Eli5 When you’re rock climbing and having to use safety gear and tie yourself off when climbing, how do you get all your equipment back when you’re done climbing. Do you just get your rope back and have to leave all your anchors there?
In: Other
Hi,
When you’re being brought back down by your partner, you stop at every anchor to recuperate the carabiners you had put. Since at the top of the route you will have to put the rope through a special anchor that is always staying there (a heavy metal ring on a thick chain here in France, for instance), you are safe to go down (obviously).
Once down, you will have get back all your carabiners (that you attach on your harness on the way down) and you’ll then be able to just take the rope back with you, by pulling it, thus not leaving anything of yours on the route 🙂
This requires obviously to reach the top of the route.
If you don’t, then the last carabiner you put on the wall will have to stay there, so as to enable you to be brought back down. But you’ll still be able to get back the other ones.
What you are describing is called Traditional Climbing (usually shortened to ‘trad’), where safety gear that anchors into the rock (‘protection’) is placed as you climb.
How you recover your protection depends on the route as it can go a couple ways, mainly depending if this is a multi-pitch climb and whether you can just walk back down via some other route from the top of the climb.
1. If its a multi pitch (you climb multiple lengths of your rope up), what happens is the lead climber goes up and is placing protection the whole way. At some point they stop, set up an anchor and take over belaying for their partner who ‘follows’ them up and is removing the gear as they climb. They might overtake the original lead and keep climbing or switch positions at the anchor.
2. Its a single pitch and you can just walk down from the top. Similar to multi-pitch, the leader goes up placing safety, they top out, setup anchor and start belaying, the follower follows and cleans the route as they go up.
3. Its a single pitch but you cant just walk off from the top. This one is more complicated (mainly in execution) and requires some gear to be left behind as an anchor. If you are climbing in well-known areas, typically there is some dedicated permanent anchor at the top for this purpose. What happens is you set up the anchor and the belayer lowers you back down, while you clean up after yourself. If you have to bail halfway, then you are going to be leaving whatever protection you need to build an anchor behind as crag booty for some lucky climber to find.
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