by Andy Selters
As the victim approaches an overhanging lip it's imperative that the haulers slow down, then stop hauling before heaving the victim into the lip. It's surprisingly easy to haul a victim into an overhang, embedding the person there as a human fluke. Assuming that the ratchet prusik holds as tightly as it should, the victim will then be in a very serious predicament with no reasonable way to move up or down. Chapter 4 details a way to build a releasable ratchet. But lacking this, it might be that the only way to escape this predicament is to tie tight into the hauling line and cut the ratchet prusik with a knife—a very dangerous idea, because even a tiny nick in the tensioned main rope could sever the whole rope. With the ratchet prusik cut, however you could walk toward the victim and lower him away from the overhang (see below).
The first choice to get someone over a lip is to lower down a ladder of loops for them to pull themselves out with. If the victim needs to be hauled right to the surface, hauling will require coordination between haulers and victim, for the victim will have to knock away the lip and push away from it—only then can the haulers heave another foot or two. In this way a team hauls around and over a lip in small increments. Of course, this takes communication, and for this reason it's best if a surface member remains at the lip to relay signals. If there's no spare rope for the relayer to tie-in to the main anchor a personal anchor can be set up a short distance away from the lip. Another workable option is for the relayer to simply keep a waist prusik on the haul rope as a self-belay. If no relayer can be spared, then the haulers must be extremely wary of any increase in the resistance as they haul, and they must yell back and forth with the victim as best as they can. Here's a summary of the bare minimum of gear used to set up the Z-system:
2 prusiks or mechanical ascenders
2 anchors
2 pulleys
l ice ax, but preferably 2
1 long runner or cordelette
6 or 7 carabiners
Therefore, in order to make up for gear that will go into a crevasse with a victim, a party of three should carry at least 50 percent more of each of these items, equally distributed among the members. Parties on glaciers with more serious crevasse hazards are wise to carry more anchors, runners, cordelettes, and carabiners. The latter three can be most valuable, for they allow a team to bury and equalize deadman anchors from almost anything, and runners can also substitute for prusiks when tied in a kleimheist knot (see Appendix 2). If the team is in a pinch for pulleys, the rope can simply be looped through carabiners instead, but of course the greater friction makes hauling much more difficult.
LOWERING A VICTIM WITH THE HAULING SYSTEM
There can be reasons to lower a victim deeper into a crevasse; most obviously if lowering gets the victim to a place where walking or climbing out of the crevasse is feasible. Another reason is to lower a victim onto a fresh strand, which is described in the next chapter under “Rescuing Over a Newly Prepared Lip.” The key step in lowering a victim is to temporarily deactivate the ratchet prusik (or ascender) at the anchor. This requires that you haul the victim just enough to take tension off the ratchet prusik, and then carefully let rope out through the haul system. The procedure is as follows:
Build a Z-system as previously described, and then pull the victim up just enough to take all the weight off the ratchet prusik.
One surface member must hold the wraps of the ratchet prusik open, while another can lower the victim by slowly letting rope out through the haul system. (One careful person can do both, if necessary.)
If the victim needs to be lowered a fair distance, make sure the tractor pulley of the Z-system doesn't run too far When this pulley has run a reasonable distance, the rescuer at the anchor resets the ratchet prusik. Then the lowering rescuer can go out to retrieve the tractor and slide it back close to the anchor. This procedure can be repeated to lower the victim as far as the amount of free rope allows.
MIDDLE PERSON IN
Contrary to what one might think, a climber in the middle of a rope team can fall a good distance into a crevasse. Even though a middle person has a rope on both sides, it's not uncommon for both ropes to be slack or oblique to crevasses. And rescuing a middle person actually can be more problematic.
When a person in the interior of a four-person rope team breaks through a snowbridge, the two surface members who are together on one side of the crevasse are best situated to carry out the rescue. Their procedures are the same as when a member on the end of a three-person rope goes in; the adjacent member holds the weight and the end member sets an anchor “below” them.
