Abseiling (descending)

Abseiling is going down a rope. It’s simple- you lower yourself off the edge and use friction to control your descent. In the good old days, people wrapped the rope around themselves to do this, but now cavers use devices to actually attach themselves to the rope. These devices are called descenders, and NUCC’s descender of choice is the Rack, although we do also use Bobbins and Stops, both of which are also very popular amongst cavers. What we don’t use are Figure Eight style descenders or ATCs, as both of these are required to be removed from your harness as you get on rope, raising the spectre of dropped descenders.

We have a standard abseiling drill that everyone in the club uses:

  1. Attach your long cowstail into the rigging krab or safety point
  2. Approach the pitch head and shout “ON ROPE” down to the person belaying you (they will shout back “ON BELAY”)
  3. Thread your descender onto the rope as high up as you can comfortably get it. With Racks, the rope goes from the top (up rope) to the bottom (down rope)
  4. Put your descender onto half-lock and then full lock; this will vary based on descender, but importantly with our Racks don’t let go of half-lock
  5. Climb out over the pitch and get comfortable (relax!)
  6. Test descender by going back to half-lock, and then easing off half lock to allow some rope to run through your descender. You only need to let 3-5cm through though
  7. Return to full lock
  8. Remove long cowstail
  9. Shout “ABSEILING” down to your belayer (they will shout back “ABSEIL WHEN READY”)
  10. Remove full-lock, and then move from half-lock into the abseiling position. With our Racks, you want to swiftly move your dominant hand holding the rope from manipulating the half-lock to controlling your abseil. The way to do this is move your thumb to your bum, and from there you can control the speed of your abseil. Loosen your grip and you go very fast, tighten it and you stop. DO NOT let go of the rope, or you can go into free-fall
  11. Enjoy the view as you abseil down the rope
  12. Once you’re at the bottom and have removed your descender from the rope, shout up “OFF ROPE”

And that’s abseiling with NUCC in a list. It seems a lot, but there will be an experienced caver there showing you what to do in the gym when you first abseil. After time it becomes muscle memory, and climbing over the edge second nature. Sometimes you will encounter circumstances where it is better to vary (or skip) parts of this, but that’s something for when you’re more experienced.