Backcountry Beacon

Jesse Mattner 1,000 feet up Mt. Moran with 3,500 feet left to go ... a terrible place to drop a belay device

At the top of pitch seven, you build an anchor and clip in. You call, “Off belay,” pull up the rest of the rope, unclip your belay device from the back of your harness, and fumble it. That very important piece of aluminum falls cleanly to the ground without touching a thing along the way, but you’re still seven pitches up with several more to go. You can continue to the top or rap to the ground, but you just dropped the one piece of gear that allows you to do either. You’re not completely SOL though. With a few old-school tricks you can carry on like nothing ever happened. Read More …

Looking down from the hanging belay at the top of pitch 13 on the Lotus Flower Tower. Only five more to go.

Hanging belays look great in photos, but let’s face it, the novelty disappears pretty quickly. After a half hour of hanging in your harness, your legs go numb, your kidneys throb, and your patience of your partner’s slow, methodical technique begins to wear thin. There are a few things that you can do to reduce the suck, so before you go get on something with pitch after pitch of steepness and no ledges in sight, make sure your bag of tricks is nice and full.

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