However when the middle person on a three-person team falls into a crevasse, the two end members must hold the fall and then shout back and forth across the crevasse to decide which of them is holding most of the weight, and make sure that they can hold the entire weight.
Figure 3.16 Middle person in, schematic sequence: top, B falls in; middle, A holds weight, C sets anchor, generating slack; bottom, A releases B onto anchor, C rescues
The procedure then runs as follows:
The free member goes toward the victim on a self-belay, preferably coming far enough to generate adequate slack to reach the victim.
This rescuer sets an anchor and connects it to the rope with a prusik.
Next the rescuer travels on a self-belay to the crevasse edge to pad the lip under the rope.
Now the weight-bearing member across the crevasse eases toward the victim, letting the weight swing onto the other surface member's anchor
The rescuer who set the anchor can now initiate the rescue, if necessary sending the slack rope down to haul the victim's pack, waiting to assist the prusiking victim over the lip, or setting up a pulley system to haul the victim out (see fig. 3.16).
OTHER SIMPLE HAULING SYSTEMS
The Z-system has proven to be the most versatile for hauling crevasse victims and it should be the method of first choice in most cases. In fact, knowing more ways to haul can be a burden because in a tense situation rescuers can lose valuable time deciding which method to use, and different methods can even be confused with one another. However the following two methods can offer a faster rescue in some cases.
Straight pull. When there are perhaps five or more rescuers available, and the lip is not problematic or has been well prepared, rescuers can usually just directly haul the victim out. Those hauling should either tie into the rope or pull with a prusik or ascender from their harnesses, to make sure that they don't drop the victim. One member must be ready to hold open the anchor prusik as the rescuers haul.
C-pulley. The simple two-to-one pulley system used to describe pulley theory earlier in this chapter also can be used to haul a victim.
Assuming the victim's rope is anchored off with a prusik, thread the slack rope “above” the prusik through a pulley.
Clip a carabiner preferably a locking model, into this pulley. Send the pulley and carabiner to the victim on a loop of rope, holding on to the slack end of the rope.
After the victim clips the pulley with its loop of rope to his or her harness, begin to haul on the end you have been holding onto.
If for some reason you can't get a loop and pulley onto the victim's harness, you can build an alternative of this system simply by attaching the C-pulley onto his existing strand with a prusik.
This system is good for a quick and easy haul when the victim is just a few feet into the crevasse, but unable to heave out. This is a common situation, when a victim gets stuck in a partially collapsed bridge or gets wedged between crevasse walls. This system strains the anchor much less than does a Z-system, because the haulers' strand bears all the friction at the lip and only half of the hauling tension. Another bonus of this system is that the victim can help in his own hauling, by pulling on the strand that goes up to the anchor. A disadvantage of the C-system is that it can't be easily rigged with a ratcheting belay.
HYPOTHERMIC VICTIMS
During a prolonged rescue, crevasse victims often become severely chilled
or hypothermic. This condition is not unlike shock. It begins when, in response to cold, the body shunts blood away from the periphery and sequesters it for the internal organs. With prolonged cold even the body's core cools down, and this changes the blood chemistry, drops the metabolism, and generally compromises the organs, especially the heart. A severely hypothermic victim is at great risk of heart failure, especially from jostling of the heart. More than one crevasse victim has died after reaching the surface and apparent safety and this was likely why.
Rescuers should thus take whatever care they can to avoid jarring the victim. Once the victim is out of the crevasse, minimize stress and preserve what little blood flow to the organs there is. Immediately lay the victim down and elevate the feet. Then take care to rewarm the person gradually. Warm fluids can be very helpful, but the most effective treatment is insulated warm (not hot) water bottles around the torso or the old body-to-body contact in a sleeping bag.
Of course, the best solution is to prevent hypothermia in the first place. The seriousness of getting too cold is a good incentive to have clothing handy, and to have rescue procedures down pat.
