Touching the Void 20/20

Problem: You are lowering your partner with a broken leg down 300 feet with 2 150 feet ropes tied together and you get the knot and the partner can't take the weight off

Possible Solution: Tie a Prusik knot in front the the belay device and attach that to your harness. Cut the rope behind the Prusik knot, now you can free the belay device. Untie the cut rope and the full 150 foot rope and tie a bite in the end of the 150 foot rope and attach it to the Prusik loop. Set-up the belay device just after the bite and detach the Pruisk loop from your harness. Contuine lowering. Myabe use 2 Prusiks if you have them

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Originally Posted by climb2ski

... and detach the Pruisk loop from your harness. ..

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How, exactly? Isn't your partner's whole weight on the prussik loop?

it's called "passing a knot"
and you don't have to cut any rope

and I think they knew that, they were just trying to get the fugg off the mountain asap and didn't want to take the time to pass a knot at every belay station

I guess you would have to pull with one arm giving enought slack (just alittle) to slide the Pruisk loop out of the biner on your harness. It would help if you were using a Positron.

in that particular case it wouldnt have been relevant anyway - the 2nd 150 ft rope wouldnt have been long enough anyways, would it? and simon probably would have ended up going over the edge anyways. i dont remember, was he glissading down between each "belay seat"?

I've never read the book - does it explain the situation better than the movie? I immediately thought there must be some artistic licence going on in that scene.

As I read the book, I think the scene was fairly accurate. Simon was using a seated belay in the snow, which was too granular to hold his weight and his seat was constantly crumbling under his ass and feet. He belayed to the knot, and then just sort of had to wait for something to happen.

Simpson, meanwhile, was dangling in space, just waiting for something to happen.

They both had frozen hands and had no water for a day, making tying a prussik a challenge, at least. I've always figured the challenge of tying a prussik at each knot pass-- combined with the "get the hell out of here" mentality-- led them to the solution of simon undoing the belay at every knot, rather than pass it.

Who knows, though, really.

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Originally Posted by PNWbrit

I've never read the book - does it explain the situation better than the movie? I immediately thought there must be some artistic licence going on in that scene.

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No, that's pretty much how it happened.

As for the prussik, well, it's easy to sit back and say do this or that, but two things come to mind: 1. Prussiks tend to have a disdain for icy ropes and I'm thinking it wouldn't have held anyways. 2. Tying said prussik and fussing over everything you described might just work, if your hands weren't numb already and you weren't being pulled relentlessly out of your makeshift belay seat.

And Xover, they did pass the knot repeatedly, but that requires the weight be taken off the rope, which is exactly the problem they faced since Joe was dangling off a cliff.

cs,

hopefully you know what I meant about "passing the knot"; i.e. the correct way (mule knot rope, prusik to mule knot, release rope and pass knot and again mule knot rope, release mule knot on prusik, release mule knot on rope, continue belaying) that doesn't require taking weight off the rope.

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Originally Posted by climb2ski

I guess you would have to pull with one arm giving enought slack (just alittle) to slide the Pruisk loop out of the biner on your harness. It would help if you were using a Positron.

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That would basically require Simon to do a one arm curl of Joe's full body weight (+ pack + friction between rope and snow + rope stretch); all while sitting in a crumbling snow seat with no anchor. Oh yeah, he's dehydrated and has frostbite.
Whoa... burly.

With an anchor to take the weight, passing a knot through a belay device is not that hard. Without an anchor (and in a "oh-shit-we're-fucked" situation) it becomes much much harder.
(Edit - As Xover points out, it is possible though.)

We can second guess and say, "Well boys, you should have been building snow bollards or using pickets at each anchor point." But snow bollards take a fair amount of time to build, and I'm not too sure they even had pickets.
Woulda/shoulda/coulda....

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Originally Posted by Xover

cs,

hopefully you know what I meant about "passing the knot"; i.e. the correct way (mule knot rope, prusik to mule knot, release rope and pass knot and again mule knot rope, release mule knot on prusik, release mule knot on rope, continue belaying) that doesn't require taking weight off the rope.

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Gotcha Xover. To be honest the only knot passing I've done was while rapping and I had some nice jumars to help me.

Also, that way works if some foresight is involved since the mule knot is tied before the knot in the ropes. Correct? Once the knot sucks into the belay device and there is no way to get the weight off the rope, and you are in danger of being yarded off the mountain, well, I don't see any other solution than the knife.

I think climb2ski has a point, if Simon knew that Joe was hanging in space, he could have tied a prusik from himself to the rope, quickly passed the knot, and continued lowering - before the knot was at the belay plate. But he didn't know Joe was over the edge, the knot came tight to the belay plate and Simon was getting pulled off the mountain.

In Simon's situation, he could have still transfered the weight off the belay device and free himself to pass the knot or haul Joe back up. But it would require an anchor to transfer the weight too. As they alluded to in the movie, a lot of the south faces in the peruvian andes consist of very weak sugar snow. Anchors of any kind are very hard to find in these situations.

I've twice been turned back on routes in the cordillerra blanca because of similar conditions. A lot of "don't fall here or will both go....this anchor is shit" situations. At best it is very hard to climb, at worst it is downright terrifying. I would think that trying to get in a solid anchor to set up a z haul or prusik would be hard enough, nearly impossible with the full weight of your partner slowly pulling you down the mountain.

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Originally Posted by CS

Also, that way works if some foresight is involved since the mule knot is tied before the knot in the ropes. Correct?

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correctomundo - about 5' before

Also, they were out of anchors, even if there was any good snow. I seem to recall that Simon had no pro left at all, and Joe had one ice screw (which eventually got him out of the crevasse).

They were pretty well fucked.

Good discussion, the shoulda/coulda/woulda discussions that come after mountaineering accidents can be very useful in exploring various options for given situations. Not really saying so much that they should have done this or that, but discussion for discussions sake and things to file away in the back of your mind if a similar situation should arise.

Instead of clipping the prusik to the harness with a biner if you girth hitched it with a sling or another prussik, you could have then just cut that piece after you had set the belay on the 2nd rope. That way you wouldn't have to unweight the rope to transfer control off of the prusik to the 2nd rope.

Also, if you tied the prusik low enough on the 1st rope perhaps you could have enough slack to tie a double fishermans or similar knot to eliminate the insecurity of the prusik.

Xover, you are correct in the normal protocol for passing the knot (no cuts necessary!!) but in this case with the knot jammed in the belay device I think that cutting the rope behind the prusik would be the only feasible way to free the belay device. What do you think?

cutting rope as "final" solution? yes
but would hope that in that situation one would have foresight to see when knot was approaching and weight was still on the rope that something else needed to be done - but we don't know the mental state of either in that situation either

Their plan for lowering down was when the knot would come to the belay device, Simon did a series of tugs to say "we're at the knot" and then Joe would stand up on his one good leg to unweight the rope and Simon would pass the knot and just hope that nothing happened in those few seconds. They weren't backing anything up and you can't blame them really as speed was their primary concern. But the knot was coming all the way to the belay device on each lowering.

The knot hitting the belay device is important as you would need something like that to be able to free both hands to be able to tie the knots.