Two Methods of Dividing the Rope for Glacier Travel

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It’s easy to get caught up in thinking that the two methods of dividing the rope that I show in the video can be done automatically and without critical thought. If you have x number of people, you just use the corresponding methodology. But glacier travel is more complicated than that.

The video demonstrates two methods for dividing the rope. One automatically spaces out the climbers so that they are all equidistant from each other. But, as I mention, you could potentially take in more coils in case you need them for a crevasse rescue. But even then, the length of your rope will dictate the spacing, for the most part: a shorter rope will mean shorter spacing, and vice versa. The other method uses a rule of thumb to create spacing, again, based on the number of climbers, but then the coils are made up of whatever rope is “left over",” and that may not leave enough rope for certain kinds of crevasse rescue systems.

But what if we didn’t think about glacier based on the number of climbers, but rather based our thinking on the hazards? Are the crevasses huge, like in the Alaska range? Then we may need more space between the climbers as we send our teammates one-at-a-time over snow bridges and the like. Is our route technical with lots of winding twists and turns or occasions sections over rock? Well, then we might want to keep the distance between climbers shorter so that we can make tighter turns and even potentially keep the rope off the ground to avoid knocking rocks loose and the like. What about communication? Will it be easy, with lots of straight lines of sight and little wind? Will it be harder based on a windy weather forecast or because we are starting in the dark? Are we newer to climbing together and so will be needing to be more frequent and explicit in our communication?

Once we identify the risks, we can start thinking about how we want to build a web of systems to mitigate those risks we view as the most significant (remember, risk is made up of both probability and consequence). We might want to have lots of rope coil available so that we can do crevasse rescues on a second line rather than the weighted strand of rope. That might dictate either how much we space the climbers (so that we have enough coil length available), or maybe it means we take a longer rope that we otherwise would so that we can have wide spacing and big coils? Maybe that’s too much rope. Maybe the glacier travel on our route is short and then soon we are on a ridge run, where a shorter rope makes more sense. Then maybe we want to have a default crevasse rescue system that doesn’t require as much rope so that we aren’t carrying extra rope for the most difficult part of our route (say it’s the ridge, in this case).

My point is, these two methods of dividing the rope can do just that: divide the rope. What they can’t do is think for you and assess risk. If you decide you need more space between climbers due to gaping crevasses, then pull more wingspans through before tying knots (if you are using the wingspan method). If you are worried about communication and so want your climbers closer together, then don’t hold the ends of the rope if using the accordion method; leave extra long tails at the ends, and that will shorten the distance between climbers.

There are very fewer “always do” or “never do” rules in climbing than we might think, and even something as simple as dividing the rope amongst teammates is no exception.