| When: | 7/8/2006 |
| Where: | New River Gorge, WV |
| Who: | drove up with Lisa Lorenzin |
| large group of XTR folks | |
| What: | rappelling and ascending at Ram's Head |
With me having been sick and Lisa overwhelmed with work, we decided to stay home Friday night and drive up to the New early Saturday morning to meet the crew up at Ram's Head.
I accomplished the following:
On the first unweighted and weighted rappels, I did not have good control going over the edge and making the transition to the free-hanging part. That wasn't a problem with the unweighted rappel because I had plenty of space to go zipping down and get my speed under control. However, it was a problem with the weighted drop because about 20' below the edge, there's a jumar that you have to stop before in order to transfer it from below you to above you (after they've put the weight on the rope). I didn't stop and ended up getting caught up at the jumar. There was enough slack in the rope that I was actual on a loop *below* the jumar, but my brake hand was somewhat crushed -- ended up fairly bruised -- by the rope. First thing I did was put my safety ascender on.
Larry Smith came to the edge, and talked me through being stuck. Ended up that they put weight on the rope and were able to get enough slack that I could move the jumar from below to above.
The next problem was that I them had too many bars on and it was hell to try to get moving. I struggled with it and eventually was able to drop a bar. (Made harder because I had to pull the rope toward me to pop the bar.) Finished the rappel OK.
After that, I was a bit freaked out and scared because I didn't know what I had done wrong. It took me a while to get up the nerve to try again -- on an unweighted rope -- this time staying in full control. It worked pretty well. I eventually got back on the weighted rope. One of the changes suggested was that I use a different long rack. I had been borrowing Nikki's rack which had spacers set for her weight which is probably only about 2/3 of mine. I borrowed a rack from Phil, and worked hard on being in control with a few additional hints and pointers from Larry, and it went very smoothly. (I used a *total* of 6 bars going over the edge, used my right hand to pull the rope up against the bottom bar, then came to a stop and dropped a bar before they added the weight, and was able to rappel on down in good control the entire time.)
We had a fun and good dinner (for 25-30) at Miguel's in Oak Hill then headed back to Passages where we were camping. There was a team meeting to discuss next year's El Cap trip, including slides and video.
Lisa and I decided to come home early on Sunday rather than do either more rappelling or some rock climbing. It would have been nice to get more practice in, but it was good to have time at home to get things done around the house Sunday afternoon.