A No-Gear Rappel Anchor: How and Why to Use an Equivocation Hitch

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How many tools in your tool belt?

Well, maybe that’s a bad analogy, because I don’t know many climbers who are interested in carrying more stuff.

Really, it’s something like ‘how many things can you do with the tools you have?’

Gear has weight. Knowledge does not. So, if I can manage eventualities by using the tools I have in creative ways, I can take less and successfully deal with more. I spend a reasonable amount of time (maybe an unreasonable amount, if you ask my friends and family) thinking about the “tricks of the trade” that are truly useful and those that are simply novelties.

On the novelty side, I think of things like fancy knot tying methods. That, for instance, was the genesis of the short video we did where we joked about the impracticality of the “flying bowline” knot, just as one example of many.

Then there are things like “ghosting” techniques for rappelling, leaving no gear behind. While I find some of the methods of “ghost rappelling” to be more or less secure and more or less fiddly, the concept is an intriguing and useful one: I can theoretically perform as many rappels as I want if I don’t burn through gear every time I perform one of those rappels.

Well, at least that’s how I look at it.

Ghost rappels actually were born in canyoneering, which is all about moving down instead of up, and so many rappels is in the nature of the activity. Also, it is part of that discipline’s ethic to not leave any material behind to both sully the landscape and diminish the experience of the next party to trod on your same terrain.

Climbing and mountaineering share similar ethics, but to a lesser extent, if I am honest (different discussion for a different day). But there is a very practical reason to not burn gear on many rappels down the sheer face of some gigantic mountain: if I need gear at each rappel, when I run out, I can’t rappel anymore; if I can’t rappel anymore, in the hash conditions of an alpine environment, a night out, a rescue, injury, or death are all on the table.

On icy or snowy pitches, the “no-gear” rappel is actually a little easier. On good ice, you can run the rope through a v-thread or a-thread anchor (bored holes in the ice that connect and therefore can have a rope or sling run through it). On snow, you can construct a bollard.

On dry ground, things get more complicated, as you have to consider finding a suitable gear-free anchor and also concern yourself with the higher likelihood of the rope getting stuck when you pull it (dry ground: rocks, sticks, twigs, high friction; icy ground: none of that).

So, having another skill and technique I can use with one of the few, but already existing, tools on my “tool belt” - in this case the climbing rope - seems to fall in the category of useful. Take a look at the video, and make a determination for yourself!