What is a Semi-Rigid, Extended Quickdraw? How and Why a Rock Climber Might Build and Use One
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Risk mitigation.
One of the interesting things about rock climbing is that there are no “perfect” solutions for mitigating risk. We are almost always selecting a risk to mitigate at the expense of accepting another risk that - for one reason or another - we have decided is less impactful… either because the risk we accept is either less likely or less consequential (remember, risk = probability x consequence).
These semi-rigid, extended quickdraws, or “cheater sticks,” are a perfect example of this risk selection reality. As the video points out, we are introducing two significant risks when we use on of these draws. First, we are likely going to add a lot of rope slack into the system. The rope will run from our waist all the way to a fully extended arm plus the length of the extended draw and then back down to our waist when compared to clipping a bolt that is right at our waist. That could easily be two meters of additional slack in the rope. Should we fall as we are making the clip, that’s a lot more fall distance before the rope comes tight and starts to catch us. Second, the rigidity of the draw introduces a considerably higher likelihood of cross loading a carabiner through the bolt, which could compromise it’s ability to hold a fall.
We are accepting these two new risks because we - let’s presume - feel like we can mitigate those risks by a) only using the cheater stick from a good stance where we are very unlikely to fall, and b) not climbing past a placed cheater stick before replacing it with a regular quickdraw that is unlikely to cross load.
Okay, the addition of those two risks seems like it comes at a pretty high cost. What are the benefits?
Well, in exchange for accepting these new risks and their associated mitigations, we are gaining the ability to try a particular section of a climb, in essence, on top rope. So, we would only want to accept the above new risks when we see the current risk of a standard lead fall to be too problematic. I think the classic example is when you can’t reach the protection bolt of a crux move. This happens a lot for my kids because they are (currently) just barely above four feet tall. So, if we are, say, moving from a slab or ridge to a vertical or overhanging crux with a bolt above the crux move that we can’t quite reach, we are a) likely to fall (if the crux is at or near our limit), and b) may have a high consequence of a fall because we are going to hit that ledge or slab below us. And that’s just one example.
So, it comes down to the risks we choose. If you watch the video, you’ll learn, in a bit more depth, some of the risks we just talked about and find a few options that are commercially available. But you’ll also learn about how to make this potentially handy little tool. Of course, to do so, you’ll need the right materials. So, here are the options to purchase as well as the equipment you may want should you build your own.
The commercially available semi-rigid extended quickdraws:
The collapsible stick clip, Trango Beta Stick
The products we used to make our own draw: