How to rescue a vertical rope

How to rescue a vertical rope.

Before attempting to rescue your first vertical rope it is advisable to attend a vertical rope rescue training course. This I did mid-April. I’m now well on my way to being a competent rescuer of vertical ropes, after that maybe I’ll see about rescuing cavers who might need it!

          This course was run by CaveSAR under the LandSAR umbrella. The course itself was free of charge, accommodation was provided (to an extent anyway) and all meals were fully catered and delicious and the catering team did all the dishes! Amazing bunch.

          The course itself covered everything from; how ropes are constructed, how to tie a knot, bend or hitch and which way round to use a carabiner; to how to move things with rope, protect things with rope and how to get rope to stay in the place you want it to stay; to how many kN it takes to break a rope, carabiner or prusik, how to construct an underground flying fox and subtleties of anchor vector forces versus directional vector forces. Phew, if my head wasn’t spinning on Day One it certainly was by Day Three. I’ve been trying to remember the last time I had such an out-sized input of information – possibly 20 yrs!

          Day One was set down to start at 8am, which meant in practice it was Day Two, because getting to the NSG hut takes a bit of doing from Westport and almost all the course participants stayed overnight in the NSG hut prior to the course starting. In a never-before-witnessed phenomenon 15 cavers were ready for kick-off at 8:05am, albeit that most still had a coffee in hand and slice of toast between the pearly whites. Apart from a bit of a dribbly introduction that dragged on somewhat (during which I fervently tried to remember more than just an Italian hitch and a figure-8 and practice them under the table on a cordelette) we finally got into matters of substance and everybody got to practice Italian hitches and figure-8 knots on lengths of cordelette. So far so good.

          After a hearty if slightly bohemian-themed lunch we tucked into a rich and heavy dessert of equipment and technical terminology; pre-cinched prusiks complete with docking rings, Prusik Minding Pulley’s and Bears Paws; pre-tensioned, multipoint, load sharing Wrap3Pull2 with floating foci etc. Great fun even if very little of it was ever liable to adhere to the grey matter. … I gather one of the game-changers (as we seemed to like calling them) was the recent innovation of the 14kN 7mm prusik that has enabled and/or is driving the move to the use of lighter rope and rigging. Anyway, by end of Day One we had rope strewn about like over-sized spaghetti from an exploded kitchen and every kit bag had been completely denuded of gear. Some of us had managed to fabricate rigging systems that could have easily hoiked the NSG hut off it’s foundations if we had so much as tugged on the high ratio MA twitching in our fingers. That or at least we would have broken one of the flimsy slats tacked to the hut’s handrail that we had used as a convenient anchor point.

          I’m sure I hardly slept a wink that night, being busy as I was tying knots and trying to remember what serpentine trail a rope should weave on its merry way through a 5:1CD. But I must have at least dozed off as my neighbour greeted me with a warm welcome the following morning and a cheery promise to punch me on the nose should I kept them awake with my snoring again.

         

A-rescueing we go

Attention to detail

 If Day One had been information over-load, complete and total, then I’ve already run out of adjectives for describing the course content of Day Two. Directionals, minimum breaking strengths, comms, Co-ordinated Incident Management System, risk analysis all got an airing, wafting gently in one ear and exiting unobstructed via a second. Just when I thought we’d overdone it by sufficiently way too much (not that I was counting by now), and right at the end of the day (on the downhill side of Beer O’clock) we broached the subject of tracking lines, replete with a full-blown working example. So realistic was the example that the rigging attracted the attention of the hut Warden, who requested a slight modification to one anchor least we unwittingly deconstruct the edge of the verandah. Powerful things them anchor vector forces; as we should have well known by now.

          

Gear scramble

This is the way we rig an anchor, rig an anchor

 

How many mistakes can you spot?

 

Watching and learning

 

Last 5 minute 40

Day Three dawned and my nose remained mercifully un-bloodied – there are certain people you just don’t want to mess with. After breakfast the day commenced with, and I quote, a “Short session to catch up or review anything not quite understood.” - emphasis unnecessarily added. Whether you choose to believe that the session wasn’t short or that not everybody fessed up ‘quite understanding’ everything is entirely over to you. I would proffer the opinion that both things were equally true and historically accurate. Next up we were to put it all into practice.

