How to Multi-Pitch Rappel (Abseil) on Two Ropes and Considerations if Using Single Ropes or Taglines

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Why am I sharing all of these videos on rappelling and rope systems and the like? (Most of the recent videos over the last month or so have been about getting down off of things rather than climbing up them).

Well, as I mentioned in one of the videos that fall into this vein (on how to switch from rappelling to ascending the rope), it has to do with the obligation I feel to keep my kids safe when we go climbing. Okay, so that is kind of a “no duh” kind of statement. But let me go a little deeper.

My kids are getting better at climbing. And they are getting better at climbing fast. I don’t think that has so much to do with some prodigious talent (although they have more talent than I do for the physical movements of climbing) as it does with them having climbed for six years at only eight years of age. They have quite a bit of experience, actually.

As they have gotten better, what they are capable of has gotten more involved. More climbing, farther away, harder routes, all of that. Now, they are enthralled by multi-pitch climbing, and that ups the anti when it comes to sophistication of systems we need to know and master.

If you think about a single pitch climb on top-rope, the system I set up is the same system they use to both go up and down the rock. That get’s more complicated if the boys lead the climb, because then they need to transition from going up to going down. That requires some fundamental knowledge about anchors and tethering ourselves to them and the like.

But multi-pitch climbing cannot exist without transitions. It’s in the definition, as a pitch is a rope length. We need to recycle the system on the way up and again on the way down. And the transitions will happen in an exposed situation - on the side of a mountain - where mistakes can be fatal.

Also, should something happen and assistance is required, we can’t simply secure the rope and run along solid ground to go find help. Nope, we need to secure the injured person and then either deal with it ourselves or extricate an able-bodied person to get assistance.

Sure, I carry an emergency communication device. (I carry the Garmin InReach Explorer+, actually.) But the likelihood of one of us getting hurt, on a climb, while sitting next to each other is actually pretty small. If one of us is to get hurt, it is far more likely to be while one of us is moving and we are - therefore - separated. So, We’d still need to be able to get to each other in order to render immediate assistance.

My point is, as soon as you get more than a pitch off the ground, you are much more likely to be effectively “on your own.”

So, I think a lot about self-sufficiency as a team. I feel compelled to have the skills to handle eventualities that match the negative consequences of our chosen activities. Those consequences change when the activities get farther away - in this case, vertically - from your average bystander.

At his point, I’m not sure I’m just fathering them, rather I’m “guiding” them, in the “mountain guide” sense of the word, and I need to have a commensurate skill set.

I originally learned these skills because I liked going off to hard-to-reach places and obscure routes where I and my climbing partner(s) were often the only ones around. We needed to have this same level of self-sufficiency. And since we could never know who among us would be the incapacitated one (if it came to that) and who would be left to manage the situation, we felt we needed to all have the capabilities to deal with what may come.

Now, with my boys, I feel the need to be polished in my skills but also pass on this knowledge to them, for the same reasons. Yes, they aren’t going to get all of this down at once, there is a learning curve that is often just dependent upon repetition. But this will prove important to them, not just for the climbs they do with their Dad as kids, but for all of their lifetime of climbing for as long as they choose to pursue that type of adventure.

And we are also constrained by a practical reality: they are still eight. They have limited life experience. They are ever developing more sound reasoning. They certainly aren’t yet equipped to compartmentalize the emotional stress that can happen when things go wrong on the side of a cliff. In short, they still need their Dad.

(Frankly, I try to enjoy that fact while I can; they will be teenagers soon.)