Rebelays

Rebelays are a basic fact of life in alpine style rigging. They’re absolutely vital with thin rope, as they save it from being destroyed, and handy with thick rope, as they can protect formation and allow multiple people to progress down a pitch at the same time. Essentially, each rebelay is the start of a new pitch backed up to the one above (and with multiple anchors if necessary), and you treat it like the top of a pitch (only you’re in mid air). There are obviously two variants, going down and going up.

GOING DOWN-

  1. Abseil down the rope until you are level with anchor karabiner of the rebelay. Lock your descender off and clip your SHORT cowstail into the anchor karabiner.
  2. Clip your LONG cowstail around the rope above your descender. Take the lock off, and continue abseiling down into the loop of the rebelay until your short cowstail takes all of your weight.
  3. Take your descender off the rope, and thread it back onto the rope as high as you can get it underneath the rebelay and lock it off. Make sure you put it on the side of the anchor continuing down the pitch!
  4. Unscrew your short cowstail if a locking karabiner. Get one foot into the loop of the rebelay and stand up in the loop and remove the short cowstail from the anchor karabiner. Sit back down, and the rack will take your weight. If you can’t get a leg into it (for instance, not flexible enough, very short loop), then attach your hand ascender above your descender, unclip the footloop and stand up in that, using it to unweight your short cows tail. Make sure you put the hand ascender between the anchor and your descender, not above the anchor, as then you swing off to the side and it’s pointlessly difficult.
  5. Test your rack to make sure that its working, and then go back to full lock
  6. Remove your long cowstail from the loop of the rebelay, remove the full lock, and continue abseiling.

GOING UP-

  1. Prusik up until you are just below the knot of the rebelay (make sure you don’t jam your hand ascender onto the knot- been there, done that, it’s as awkward as hell). Put your LONG cowstail into the anchor karabiner of the rebelay (different cowstail to going down!)
  2. In one movement, you then stand up in your hand ascender footloop, take hold of the rope going up towards the top of the pitch with your LEFT hand, open your chest ascender with your RIGHT hand, and put the rope into the chest ascender. You MUST move your chest ascender first; moving the hand ascender first can work in some circumstances, but it’s really horrible to do.
  3. Sit back down, moving your weight over to the up rope. You will swing over a little bit. Make sure that the chest ascender isn’t in the very bottom of the loop of the up rope, as if there’s a lot of pressure on the cam due to it being at the bottom of that loop, it can come off the rope.
  4. Unclip your hand ascender from the down rope, and move it over to the up rope. Prusik up both ascenders AT LEAST 3 times so that you know they’re functioning properly.
  5. Unclip your long cowstail from the anchor karabiner, and keep on going up