by Andy Selters
Pull the extra cord snug and tie it into a Münter hitch on the locking carabiner.
Tie off the Münter hitch with a half hitch, and then an overhand knot (full hitch). As a final backup, clip the bight of this final knot to the anchor This hitch and backup is known as a “mule knot.”
As shown in fig. 4.5, you can use a cordelette as the extended Münter You can also get more length out of it by using it as a single strand, tying a large loop at the end of the cord and wrapping the prusik with this loop. Then you tie the Münter with a single strand and have extra length to lower the victim. You can also use a normal prusik loop and tie the Münter with an extension of cord or webbing.
Now you can proceed with the rescue as previously described. The rescuer holding the victim can release the load onto the Münter hitch and anchor. To set up a hauling system, start with another carabiner on the anchor and clip the pulley with its autoblock and the rope into this.
To lower the victim, undo the full hitch and, while holding firm on the Münter, pull out the mule's knot half hitch. Now you can carefully let out the Münter, which will lower the victim. The Münter hitch is a high-friction brake, and lowering a victim over a crevasse lip will not be a problem. When the victim is lowered far enough, retie the mule knot.
For hauling, you'll probably want to get the anchor (ratchet) prusik back close to the anchor before retying the hitches. To do this, have others (if available) hold the victim's weight via the haul system while you slide the ratchet prusik back and pull the extension back through the Münter and then retie the mule knot. With the anchor prusik back near the anchor, you can lower the victim again if necessary.
Figure 4.5a The Münter-Mule releasable tie-off: tying first hitch with Münter in place
Figure 4.5b The Münter-Mule releasable tie-off finishing the mule knot's second (overhand) hitch
Figure 4.5c The Münter-Mule releasable tie-off: connecting to the anchor as a final backup
A tension-release mechanism can be added into a haul system even if you have fixed the original anchoring prusik to the anchor, as described earlier: To do this, wrap a new ratchet prusik onto the victim's strand and add the Münter-mule extension onto a fresh (locking) carabiner at the anchor: Build the haul system and haul just enough to take the weight off the original prusik, which you can then unclip and remove. Now the tension-release prusik is also the main ratchet prusik.
To those who are relatively new to rescue techniques, building a tension-release mechanism can seem a complicated and confusing addition. Indeed, it is not worth doing and dangerous to attempt if the rescuers don't understand the principles and know the procedure well. However; for those with experience, the tension-release mechanism simply inserts a proven belay into the victim's anchor attachment, and with practice the mechanism can be added in less than half a minute.
RESCUING OVER A NEWLY PREPARED LIP
As noted earlier; the rope can cut very deeply into the lip during a crevasse fall, and getting the victim past a great eave can pose a major obstacle. The surest way to solve the problem is by sending down a fresh rope over a prepared and pre-padded edge off to the side of where the original rope has cut in. When clearing away a large overhang, however, great care has to be taken to avoid bombarding the victim with blocks of snow. The surface member who goes out to check the victim should decide if cultivating a new edge is necessary. If it is, the procedure then goes as follows:
Build a Z or Z×C haul system on the victim's original rope and haul the person to within a few feet of the overhang. This gets the victim out of the way of falling debris and generates more slack.
To the side of the original rope, far enough away to keep the victim clear knock away the lip and set a rope pad as described in chapter 3, “Preparing Crevasse Lips.”
Send the “fresh” strand of rope down for the victim to tie into, then run it over the newly prepared lip site. It will be easier to use an entirely different rope if one is available, although sending down the other end of the victim's original strand works fine if it's your only rope.
Connect the fresh strand to the anchor with a prusik, and pull the slack out of the rope and prusik.
Lower the victim on the original haul line until the person's weight swings onto the new strand, using one of two methods. As described earlier you can lower with the original haul system. Alternatively, if you have built a tension-release hitch into your ratchet prusik, you can untie the mule knot and lower the victim out with the Münter hitch.
Using the newly weighted strand, either the victim can ascend out of the crevasse or surface members can haul the person out by breaking down the original haul system and building a new one on the fresh strand. Once the victim's weight is completely off the original strand, the victim should untie from it to avoid getting it snagged in the overhang.
TWO-PERSON PARTIES
As mentioned earlier traveling on a glacier with just one partner begets the serious possibility of one person having to rescue another For this reason, the traditional wisdom has been “never travel with fewer than three.” But this is too restricting for many people. Indeed, many parties travel across glaciers in order to reach a technical climb, where the most efficient team will be a pair Also, it can be hard enough to gather even one partner with the time, ability, and interest to take a trip, much less two or more. But while the temptations for going onto a glacier with just one partner are clear, they make it easy to overlook the central question:
“You can look down in [the crevasses] for distances stretching from your feet to Hades or China. Look down one of them and you never will forget it…most of them appear to be bottomless. These are not good things to look at.”
—Tom Lloyd during (unroped) first
ascent of Mount McKinley, 1910. From
The Sourdough Expedition.Terrence Cole.
Do pairs really have the “safety net”—the rescue backup—that they need?
