Canyon Rope Rescue Testing 2021 In February 2019, a team of people from the NZ Canyoning Association got together for a weekend to discuss setting up CanyonSAR for New Zealand (as a specialist discipline under New Zealand Land SAR). As part of this weekend, we discussed and practised rope rescue in the canyoning context with […]
What’s in this post? The question we are going to answer in this post is: When you drill a hole through a rock and thread a cord what is the best setup for bends, cord and rock strength. We have used an 8mm Nylon cord for cave rescue and a 6mm Dyneema cord for canyoning […]
Webbing in hangers The question we are going to answer in this post is: Is it ok to rig using webbing directly into new bolt hangers? I have rigged and used both inline and two-point anchors in a canyoning situation for years and never had any reason to be concerned. However, it was time to put […]
Introduction Floating anchor: but what if the anchor blows? Isn’t it going to rip the other anchor out? I hear this as a common statement when discussing a two-point floating anchor (aka self-equalising, equalette, magic X, sliding X, quad, etc.). I can only think it’s based on the assumption you have: Built or chosen poor […]
Introduction As part of writing the Canyoning Technical Manual, I needed to find out more about flat bends. For my own peace of mind, I had to make sure what I was putting in the book was suitable. We undertook some testing in 2015 including a control test and five flat (offset) bend variations. In 2020, […]
How much friction for your device? We were interested to know how much a lowering device can hold for rescue in particular and personal use. The testing is for practical use when out on a rescue, training or instructing a group about how much it can hold in relation to: the particular device the friction […]
Time to meat Human Anchors A temporary human (meat) anchor is used in sports such as caving and canyoning, to get the first or all but the last person down, using a person (or people) that is suitably positioned in a stance where they can use the friction of rope on the rock, their own […]
Vlad to help – a replacement for the master carabiner Back in November 2018, I decided to purchase a Grivel Vlad and put it on my harness to see if it was going to be a useful addition. The Vlad could be helpful as a master carabiner for anchor station organisation for multiple clip-ins. There are […]
The perfect storm – keep an eye on your rigging We were on a canyoning trip recently when we were using a figure-8 abseil device as a block. Over the last eight years, I have probably rigged it over 500 times and never had an issue. However, on this occasion, all the holes in the Swiss […]
The American Death Triangle in the real world Recently (Feb 2018) I wrote a blog on the forces involved in the American Death Triangle. I questioned if there were some occasions we can use this style of rigging. Note: I would recommend reading this first article before diving into this one: American Death Triangle and […]
