Short Roping- delivered by Mike Pescod IFMGA Mountain Guide

 

·        What is it?

·        Assessing and coaching movement.

·        Ropes and knots.

·        Communications.

·        Sight and sound.

·        Timing.

·        Putting it all together.

 

Monday 11th November 9am to 5pm

 

£100 per person, maximum 4 people

Meet at Glencoe car park, behind the MRT Base.

Bring helmet, harness, 2 x slings and a few karabiners

Be prepared to spend the day outdoors 

 

What is Short Roping?

 

Using the rope to safeguard people on consequential terrain that is more than walking but does not require sequential pitches to climb. It might be broken into three types of ground with increasing difficulty:

 

1.       Walking tied together on terrain where the leader can stop a slip or wobble from turning into a fall by holding the rope appropriately.

 

2.       Moving over more technical terrain requiring the use of running anchors in addition to the leader holding the rope to hold a slip or slide.

 

3.       More difficult ground in which mini-pitches are required.

 

 

 

Assessing and Coaching Movement

 

Short roping is an incredibly dynamic process of making judgements and deciding actions. Judgements need to be made on the difficulty of the ground for you and the people that you are with, the weather and conditions at the time, the consequence of a slip or fall and the leader’s ability to make it safe enough.

 

The competence of your clients is a major factor in this, and being able to assess their competence before you get onto difficult terrain is very helpful. Being able to coach their movement skills if required can make a huge difference to their enjoyment and security during the day.

 

 

 

Ropes and Knots

 

The mechanics of tying in, taking coils and tying them off, tying in clients with thoughts on spacing and isolation loops. Holding hand coils with thoughts about how much rope to hold, how to hold it and how close to be to your clients.

 

 

 

Communication

 

As with all of your guiding, communication is key to success, especially in short roping because your clients are part of the system and they need to know how to operate. What do you say to clients to help them use the system well?

 

 

 

Sight and Sound

 

We need to observe and monitor our clients as we are climbing. It’s useful to know how much we can see and how we see it, and how much we can hear. We can tune in to our peripheral vision and cues that we hear to help us safeguard our clients.

 

 

 

Timing

 

Many scrambles offer tricky sections in discrete steps. As we progress through our short roping skills, we can discover how we can safeguard clients on the tricky steps without having to stop on the easy sections in between. This is about timing, positioning and different ways to hold the rope to allow your clients to move up the scramble at a steady continuous pace while you work hard moving from step to step looking after them.

 

 

 

Putting it all Together

 

 

 

Building all of these subtle factors into fluid movement over differing types of terrain, going between different rope techniques, so that you and your clients have a great day.