A party of two can have a reasonable safety net if they are cautious about the crevasses they cross and if they are very competent at rescue technique. In fact, it can be safer to travel with one competent partner than with any number of incompetent partners. However, while one competent individual can perform most crevasse rescue procedures, roped pairs need to understand that the most basic element of initiating a crevasse rescue can be very difficult for any one person: setting an anchor
When one climber holds a partner's crevasse fall, very often the partner's weight continues to bear down. The surface member must set an anchor while holding this weight (mitigated by friction of the rope over the crevasse lip). Too few glacier travelers have given much thought to the need to set an anchor while holding a person's weight, much less practiced it. But imagine holding your partner's crevasse fall and not anchoring off. Do you just lie there in ice-ax arrest and hope the victim can prusik out, while both your lives depend on your grip in the snow? How long do you wait?
Pairs should keep at least two anchors appropriate to the conditions very handy, ideally clipped to their harnesses or low on the shoulder straps of their packs. They should also have prusiks on the rope (or ascenders very handy), for these are what will connect the taut rope to the anchor. Remember, too, that each partner should travel with enough slack rope to reach the other. Now, assume the worst case: you've had to hold a fall with an ice-ax arrest. From here your procedure is as follows:
Work from the ice-ax arrest position to a position that allows you to still hold the victim's weight but free at least one hand to set an anchor Usually the key is to dig in your feet and bear as much of the load with them as possible. One good compromise position is to roll onto one leg and brace with the other perhaps still holding onto the ice ax. The pose looks something like a baseball player sliding into home plate (see fig. 4.6). If the victim's weight bears heavily, you might have to stay generally prone in ice-ax arrest.
Figure 4.6 Lone rescuer setting on anchor
Assuming the anchor of choice is a fluke, sc
our out a T-shaped trench, as similar as possible to the ideal trench described in chapter 3. If you've been successful at taking most of the weight with your feet, you might be able to dig with your ice ax. Otherwise, you'll have to dig with your hand or perhaps a second ice tool. Gauge the site of the trench so that when you set the fluke, the extensions of your prusiks or ascenders will just reach the fluke's carabiner. If you're traveling with pickets, you should be able to dig a T-trench to set one of those sideways into the snow as well.
Set the anchor in and give it a few test yanks.
Connect the anchor to the rope with a prusik or ascender. Here we see another bonus of traveling with the Texas system on the rope, because the stirrup loops can be pulled out and immediately clipped to the anchor.
Ease back toward the crevasse, keeping a watchful eye on the anchor. The victim's weight transfers onto it as you back away. Be ready to jump back into ice-ax arrest should this primary anchor fail.
When the primary anchor obviously holds all the victim's weight, unclip from the rope and add a backup anchor (as described in chapter 3). Use a tensioned backup, or make sure there's a minimum of slack in the connecting runner. With the rope anchored off, rescue procedures are the same as for larger parties, except there are fewer options.
With a self-belay on the slack rope you've been carrying, go to the lip and check your buddy's condition. If he or she needs a pack hauled up, you can send down the remaining free rope and yank it up hand over hand, assuming you can get it over the lip. If the victim can then ascend out without assistance, you can wait at the lip to help heave the person onto the surface. If the victim absolutely needs your assistance to be freed or for first aid, then you can pad the lip and go down immediately, taking the necessary clothing and gear
If your partner needs to be hauled, do what you can to prepare the lip under the rope without bombarding them with blocks of snow.
Go back to your anchors to build a six-to-one pulley system. It's preferable for a single rescuer to build the drop-loop system, because the advantages of reduced drag at the lip and the victim assisting in hauling can be especially valuable. However, a single rescuer may not have much free rope to build the drop-loop, so it's probably necessary to extend the hauling point closer to the crevasse. Start doing this by preparing the lip and sending the loop down to your partner (this alone requires that you've roped up with at least twice as much slack as the span between you). Then, on the loop strand heading down to her, tie a butterfly knot (see appendix) about 15 feet back from the crevasse lip. This is your new hauling anchor point, so put an autoblock and tension-release ratchet there, and finish by adding the Z-pulley tractor onto the loop strand coming back out of the crevasse.
While hauling, remain very sensitive to any increase in resistance, because there's no one to relay warnings when your buddy is rising into an overhang, and if she's injured there's no one to assist her over. When you do feel added resistance, stop hauling and give your buddy a chance to knock away an eave or push away from it.
When you suspect you've pulled your partner up to the final lip, it's wise to run out to the edge and make sure you're going to be able to haul over it. Go out on a self-belay set on the main rescue line. You might need to carefully knock away as much of the overhang as possible now; with your partner close to the lip, it will be safer to knock away hunks of snow. How much of a lip you can haul over depends on how capable the victim is to help, and how deeply the rope cuts into the lip.
Once the lip is certainly surmountable, return to the haul system and heave your buddy up.
