Pallando wrote:Does anyone know how well (as compared to one 24in picket) two equalized 18in snow pickets would be?
I know it sounds shifty, and there will always be the question of, "Why risk it/go cheap with anchors?" but if it's as solid as one 24in picket, would it not make anchoring quicker?
Considering you self arrest after your partner falls into a crevasse. It's just you holding him/her, and you have to hold self arrest while also building an anchor. How difficult is it to reach a 24in picket in your pack with one hand and pound it into the snow with one hand? I feel like if one had two 18in pickets on their thigh with a sliding X cordelette already ready to go, this would be much easier to grab and pound into the snow.
Is this too sketch to try out, or am I stuck with awkward anchor placement?
warning: what follows is boring but useful information
(yes, i do have a lot of time on my hands without work... heheehhee)
I think i know what you are getting at.... This is a scenario that i practice before heading out onto glaciers. Guides will not usually "teach" the scenario of a two person roped team on a glacier and how to set an anchor solo from self arrest. After years of tweaking.... this is what i do:
1: carry an picket 18", a fluke, and an long ice screw on my harness. the side you have them on depends on the the lower hand you may have on your ice axe in self-arrest position. now after having stopped the fall in self arrest, you can start setting the anchor. reach down to your harness and grab you first piece of protection depending on the glacier condition. if its snow, i like to grab the fluke first because i can place that pretty well with one hand but the picket can work too in the vertical position into the snow.
2: at this point i clip the prussik from my rope directly into that first piece of pro. I will call that point of connection the powerpoint. i am assuming that setting an equalized anchor in self arrest is not possible. which is the case in most 1 person self arrest scenarios i feel unless you partner+pack only weigh 50lbs or somehting. at this point, i will place the second piece of protection adjacent or above the first one and clip this piece into the same power point of the prussik. now we have the anchor backed-up but not equalized.
3: now i slowly move down, slowly allowing the force of the rope (climber in the crevasse) to transfer onto these two pieces. if i see they are holding, then just as i pull out of self arrest, i plunge my ice axe vertically into the powerpoint of the prussik. this now creates a second backup to the first anchor piece. this system is not equalized but very good given the scenario. (if climbing in a party of 3 or more, the anchoring is trival and equalized as ideally wanted of course.)
4: now that you can stand up, you can create a third back up to your system, with either a second picket that you may have on your pack or by using your pack itself as a buried anchor and then clip this to your powerpoint as well.
5: at this point you can feel pretty certain that the system will hold.
(jerry nikko cooke, mt rainier 2005)
in fact, i know that this anchor holds since it was tested on me in a real fall i took on mt rainier 5 years ago. my partner (the late
Jerry Nikko Cooke who died a year later on mt hood,
R.I.P. dude!) caught my fall and did precisely these steps and locked off the rope for me. (we were climbing as a two person team.) i was hanging down inside the crevasse 25ft in midair. after jerry pulled out my pack, i then prussiked up and out of the crevasse. his anchor was bomber and its was quite impressive that he did it all under the real-life pressure knowing that if he fumbled-up this anchor, we would both die.
i am writing all this because i have on many occasions gone climbing with people who thought they had their glacier two-man setup all set to go. then when we practiced on a safe slope a crevasse fall (by me pulling downhill on the rope tied to my partner, knocking him to the snow, then finally self-arresting this "fall"...) trying to create an equalized anchor with two peices of snow protection failed in almost all attempts. by pulling hard on the rope, it made it super hard for him to do anything. he was holding on in self arrest barely holding his position. an equalized anchor is a dream in selfarrest with the rope pulling hard on the harness. then when we switched to this system that i mention above, he was then able to create a bomber anchor because you can at least get one hand free and reach to the harness to grab the pieces of protection one-by-one and placing them in simple ways to each other. try it.
when it comes to glacier travel i am super paranoid so having a rig that is tested and works is super important to me. i ALWAYS practice this scenario with my partner (whoever he may be) before I will put my foot on a glacier. most climbers never do this. most never brush up. and most never insist on going through the effort of actually testing this scenario. it is really annoying time-wise to have to test this and to make sure that your partner has it dialed in too (even if he has 20yrs more exp of climbing). but ultimately, i guess there is no point in carrying all the anchor metal if you never really know how it all works in a high-stress real-deal practice ahead of time.
in my case in 2005, Jerry and i practiced this over and over on the snow adjacent to the Winthrop Glacier. By the end of the day we had both test each other and we were all wet but totally confident of what to do. Jerry was from NYC, so he really needed the practice. I was totally glad that he was happy to do it. The following day, i took a 25ft crevasse fall on a hidden crevasse on the Emmons Glacier. Jerry saw me disappear into the glacier and jumped into self arrest. He set an anchor as described above and saved my life... AND his too! He was after all still tied-in to me.
good luck man