Spacing, Coils, and Brake Knots to Determine Glacier Travel Climbing Rope Length

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Back on my “you can’t do it one way and expect it to work all the time” kick.

You’re probably tired of hearing me talk about this in this video series on glacier travel and reading about it in the accompanying blogs. But, like I said elsewhere, that idea is really the inspiration behind the entire series: being taught “the one way” to do things is self-limiting in a way that it need not be.

So, this particular video on the decision-making process to determine how long of rope coils to carry, how much space to put between climbing partners, and whether or not to use brake knots is really the pivot of this series. We’ve been leading up to this point of, in essence, building the system we are going to use as the primary risk mitigation on our glacial climb. And the rope we tie into together is that primary system.

Coming to a head, then, are all of the risk factors we’ve analyzed up to this point: our crevasse sizes are constant; we need to consider our spacing between climbers based on the size of those crevasses as well as the number of teammates we have on the rope. As teammates, we have to agree on a crevasse rescue system, and that system will determine how much (if any) spare coil length to carry; that coil length is also impacted by the number of climbers on the rope, too; then there are brake knots to consider, because tying them has tradeoffs and uses up rope length. Factoring all of this, together, should equate to the rope length we need for the team.

But then we also have decisions to make about how each teammate connects to the rope. This will also have tradeoffs and need to work seamlessly with our crevasse rescue procedure.

It’s, as they say, “four dimensional chess.” Each determination we make impacts the other determinations we need to address. This, in the end, is a big reason why glacier travel is so complicated. It isn’t the hardest climbing, but the ripple effects of each and every decision makes it complex.

Take a look at the video. Hopefully it provides some insight into this tangled web and helps you and your team think through its own decisions as you prepare for your next glaciated climb.