HUMILITY
A year after the Kashmir trip I was assigned to teach a basic mountaineering course on the Kahiltna Glacier, below Denali in Alaska. Right after landing on the glacier, I taught my two students the fundamentals of glacier travel and crevasse rescue. A point I emphasized more than once was that any incidents would have to be dealt with immediately by our party. Help would be too far away.
About the fifth day into the course, I found an ice slope suitable for practicing crampon techniques. It was wind-scoured, blue ice at a low angle, perfect for learning. I knew we wouldn't be in danger of crevasses here, so on the easy ground I led us around without the rope. We progressed to some steeper places, and by afternoon I returned to the easy area to demonstrate chopping steps.
Unroped, I walked out a narrow ledge with a coating of snow on it. Suddenly I was falling, plummeting in a chaos of snow and ice. Whumpf! I came to a stop 30 feet down. Never in a hundred years would I have guessed that that ledge was a covered crevasse, but how instantly was I proven clueless! I wrestled one arm free, and my head was free, but my buried legs and an arm (still gripping my ax) were held fast, like a bug in amber. Wow, an instant panic seized me to get out as fast as possible. I knew I was lucky, and that my students would soon come to my rescue. I yelled.
Twenty minutes later I was still yelling, scraping futilely with my one free arm, but starting to shiver and starting to worry. Thankfully I had overdressed for the hot day above, but I did not have hours. Why were they taking so long to even look into the hole? All they had to do was set a couple screws like we'd just practiced, tie off the rope and come over It turned out that they were arguing over whether or not to go search for help. Luckily the doctor of the pair held the day, and after half an hour I heard a timid voice from the daylight above me.
I yelled for them to lower me an ice ax and a jacket, and 15 minutes later that package came down to my waving grasp. I chopped myself free, confirmed they'd anchored the rope, and then prusiked out. Looking back down, I saw that the soft shelf I'd landed in was only fifteen feet long; farther along, the slot was perfectly black.
Back in the warm tent, I evaluated my mistake. How many hundreds of crevasses had I come across, always roped? Crevasse caution had been my middle name for years, but there I was, as fooled as any novice and living testimony to the wonders of chance. How much had I set my trust on instincts, and how accurate were those instincts? Even though I thought I'd long before sorted out the proper zone between caution and confidence, clearly I still had blind spots. I could only give thanks that I had another chance.
Doug Ingersoll rounding a crevasse on the Coleman Glacier, Mount Baker, North Cascades
CHAPTER 4
ADDITIONAL RESCUE TECHNIQUES
For those new to mountain rescue techniques, it's usually enough of a challenge to first learn the procedural outline of crevasse rescue and the basic methods described in chapter 3. However, crevasse rescues can demand more than what can be accomplished with those basic techniques. Also, a few extra tricks can make many situations run more smoothly. Therefore, this chapter advances a rescuer's repertoire with techniques designed to prevent or solve complex crevasse-rescue problems, techniques that integrate with the basic procedures of the previous chapter
ADDITIONAL HAULING POWER: THE Z×C
The three-to-one Z-system typically requires at least two and often three haulers to get one person out of a crevasse, depending on their strength, the victim's weight, and, especially, the amount of friction at the lip. If for any reason you need more hauling power you can most easily get it by adding a two-to-one C-system onto the Z. This is the Z×C. The fairly simple procedure goes like this:
Take the free end of the rope coming off the Z-system (or the end of an entirely new rope) and fix it to the anchor
Wrap a prusik on the hauling strand of the Z-system just “above” the running pulley.
Feed the newly tied line through a pulley and clip this pulley to the new prusik. Bring the line back toward the anchor, completing a second tractor and you're ready to haul on this strand (see fig. 4.1).
