saveall.org

The sun is setting on an already long and imperfect day in the alpine when you accidentally drop the plaquette device you were planning to begin the next dozen rappels with. What now? How do you get down? Walking off is inadvisable due to the exposed terrain combined with nasty weather moving in from the northwest, so you’ll need to improvise something quick from the kit that exists between you and your climbing partner.

As climbers, the most representative and common item we carry aside from a rope is the carabiner. On an ordinary climb there is often more than 25 ‘biners between two partners – sometimes far more. A popular way to rappel in the ‘60s was to use the carabiner brake, and it’s still expected that AMGA Alpine Guides know this technique. Below is a quick tutorial I put together to demonstrate the steps to setup this Cadillac smooth rappel technique. Marc Chauvin demonstrated this technique during a 2-day climbing self-rescue course I participated in recently and the AMC includes it as a part of their rock program each spring.

Figure 1

Step 1. Start with a locking carabiner clipped (and locked) to your harness. Alternatively, in the unlikely circumstance that you don’t have a locker, you can use two opposite and opposed non-locking carabiners. Think of what needs to happen in the more common ATC/Reverso rappel setup. Essentially, you need to secure the breaking device and rope to your harness. This first step gives you that security so it needs to be foolproof.

Figure 2

Step 2. Take any regular non-locking carbiner, whether it’s oval-shaped, d-shaped, wire gate or bent gate and clip it to the locker as illustrated in Figure 2. Try to use similar carabiners if you can, if for no other reason than the aesthetic.

Figure 3

Step 3. In this step you’ll take another non-locking carabiner and perform the same basic action as in step 2 with the exception that this carabiner gate needs to be opposite and opposed to the first gate as illustrated in Figure 3. The gates should open in a ‘X’ pattern making it more difficult for the rope to unclip. This is the standard way climbers substitute for a locking carabiner when one is unavailable.

Figure 4

Step 4. Picture again your ATC or Reverso. This time focus on the slots that accept a bight of rope and keep a bend in that same section. In the previous step we used two carabiners to create that same slot. The brake is now secured to our harness and has a slot that performs the same function as the slot on a modern plaquette. In this step you simply take a bight (or two) of rope and feed it through the carabiners. Obviously it’s different for single and double rope rappels. Do we really need to go there?

Figure 5

Step 5. Now it’s time to create the friction that facilitates a controlled descent. Take two non-locking carabiners and clip the strands as illustrated in the Figure 5. The spines of these carabiners should be on the side that the rope runs over. The intent is to create friction. In an ATC/Reverso setup we normally use one locking carabiner to capture the rope we’ve fed through the device slots and also secure them to the belay loop on our harness. These two carabiners add the friction by capturing the rope and also work with the previously added carabiners to secure the rope to our harness.

Figure 6

Step 6. Slide the two carabiners we added in step 5 down into the position illustrated in Figure 6. Both strands should run smoothly over the spines of these carabiners and provide sufficient friction for a single person rappel.

Figure 7

Step 7. Optional – If you find yourself in a situation where you need to perform a tandem rappel or just simply require more friction you can add more surface area for the rope to run against by adding a locking carabiner as illustrated in Figure 7.