If the rope knifes very deeply into the lip, and/or if the victim is too injured to help much, you might have to haul over a new site to the side. Without rescue partners this is difficult, but without someone at the lip to help an incapacitated victim, hauling over even a small eave can prove impossible. The new-site procedure is basically the same as when there are two or more rescuers:
When you've hauled to near the final overhang, put a self-belay on the free strand of rope, and go out to the lip. To the side of where your buddy dangles, prepare the new haul site.
Send down the free end of the rope for your partner to tie into, and then run the strand over the newly prepared site.
Go back to the haul system and anchor off the “new” strand with a prusik, pulling all the slack out of this strand.
Then lower the victim so the person's weight comes fully onto the new strand. If you rigged your haul system with a tension-release hitch, you can probably lower out enough with this. If not, you can lower with the haul system as described earlier in this chapter, holding the ratchet prusik open yourself.
Break down the first haul system and build a new one on the fresh strand. Now you're ready to haul over the freshly prepared site.
Clearly, with a lone rescuer the rescue for any crevasse fall is both involved and uncertain; thus two-person parties should travel and cross crevasses more conservatively than a larger group might. Pairs should realize that even if they are practiced at rescue procedures, setting an anchor and hauling past a large lip are weak links in their safety net. Of course, each member of a pair needs to carry enough gear to rescue the other—at least two anchors for any conditions expected, two or three pulleys, and also extra runners, carabiners, and prusiks.
DRAG KNOTS
Two-person rope teams depend on only one person to hold a crevasse fall. In some cases this can be an uncertain prospect, especially, say, if one of the pair is much heavier than the other. To improve the stopping power of a roped pair you can tie drag knots at intervals along the length of the rope between them. When the rope of a falling climber starts to saw into a crevasse lip it cuts a narrow groove, and when a drag knot hits that groove it can dramatically slow the force of the falling climber However a knotted rope is useless as a rescue rope, and so a pair must be ready with other contingencies for rescue.
The preferred drag knot is a butterfly (see appendix), because it creates a nice dragging clump, and because it's usually not too hard to untie after it's been loaded. Tie one about every 6 feet (2 meters) along the rope between you and your partner and so for a typical paired span for alpine glaciers there will be five or six knots between you. Drag knots are effective enough to allow reducing the span between climbers, so even though the knots take up a couple of meters of rope, they make it okay to travel on an alpine-scale glacier with 8 or 9 meters of span.
If you're part of a larger party with other rope teams, then you already have another rope nearby for rescue purposes. If not, you might consider other options to make sure that you have enough rope to carry out a rescue. One, you can use a longer rope, perhaps a 70 meter one. Two, you can travel with a second rope between you. Lightweight “twin” ropes—also useful on a technical alpine climb—are a good option here. Make sure that the second, unknotted rope has a bit longer span between you, so that the knotted rope takes the force of a fall, and so that the second rope will be free and ready for rescue. After a fall, set a rescue anchor onto a prusik onto the original, knotted rope. Then either tie the free rope to the anchor and have the victim prusik out on this, or set up a ratchet and haul system on it.
MULE KNOT FOR TYING OFF A BELAY
When members of a two-person party decide to belay across a fragile-looking crevasse bridge, and the bridge fails, the belayer will have to hold the fall and then “tie off” the belay. With hands then freed, the rescuer can anchor off the rope. The tie-off knot is basically the same as described for the Münter tension release tie-off. Assuming you hold the fall with a belay plate in an anchored-sitting belay, here's the general procedure. Depending on the harness, you may need to tie the hitches “above” the belay plate, around the loaded strand.
With one hand, hold the rope back from the belay plate to maintain the friction that holds the victim's weight. With the free hand, bring a bight of rope from the brake hand around the harness loop, and pass the bight under the loop created (see fig. 4.7a). This is the tie-o
ff half hitch.
Still holding the brake strand, pull plenty of slack into the bight, and pull out all of the slack between the brake hand and the bight. Hold onto the bight and let go with the brake hand. The weight of the victim will tighten the half hitch (see fig. 4.7b).
Tie the bight around the harness strand in a whole hitch, the tie-off backup (see fig. 4.7c). Clip a carabiner into the final bight.
Now you are free to connect the rope to the anchor as in any crevasse rescue situation. Wrap a prusik around the load rope and clip the prusik to the anchor Ease toward the victim, letting the person's weight come onto the prusik and anchor. Now you can untie the hitches at your harness and carry out a rescue.
RAPPELLING TO AID A VICTIM
What do you do when you go out to the crevasse lip and there's a labored, pained response, or no response? Is the victim hanging limp? Is there a pack? A chest harness? Can you even see where he or she stopped? Do you go down to help? If the victim is severely injured, severely hypothermic or unconscious, going down could be the only way to save their life. On the other hand, the time it takes for you to go down and administer to a victim suffering only slightly can be time enough to have them suffering severely, and putting a second person in a crevasse is not to be taken lightly.
Decisions like these cannot be covered with blanket statements, and in rescue situations often too little is known to say with certainty that a given decision will be the right one.
Figure 4.7a Tying off a belay: hold belay and tie half hitch around harness loop
Figure 4.7b Tying off a belay: pull out slack between brake hand and half hitch
