I made this thread on the ropework board, but there's never much activity on there. Plus I'm curious how many people currently on this forum do SRT or any form of vertical access. I'm sure a thread has been made at some point in the past, but the community has probably shifted since then anyway.

For me personally, I've only ever used the frog system to ascend and it suits my needs just fine. Looks into trying tiblocks and prusiks for emergency ascending devices in canyoneering though. Would be a lot easier than hiking around with my handled ascender.

As far as rappelling goes, for shorter distances I love the new CRITR2 I just purchased from canyonwerks. My microrack is my favorite for longer rappels though.

How about you guys? Who does vertical access and what kind of gear do you use?

I usually use my grappling hook.

If you really like to geek out on rope gear, check out this website:
http://storrick.cn...VerticalHome.shtml

I can spend hours on that site...

But I guess if I had to pick a "favorite" vertical access device... I very much love my 16.5" CMI rappel rack:
http://www.cmi-gea...oducts/srack2bnfpa


Also, I'm just going to take this opportunity to promote my old ropework "private board" (in quotes because it's not actually private in any way), which, despite being somewhat dormant, has tons of great information archived, and maybe one day we can revive it! It's here:
http://www.uer.ca/...id=1&catid=1000660

Good lord that site looks terrible. I will have to check out their gear though. Typically I got with http://onrope1.com/index.php#ad-image-0 inner mountain outfitters has some cool stuff too.

Your rack is similar to the one I was trained on. Mine is a bit smaller though only around 8" with fewer bars. Personally though, I prefer the dual hyperbars. Makes tying off and therefore changeovers pretty easy.

http://onrope1.com...t&id=972&parent=14

I've been doing chin ups a lot to get better at climbing. Does that count?

Paid off yesterday when i ended up climbing onto the roof of a mausoleum building. I'd had a few drinks, it was like 2am. Don't question it.

Tiblocs are awful for ascending once you give them a shot. First, you need to match them with an oval carabiner as they are very finicky between specific designs (it is just trial and error to me). They also wont work almost at all with most "D" shaped 'biners. There is a reason they are marketed an "emergency" ascendance devices and big wallers haven't adopted them to replace traditional juggers- they suck to use. That said, they will get you up a rope and I still carry one in addition to some cord because they are so light weight and space saving for mechanical advantage hauls. For less than $20 USD it is probably one of the least expensive pieces of hardware you can get just to try it out. Heck, you may actually find a more efficient way of using it.

If I was ascending a rope, though, I would prefer a klemheist (or prusik). Cord is more versatile in my opinion for ultra light weight movement anyhow and doesn't necessarily require a carabiner to function (as does a tibloc).

As for favorite vertical movement device, I still absolutely adore the GriGri2. Call me under developed if you must, but I find so many uses for the device. It certainly has its disadvantages, but for most of my ropework it fits the bill to the "t".

Cant beat the rack though for long, variable, or technical rappels.
Rope twist? fuhgettaboutit!
Ability to alter device friction? Heck yeah!
Rope size limitations? Anything from fishing line to anchor chain!
Weight? ...uh.... we'll get back to you on that once we've hiked this thing in, haha.

As much as I love my rack, I have only used it once outside of practice or teaching and that was on one LOOOOONG rappel.

Back to the topic at hand, my second favorite device is my BD ATC Guide. Lightweight and versatile, it is simple and can accommodate a decent array or rope diameter (with varying success). Can do double or single rope rappel with ease and is probably the most intuitive.

Anyways, that is my rap. Everyone has their favorite toys. Find what works for you. Not everyone "ropes" the same way so don't take it from anyone if it doesn't make sense. In all honesty, there isn't a whole lot you cant do with some rope, carabiners, and cordage. Everything after that is just awesome colored icing on the cake.

Generally I use a figure 8 for rappelling, and for ascending, most of the time just climb the building itself, or hand climb rope, but I've used a prusik a couple times.

^ A lot of the canyoneerers I've met rappel on figure 8s. There terrible for so many reasons. They twist up the rope like crazy, you can't add friction, and you have to take them off your harness to attach the rope ( drop it down whatever you're about to rappel down and your fucked. If it's a canyon, you're REALLY fucked).

@wranglerroadhead, Therrin gave me one of his tiblocs. I like the idea of just having to carry that or a prusik for canyoneering because when it comes to that, you should never need to ascend. Only in an emergency situation would it be necessary. Though we'll see, if I try it and it's too much trouble, it might be worth the weight to just carry my handled ascender.

I may have to disagree with you about the cord being more versatile though. It's only really useful if you know beforehand how thick the rope you're going to be ascending is. If you try to do it on someone else's rope and the ratio isn't right to what you tied your prusik out of, you're not going anywhere lol. I don't own my own rope yet, so that's a concern to me.

I just want to try as many different things as I can, I'm becoming a bit of a gear junkie :p I just learned recently how to rappel on a carabiner (which I hear is a terrible experience) and I want to try that too just for the fun of it.

As far as the rack's weight goes, I have a friend who has a titanium microrack. They are ridiculously expensive but about 1/3 the thickness/weight or my normal one. It's the most amazing think I've ever seen haha.

Posted by DawnPatrol @wranglerroadhead, Therrin gave me one of his tiblocs. I like the idea of just having to carry that or a prusik for canyoneering because when it comes to that, you should never need to ascend. Only in an emergency situation would it be necessary. Though we'll see, if I try it and it's too much trouble, it might be worth the weight to just carry my handled ascender.

Why don't you ascend in canyoneering? Wouldn't that be your only way to get back out? (I know basically nothing about canyoneering beyond the parts that it has in common with caving)

The whole idea of canyoneering is that you find a canyon, hike to the top, find the stream, and then follow it back to the bottom rappelling down the waterfalls. You make sure you have twice as much rope as you need for the longest rappel, and tie your anchors in a way where you can pull down the rope after you. After you drop the first rappel and pull down the rope, you can't go back up, you just have to keep following the stream down.

You never actually need to ascend unless something goes wrong. A lot of people I've canyoneered with, particularly the newer ones, just wear rock climnbing harnesses and don't even have a croll or any kind of chest harness.

Petzl stop.

Makes the most sense to me, especially in a mine exploring environment. Imagine you knock something loose above your head, it hits you and you are either knocked out or causes you to let go of the rope for a split second, that could mean death or serious injury unless you have an autolock. I'm very safety conscious when it comes to SRT!

But this is just my view on it all, there are many ways to go about it and this is just mine.

For ups I just use a croll and a petzl simple.

I prefer the elevator ;)