Climbing is fun. But at the top of a route, everybody gets all serious. Which is good, because lots of accidents happen while rappelling. But that doesn’t mean it has to be all business. Have fun out there. But pay attention. It’s all fun and games until someone threads their belay device wrong and … well, you know, don’t do that.
Tip #1: Add some style to throwing the rap rope.
I mean really, as long as you don’t hit someone below you, you can pretty much do whatever the hell you want with your rappel rope. The worst that’s going to happen is it will get tangled, which, if you’re me, happens approximately 50 percent of the time on single-rope rappels and 100 percent of the time on double-rope rappels. Here are a couple of examples.
Tip #2: Add theme music.
Maybe you don’t take your iPhone in the wilderness, or on climbs. If you do, tell you what makes a rappel approximately 60% more radder: Music. Place your phone in a jacket pocket with the speaker end sticking out, and play one of these two songs:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yrK0rZj6pesDon’t own those two songs? Well, that’s no way to live. Here:
-Brendan
@jmontag sure has style đ Nice post!
man I’ve really got to climb with you sometime, I wish more climbers could embrace the same side of climbing as you, love your blog man.
Dude, I like #2 best. Especially where you wrap the rope around your neck for extra safety. Gangsta!
Nice! To add a fun technique to the list, try the bowling ball. You might not need it in CO, but here in NC where you’ll have to rappel down a slab at some point in time, it works pretty darn well. Here’s how it goes: take end of rope, start wrapping rope around hand like a giant ball of yarn until it becomes one big twisty monstrous ball of destruction, yell rope, toss it down and watch it unwind.
This post has ruined me. I first read this a few weeks ago and now cannot rappel without screaming the a-team theme song as loud as I can. Great blog Brendan.