This post follows up on some initial testing done on 5:1 mechanical advantage systems used to tension tyrolean crossings done a few months ago. I suggest anyone who has not read that report catch up with it here before reading …
Tyroleans have been a bit of hot topic with me recently. I’ve developed some sites to use in my woodland near Whaley Bridge and been involved in some testing with BCA Trainer Assessors for the LCMLA scheme. We’ve measured the … Continue reading →
Caving ladders are an integral part of the LCMLA Level 2 award. Being practiced with a ladder not only saves time but lots of faff. It can be hard to pack loosely coiled ladders into tackle bags, meaning they get … Continue reading →
I had an email about a month ago from Shaun at Hitch n Hike. He’d been sent a 70m sample rope from Petzl to evaluate and once it came out of the box and he saw the colour, he knew … Continue reading →
The North Wales panel of the Local Cave & Mine Leader Award scheme has just run a block of courses based out of Oaklands OEC near Llanwrst. I am a member of the N Wales panel and I will be working alongside other … Continue reading →
Recently I headed out to our private woodland site to have a play with my new Rock Exotica Enforcer. We have recently developed a tyrolean crossing here along with calculations of anticipated loads and safety factors. Using the Enforcer on this tyrolean … Continue reading →
This week I thought I’d embark on a little back garden test of some brand new SPIT self driving anchors and some SPIT Grip 10mm sleeve anchors. Both take a normal M8 bolt and hanger and can be found in caves … Continue reading →
It is quite common that where you need to anchor ropes to things, there are no natural things there to anchor to (like boulders). Climbers and cavers get round this by installing bolts and/or ground anchors. A ground anchor is … Continue reading →
After the last blog post where I tried to compare washing a caving rope in a washing machine to jet washing I thought I’d try to see how much damage I could do to a rope with a jet washer. … Continue reading →
I thought I’d ponder a little bit about the ‘myth’ of jet washers and caving ropes. I say myth because it appears that there is no real test data out there in the caving community. Recent caving forum discussions about … Continue reading →
