Ok, so I will keep this brief. Caving is a safe activity, when done properly. Get someone experienced to teach you safe rigging, and then get someones elses to run you through rigging from scratch too, so that you know you’ve been taught the right thing. You’re trusting your life to it, so you must do it correctly. Worse, your mates are trusting your rigging with their lives, so you had better damn well make sure it is impeccable.
The difficulty with rigging is the sheer variety of situations that you can encounter. There are so many variables that can change what your rigging should look like, so it is impossible to be comprehensive. Just practice, and keep practicing in the company of people who are experienced with rigging, and gradually you will find that the decisions you have to make get less daunting. Just remember: there is NO shame in pulling the plug and saying ‘No, I’m not comfortable rigging this’.
Having said that, there are some basic principles that you want to aim for in your rigging. You want it to be:
- Safe: any rigging must be placed so that cavers can access and use it in safety
- Redundant: as far as is possible and safe, you want the rigging components to have backups so that one component failing does not result in a catastrophic failure
- Equalised: rigging components should be positioned
- Efficient: the rigging must be constructed in a timely manner, as there may be a party of cold, wet, tired cavers waiting on you.
- Effective: the rigging must be positioned and constructed in a manner to do the appropriate job, and underground, this is a harder task than you might think
- Retrievable: caves are fragile environments, and any kit that comes in with you must come out. Leaving tatty tape and rusty krabs for the next party is unacceptable
There’s a few acronyms that float around in climbey circles (SERENE and ERNEST come to mind for anchors), but most lists all amount to much the same thing. SREEER doesn’t have the same ring to it, but the list above roughly lays out the principles of rigging in the order of importance as I see it.
So, you have a pitch. You have a rope. You want to get down it. What do you do?
- Firstly, you need safe access to the pitch and a backup anchor. Find a tree (alive, and securely rooted in the ground) or bedrock feature (must be solid, have no fracture planes, and hold the rope securely in place) >30cm diameter. Wrap a tape around it three times, and join the two ends of the tape together with a tape knot.
- Pull the two loops that don’t stress the knot away from the tree towards the pitch, and equalise their length. Clip a karabiner across both tapes. Put a Figure Nine knot in the end of the rope, and clip it into the karabiner. Put a Figure Eight stopper knot in the other end of the rope.
- Take the rope to the top of the pitch. Choose your two main anchors. Attach the rope to both with Figure Nine knots.
- Throw/lower/feed the rope down the pitch. The longer and more complex the pitch is, the more likely you’ll want to lower or feed the rope (by feed, I mean stuff the rope in a cave pack, hang the cave pack from your central attachment point, and abseil down feeding the rope out of the bag as you need it).
- Say a prayer, and follow the rope down into the void. Relax: vertical caving accidents are very rare in Australia, so you’ve most likely done everything correctly enough to be ok.
- Have fun and enjoy the cave!
- Once you’re back on the surface, and relaxing in the pub/round a campfire, ask your mates for comments on your rigging. We’re all different shapes and sizes, so rigging that works well for me at 195cm tall mightn’t be so flash for you. Ask yourself what you could have done differently or better, and spend some time researching or reflecting on that. With time, that’s the first step to becoming a better rigger!
Some important things to keep in mind while rigging:
- It’s not just how you tie the knot that’s important, but how you dress it too.
- Keep the angle between knots preferably less than 90*, and certainly less than 125*
- Just because the rope/cord/tape/krab is rated to 20kn, and your weight is producing a force of 1kn, doesn’t mean it’s safe! There are myriad ways to both multiply force and reduce the strength of your rigging, and that safety margin is important
- 3 poor anchors are not equivalent to one good one
- Watch out for rub points above and below you while rigging, and get someone at the top of the pitch to watch too
- Bowlines are evil bastards that shouldn’t be observed in the wild
- The Euro Death Knot isn’t as scary as it sounds, if you can tie and dress it properly
- Garden the pitch head before you rig, not afterwards
- Ropes are much easier to join at re-belays, and knot crossings are much easier to pass at re-belays
- DON’T FORGET THE STOPPER KNOT!