Bushwalk Australia

This thread is taking on a Kafkaesque quality with talk of submarines for anchors - ironically probably the nautical vessel that actually anchors itself the least frequently.

But, CBee, your latest claim just makes no sense again. Because if the "rip the rope and all the other anchors" were true, anytime a climber fell on a bolt or piece of gear the entire chain of protection would zip. It is possible to equalize anchors to prevent shock loading and my ultra-conservative guess is that those techniques have probably been around for at least half a century. I learnt about them in my 20's and that is closer to 40 years ago than 30. And again, the maximum force on an abseil anchor is basically body weight, plus a little bit of gear, and if the abseil is off vertical/not freehanging as in this case, the force on the anchor is even less.

If I knew all this before hand, I would have not intervened in this thread. Now I'm a bit confused: should I blindly abseil from a single bolt? Is it safe 100%? Should I back up a bomber tree with a nut? Or just avoid trees and rappelling only on fixed hardware? I ask you on behalf of a friend...

sandym wrote:

Is this an Australian thing?

In 30+ years of climbing across multiple countries, I have never heard any climber call a single tree redundant (good enough, for sure). Generally, the idea of redundancy is that if one component of the anchor breaks/fails, redundancy means there is something else backing it up.

But, if this is taught in Australia as redundant, many things in this thread now make some sort of sense.

According to international standards when it comes to building climbing anchors.

John Long is an authority in the field:

A bomber pine tree tied off with a cordelette. Here the cordelette has been looped around the trunk and tied with a figure eight loop, creating redundancy in both the cord around the tree and the two loops at the master point, which the carabiners are clipped into. Simple, strong, and redundant. In all such setups, try to keep the inside angle of the cord/sling less than 90 degrees to avoid load multiplication.

Climbing Anchors (1993).

Maybe look for routes with submarines? With the AUSKOS deal or whatever it is there maybe some to spare.

Somehow related to the dodgy single bolt posted by sandym:

Failure of a maillon (quick link) in Blue Mountains canyon

Always thoroughly inspect any climbing anchors before abseiling. Back up in case of doubt.

Cheers gbagua, that is interesting.

I do very little canyoning and am surprised that these triangular maillons are the item of choice for fixed abseil anchors. It's easy to get marine grade stainless these days and triangular shape makes it hard to keep the load aligned along the long axis.

Not a fan of those either. I have seen them in Mt Lindesay too (plus a host of other rarities). That mountain is probably the best example of what not to do when it comes at building climbing anchors. At your own risk!

Leaning on the other hand is a clean peak and rock quality is quite good. I have no idea how many accidents it has seen in its entire history but generally speaking are probably more related to people suffering from falls rather than failure of the abseil point before the fixed one was installed in 2014.

doing a clean-up of my photos and found this one doing a descent of Leaning - taken January 2011 i.e. before the fixed bolt but during the small spindly tree festooned with karabs and many other attachments.

Sweet, certainly a much cleaner rap off. Not sure if you have returned after the fixed anchor point was setup in 2014 but today you'll be going down along the ridge and facing the person located at the bottom of the cliff.

Never had the chance to rap off the bush trees.