          Thus it was with an air of unbridled excitement we togged up and formed a ‘safety-net convoy’ which is to say we waited ’til the last person/vehicle was ready before we set off on the 2 minute drive to the rescue-site, least we fall victim to that most lame (but common) embarrassment of simply not making it to the rescue coz we got lost on the way there. I somehow felt we were like so many strangely-dressed aliens descending on a peculiar yet familiar planet. We gushed forth from our overloaded spaceships and milled about in the carpark keeping our distance from the native inhabitants (aka day-trampers) who were already there. When one of those bi-pedal, backpack-encrusted, life-forms ventured bravely to bridge the species-gap with a question on our intentions, I felt inclined to answer with hand signals lest they not comprehend our inner-worldly ceremonies and tannin-stained rites.

“Rescue-cave-man. Him-badly-ouch-ouch.”

I flailed my arms ineffectually, reddened about the cheeks and stammered at the awkward conveyance of concepts. They smiled and backed away leisurely, casting an eye to their nearest alpha-male. I stoically resisted that most rudimentary of instincts to step toward them as they retreated, with the exuberant reassurance

‘But it’s so much fun!’.

A simple wave was all that was required to conclude the symposium and maintain peaceful relations between races. This was of course done in the customary manner of cavers everywhere, with an imperceptible flicker of the eyebrow and a quick hitch on the sagging harness.

          Once at the rescue site (Summit Cave) our instructors pretty much let us loose. As soon as we had our Team Leaders, tasks were then assigned, strategic directions were given, timelines laid out to the nearest nanosecond and generous amounts of waiting about were all realised simultaneously. Arms were waved about at full stretch as if this were an interpretative dance festival, indicating preferred lines, site hazards and where the snacks had been stowed. We tied outlandish knots, linked more threads together than your average crocheted tea-cosy and generally concocted ‘A World-First’ solution for even the most mundane of problems. Gear was eaten up for fear that it might vapourise if left unattended.  Seldom has such loving attention been lavished on so few knots and anchors, slings were caressed, rope laid down into snowflake patterns and carabiners colour co-ordinated and arranged in descending order of size. Slowly, if not entirely surely, recognisable patterns emerged in the shadowy void.

‘Ahh, I see you’ve used thirteen figure-8 knots in your anchor there’, and

‘I don’t think your 27:1CD will quite be grunty enough’,

were among the overheard observations. We felt bullet-proof, confident in our newfound skills.

          After a few, small and largely insignificant modifications to our rigging super-structure by the instructors, we located a victim/patient and proceeded to entomb them and then heave them off the pitch edge aiming them toward the frigid waters below. I got the job of tag-line attendant, aka ‘The you’d-better-not-let-me-get-wet person’ according the patient. This we succeeded in doing on the way down albeit that our tag-line rigging was somewhat underpowered. To mitigate this on the raise manoeuvre I stood over the edge of the pool at the base of the waterfall to act as a human roller. It might sound vaguely heroic to place oneself bodily between the patient and the surging liquid nitrogen but to my mind it was merely an expedient means of avoiding a punch on the nose from the patient should I have been the one responsible for dunking them a little on the way up. This first part completed, the haul team then set about jamming the stretcher under a protruding rock half-way up the waterfall and quietly allowing the polar water to percolate in at the patient’s neck, down their back and to gradually fill their gumboots. Not that the patient was quiet about it but being constrained as they were, other options of redressing the situation (I seem to recall they used words like ‘torture’, ‘inhumane’ and ‘abuse’) were rudely limited. Needless to say we rescued them from being rescued – eventually.

Next we set up a tracking line (think flying fox). This included the by-now usual breath-taking array of knots and lots (following the old adage that if you can’t tie knots, tie lots) and rigging ingenuity that only freshly indoctrinated apprentices such as ourselves could muster. Another (unfrozen) victim/patient was procured and off we went. As the tracking line ran through a dry section of the cave the best we could manage here was simply to drop the stretcher from about waist height. Understanding that the tracking line only helps to support the load and doesn’t necessary take its full weight was valuable in hindsight.

          I think the most significant take-away I got from the course was that rescuing isn't overtly romantic. It is alternately hard work and tediously boring, dirty and frustrating. The upshot of which leads me to conclude, a) cave as hard as you like but at all times safely, and b) avail yourself of whatever training/practice/experience you can so that in the event of a rescue things run as smoothly and quickly as possible, for both your sake and that of the patient.