be fascinated to see it pull tested.

[Serdradaar]

Why not splice an eye in the dyneema big enough to fit your coil (or the bag where the dyneema is stuffed in) through, and then simply girth hitch it through the eye of the figure eight in the rappel rope? Should prevent the dyneema from slipping.

[rudwick]

A friend sewed some dental floss through the middle of a dark rope to mark the middle. Worked pretty well

[Des..Perado]

Use a locking brummel splice in the end of the dyneema, clip it with the biner you have at the quick links. Alternatively, tie your stopper knot and make a tie a prusik with the dyneema eye above the stopper.

[mirandahotspring]

You can mark the middle of a black rope with some white thread stitched through it. The rigging system you used is a variation of cord technique rigging that has been used in cave exploration since at least the 1980s. It was used to leave a thin cord at each pitch so a single rope could be used to explore the whole cave. The usual way was to sew a cord into one end of the rope (half a metre or so long) to tie the cord to. At the other end a double fisherman's stopper knot was tied and it was usually rigged through a stitch plate at the anchor. That way the rope could be recovered at the bottom of each abseil and a doubled cord left in its place. This allowed the rope to be replaced from the bottom on the way back to exit the cave.