First, We know nothing of climbing. When you climb a face (Of any Kind) and place protection in cracks/Ice Etc. Do you retrieve the protection devices as you go up or are they expendable. If you retrieve them, could you describe the method(s). Thanks from curious engineers at Kennedy Space Center.

-- Dan Sylvester (dsylvester1@cfl.rr.com), July 19, 2001

Answers

Well, if the curious engineers are out there to design us some great gear then I'm here to lend a helping hand;-) Ok, imagin two climbers on the ground attached to each other by a rope. the first climber climbs up the rock face or ice face and places at strategic points protection in the rock into which he clips his rope (i know i'm not being pc with my pronoun use, oh well). He then climbs on above this protection, so the pro won't hold his fall at his immediate point of fall, but instead he will fall double the rope length between him and the protection penduleming on it and the climber on the ground has the other end of the rope tight, tight, tight. Now, one observation I have left out is the belaying of the lower climber. He pays out the rope as the climber climbs upwards, making sure to keep a minimal amount of rope between him and the climber, so the fall is only twice the rope length between the climber and his pro and not much more as it could be. Ok, onto the gear retrieval. As the top climber reaches the pitches end or ropes end or the top, whatever comes first, he can do one of many things. On a simple sport climb he will have draws attached to bolts that are already in the rock for protection and he needs to retrieve those. So, in most often sport climbs he will rappel from a cold shut, or round bolt with no edges, at the top of the climb set as an anchor for just such a thing, and on the way down he will unclip his draws from each bolt as he passes it taking them with him. now left is a toprope that can be used for further climbing or they can just pull the rope. Now, the most common way of gear retrieval is done by the following climber, actually. He comes up below the first climber, taking out the pro as he comes up to it, and climbing on with it to where the first climber stands. From there the two keep on climbing upwards in such the same manner. One goes up placing pro, one follows taking it out, and this is the method for most multi-pitch rock and ice climbs including hard aid. Now, sometimes pro is expendable, but in that case it is only because the following climber could not remove it or there was no other way down. you'll see pitons left hammered in the rock, never to budge and sometimes you'll see rappel biners left behind or rappel stations of webbing left, as well. These are just in cases where the climbers had no other way up or down and simply had to do it, but in these cases the gear adds up at most to a stout five bucks. Ok, that's about all I have for ya guys, if you need more just e-mail or post, I'll be around.

-- adam hicks (climbhoser@yahoo.com), July 24, 2001.