Iron_llama
Well-Known Member
If you don't like the secondary bridge for whatever reason, you could put the descender on a short tether to extend it. I climb in an RCH+Drey and have a couple of tethers girth-hitched to my belay loop; I put my friction hitch on my belay loop and my figure-8 on a (more or less) 18" tether. Prevents metal-on-metal noise, prevents 'carabiner confusion' provides enough standoff between autoblock and descender, and everything is on my centerline, accessible to either hand. With a compact enough autoblock you could get by with like a 6" tether on a friction ring.I started experimenting with an ATC to replace my 8 for descending and it tends the Prusik pretty well on the way up too.
But this combination of hitches would work really well with an 8 too, for spreading out the friction/adding redundancy. Schwabisch up top and an autoblock on linesman loop. Let go of either one and you stop. In pic is 100% not my original idea, but I like it so far. Privileged Bowhunter, somebody else posted his video recently, I can find it if interested, but more for an idea of both A and B from above with your 8. I’m also considering a secondary bridge below instead of linesman but it works fine as long as the autoblock isn’t holding all the weight. If it ends up that way you just dress your Prusik and release some from the autoblock.
I mean, probably. I'm not a safety expert or anything like that. If I'm suggesting something unsafe I trust somebody will correct me.