The two-to-one C-pulley subsystem doubles the Z's mechanical advantage to six to one; usually this is enough for one person to haul out even a heavy victim. Hauling with this system goes slowly, for the victim's strand comes in only one-sixth as fast as the haulers take in rope. The second tractor will come up against the anchor and have to be reset twice as often as the Z's original tractor.
Figure 4.1 Z×C hauling system
THE CANADIAN DROP-LOOP SYSTEM
Guides and rescue teams in Canada often favor the 6:1 drop-loop system because tests show it exerts 40 percent less force on the anchor. Also, just as in the basic C-pulley, the victim can assist in his own hauling by pulling on the strand coming down to him from the anchor. Perhaps the most important advantage is that, because a fresh rope strand is sent to the victim, you can prepare and pre-pad the lip in order to prevent the rope from slicing in. This can go a long way in solving what's often the biggest challenge of a rescue—overcoming the lip. The primary disadvantages of this system are that the victim must be conscious and accessible to a rope toss, and you might have to take extra measures to generate enough free rope.
Start building the system by lowering a loop of rope fixed at the anchor and down to the victim. The loop might drop to him more easily if you send it down with the weight of a locking carabiner and a pulley already on it. Making sure that there are no twists in the loop, the victim then clips it into a pulley and attaches it to his or her harness. Now you run the strand coming back from the victim through an autoblock, pulley and ratchet at the anchor Next, run the rope back toward the victim and then build a tractor (prusik and pulley) on the strand coming up from the victim. Put the rope through this tractor pulley, step back toward the anchor and you're ready to haul. Essentially you've built a Z-system onto a C-system on the victim (see fig. 4.2).
Figure 4.2 Schematic of Canadian drop loop system
Figure 4.3 Schematic of Windless 4:1
Figure 4.4 Münter hitch
This system requires more rope, so if only one rope is available the rescuer who sets the original anchor will want to set it a good but safe distance toward the crevasse, “below” the rescuer holding the fall, to generate extra slack.
THE WINDLASS 4:1 OR 8:1
Essentially a double or triple C-system, the windlass 4:1 or 8:1 gets more hauling power out of two or three pulleys, and if a spare rope is available it's quick to set up (see fig. 4.3). A disadvantage is that the anchoring ratchet must be worked manually.
With the victim's rope anchored with a prusik and the anchor backed up, fix the end of the new hauling rope to the anchor.
At a good but safe distance down the victim's strand, add a tractor (again, a three-wrap prusik and pulley connection) onto the victim's strand, and th
en run the new hauling strand through this pulley.
A long distance down the hauling line (perhaps at the rope's middle), fix the hauling line to the anchor again and repeat the tractor arrangement on the first hauling strand.
This generates a 4:1 system. Note that the victim's original strand is not pulled through the anchoring prusik, and so one of the rescuers must pull the slack that develops in the victim's original line through this anchor prusik. With this system, it should be considered mandatory that haulers pull not hand over hand, but by attaching the rope to their harnesses, either by knot, prusik or ascender
For an 8:1 you can build a third C onto the hauling strand in this system.
BUILDING IN A TENSION-RELEASE MECHANISM
A tension-release mechanism is a hitch at the anchor that allows rescuers to lower a victim, which several different situations can call for. Most simply, you may want to lower a crevasse victim if there is an easy “floor” below him, and a way to climb out. More critically, if a victim is inadvertently hauled into an overhang, it can be crucial to lower the person enough to allow clearing the overhang. A third reason to lower a victim is to transfer to a new rope to circumvent a blocking overhang.
The basic concept of the tension-release mechanism is to extend a hauling system's anchor prusik, and wrap this extension through a friction brake. The most compact friction brake to use here is a Münter hitch (see fig. 4.4), which is then tied off. The procedure described here fits in the “Anchoring the Rope” section in chapter 3 when a rescuer is ready to connect the victim's rope to an anchor with a prusik:
Clip a locking carabiner (preferably a large Münter ‘biner) into the anchor; and wrap a prusik onto the victim's rope with a cordelette.
