Watership Down

A lot of climbers will tell you that rappelling is there least favorite part of climbing. Personally, I prefer the British term "Abseiling" because it conjures up images of doing endless crunches on a sailboat. But I digress. The rationale for not enjoying rapelling is that it is supposedly one of the more dangerous parts of climbing, and you only do it because it is the only way off the rock.

Personally, I think it is awesome. Once you get used to it you find that you can control your speed pretty effortlessly. Generally, you use a device that you pass the rope through. You then vary the angle that the rope passes through the device. This changing of the angle changes the amount of friction. You learn quickly that you can easily stop yourself with one hand. When rappelling off most cliffs, particularly if they are less than vertical, you sort of walk straight down the rock. It is more exciting if you can rappell of something overhanging where you are not actually touching anything and just rappelling into space.

****Another Aside****

In addition to rappelling, another way to come down something steep is for someone to belay you. If you are top roping, the most knowlegeable person, who is almost always K.W., sets up an anchor at the top of the climb. You climb from the bottom and then when you reach the anchor at the top, the person belaying you lets you down gradually. The belayer is responsible for controlling the speed. After climbing with the same person for awhile, you get used to what is a comfortable speed for belaying... or at least you think you do.

The first time a group of us went ice-climbing was in New Hampshire. Generally, you try to find waterfalls that have frozen and you climb up them using crampons and ice axes. It is way different than rock climbing because of a number of factors. 1. It is very cold, for obvious reasons. 2. If you belay from the bottom, you are constantly dodging chuncks of ice that the climber knocks out with his axe or crampons. Otherwise, the belaying is largely the same. I was belaying K.W. and when he finished I lowered him down. I used the same pace that I would use if he was rock climbing. Unbeknownst to me, this is way too fast when you have sharp pointy things on your feet and sharp pointy things in both hands. K.W. didn't say anything at the time. He chose to show me. Once I did the climb, he belayed me down at about the same pace. It was terrifying, but fun. It was just fast enough that I was comfortably out of control with my crampons dancing off the ice and my axes flying about. We both slowed down our belay pace after that.

****Aside Over****

Back to rappelling. With the proper device, it is loads of fun, and really quite safe. It puts some stress on the ropes, but provided that your anchor is good it should go well. I only tried rappelling without a device once. This I would not recommend. My Dad and I decided to do some climbing in the local area near where we lived called Pound Ridge. We had the rope and the harnesses, but no belay device (almost all belay devices can double as a rappell device). I had no formal instruction in climbing at this point, and my Dad had just a little. He did have a Ph.D. in material science and a good understanding of physics though. So we did body belaying and body rappelling. The idea is that you wrap the rope around your body in such a way as to create the necessary friction to slow you down. For belaying it is not too bad, particularly if the climber doesn't fall. However, for rappelling it is basically an exercise in trying to minimize pain. On one hand, you want to go fast, because it hurts. The problem is that the faster you go, the more friction you generate. That friction is dissipated in the form of rope burns all over your body. I have no inclination to try body rappelling again.

There were a few of us at camp who enjoyed a good rappell, and there was a great place to do it. One of the old surviving strucures at camp was a derelict water tower. I don't think it had been in use for several decades, and it was strictly off limits. We interpreted that to mean it was off limits during daylight hours. At least a few times a summer, we would get a group together to do some night rappells. You climbed up this old metal ladder, and then squeezed through a small hole to get to a platform that ran the circumference of the tower. There were large metal bands that went around the sphere that was used for holding water. I don't know what the purpose of these bands were, perhaps to lend strength to the structure when it was filled with water. They were almost certainly past their useful life. We dutifully used them as anchors. I figured that since K.W. had unofficially signed off on this, it had to be somewhat safe. Whether it was or not, I have no idea. Once you tied in, you would climb over the platform and rappell into empty space. Because the platform jutted out from the tower, you did not hit the ladder that you had climbed up. You just disappeared into the murky night. There would be headlamps at the top and bottom, but in the middle it was just you and the night. Really, quite amazing.
 
No one was ever injured. We even took some precautions because we often had new people with us. Perhaps this wasn't the best place for instruction, but we loved sharing our joy of rappelling. (In fact, the load and I almost got in a bit of trouble with the campus police when we set up a rappelling demonstration at his sister's college and rappelled out of a dorm room window!) Additionally, the load and I went to the same university (at different times) and he clued me in on some good rappell spots, also highly illegal. One involved a catwalk in our sports stadium. The other was a stair well in one of the 10 story lecture halls. The stair well went up in a big square, so there was empty space in the middle. While fun, it wasn't the same, because you didn't have the core group of people. Plus, getting caught doing this would likely land you in some real trouble.

We would station a person at the bottom of the tower who could give something called a fireman's belay. The way it worked was that if the person at the base held the rope, the person rappelling would be unable to move. So even if someone completely freaked out and let go of the rope completely, they would simply hang in space. It was a double edged sword though. You see, if a person is having a great time rappelling down, you can cause a nice awkward jerk and stop the person dead in their tracks, simply by grabbing the rope. Additionally, they are powerless to do anything about it, as long as you hold that rope at the base, they aren't going anywhere. It is quite easy to lower someone inch by inch by inch. We reserved that kind of tom foolery only for certain individuals.

Quack!

Those rappelling adventures stand out in my mind, because it was good old fashioned fun. Regardless of how many times you have done it, it is still quite an adventure. I hope that tradition is still alive and well up at camp.