I had booked in to meet Mike Brookes at Far Peak tonight to have a look at the abseil platform and see how the staff there set up an abseil.
Mike was really helpful and showed me how he sets up for abseiling, then took the whole system apart for me to set up. He then abseiled with me as the instructor, I then top roped my friend Sophie up the wall to allow her to abseil back down in real time. This session was far beyond what I thought Mike would do for me, so to have set up and run an actual abseil was excellent!
During Mikes abseil he simulated a malfunction with the belay device, getting it clogged up with hair. He didn't tell me he was going to do this, but my reaction was to ask him to try and free it (which he couldn't), I then tied off the safety rope and loosened the abseil rope for him to free the malfunction, once he had done this, I retied the abseil rope and he continued down.
Having chatted with Mike afterwards I could have just let the abseil rope go and dealt with the issue on the ground, or I could have asked him to get a hold on the wall to try and release the problem.
Excellent training opportunity that Mike put on for me.
