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The JRB Climbing Method

Hi John, thanks for the detailed response. I actually understood much of it, huzzah.
I appreciate you confirming the details of the calculation. It sounds like my original length estimate wasn’t that far off. But I was not confident that I was implementing the technique correctly.
I don’t know if that critter in your picture is a shooter, but he has a nice smile for the camera.
 
@gcr0003 and @Bowmanmike, thanks again for your input. The particular rope I have been hoping to purchase has been out of stock for weeks, but it rolled up as available literally while we were posting back-and-forth. So I pulled the trigger on 100 feet. I will live within whatever limitations that length offers.
 
@gcr0003 and @Bowmanmike, thanks again for your input. The particular rope I have been hoping to purchase has been out of stock for weeks, but it rolled up as available literally while we were posting back-and-forth. So I pulled the trigger on 100 feet. I will live within whatever limitations that length offers.
So i have one climbing system and 2 climbing methods. Let's take the discussion on this method, the hitch climbing to this thread: JRB Hitch Climbing

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JRB Hitch Climbing

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Thats 6 FEET of 6mm Sterling TRC to make a pair of 6 turn Double Meech loops. Tied on the 8mm Oplux. Feels really good. I haven't wet tested it yet though. On the 8mm Mammut Alpine Dry, which has a more course surface, I went with a five turn Double Meech. There's some feel involved, but you also just do a few climbs and see how much it slides. And there is such a thing as being too easy to break. Obviously, we don't want it to slip on when we're just sitting there.
4e51d015a17e1cdaf19eb80de86997d9.jpg
9ff8a0021e589b5552b010b9d6f84054.jpg


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@John RB - I have a question for you. When using your JRB climbing method, what length bridge do you find works best for your primary and secondary bridges?
 
@John RB - I have a question for you. When using your JRB climbing method, what length bridge do you find works best for your primary and secondary bridges?
My long bridge is a factory bridge on my Flex and i like it all the way out. It minimizes hip pinch. Add a Swivel and a beaner and an 8inch or so friction hitch and i can't reach any higher. My short bridge is constructed this way and i use 4ft, not 4.5 ft of cord now. I like the two beaners to be a good 18in or more apart. With no chance of them banging together.

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I was asked to provide details on how to set the rope for ascent and be sure the friction hitch will not get stuck in the tree crotch.

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So I was climbing on 8mm mammut with 5.5 mm beal cord yesterday for the first time. I checked the hitches at the bottom and they seemed to be gripping well. I put my weight on them and got a feel for the bounce or stretch of the dynamic rope. I put my Garda hitch with foot loop on and up the tree I went. I had no issues, I got to the top, switched to my figure 8 and down aI came. I really liked the feel of this system with the mammut dynamic rope and I thought the beal cord worked well too.

I wanted to make another video of me climbing JRB method (the right way) so I went and got my backpack and phone and went to ascend again. This time I ran into an issue. On my second move transitioning the Michoacán’s my left mich did not/would not catch. It appeared to catch and then when I sat down it slipped. I’m thinking that since I already descended on the rope that maybe it milked it down a little bit. It’s either that Ir the beal cordage was worn down too much even though it’s fairly new. Regardless of what caused the issue I had the scenario which would be very dangerous without something to holding both ropes equally. The Garda hitch did its job at holding the rope, however due to the stretch of the dynamic rope in combination with the mich on the left not catching, the Garda hitch pulled a bunch of slack out of one line and nothing out of the other (due to it slipping through the line). This bound up the Garda hitch beyond undoing without unweighting the main lines. I was able to attach my spare lanyard to the tree and take weight of the Garda. It was a pain to do but I got it unstuck and was able to attach my figure 8 and safely come to the ground. I would have had this all on video as a learning video except I was unable to see my phone while recording and it somehow switched from video to timelapse. I was kind of bummed about it because I think I narrated pretty well and It was a prime example of how things can go wrong and you need to be able to self rescue and descend.

That said, if you are to lose, wether by cut or by failure of a hitch to catch, you will unequally load the Garda. In my case with dynamic rope it loaded it much more (locked it down) since it continued to stretch and load the Garda hitch as the hitch slipped. If you found yourself in this scenario, how would you get out of it. My understanding of this system is that you do not carry a spare tether or lanyard so the scenario is, one mich fails completely and your Garda binds up (saves you but now you are stuck). What do you do?

Thanks!
 
So I was climbing on 8mm mammut with 5.5 mm beal cord yesterday for the first time. I checked the hitches at the bottom and they seemed to be gripping well. I put my weight on them and got a feel for the bounce or stretch of the dynamic rope. I put my Garda hitch with foot loop on and up the tree I went. I had no issues, I got to the top, switched to my figure 8 and down aI came. I really liked the feel of this system with the mammut dynamic rope and I thought the beal cord worked well too.

I wanted to make another video of me climbing JRB method (the right way) so I went and got my backpack and phone and went to ascend again. This time I ran into an issue. On my second move transitioning the Michoacán’s my left mich did not/would not catch. It appeared to catch and then when I sat down it slipped. I’m thinking that since I already descended on the rope that maybe it milked it down a little bit. It’s either that Ir the beal cordage was worn down too much even though it’s fairly new. Regardless of what caused the issue I had the scenario which would be very dangerous without something to holding both ropes equally. The Garda hitch did its job at holding the rope, however due to the stretch of the dynamic rope in combination with the mich on the left not catching, the Garda hitch pulled a bunch of slack out of one line and nothing out of the other (due to it slipping through the line). This bound up the Garda hitch beyond undoing without unweighting the main lines. I was able to attach my spare lanyard to the tree and take weight of the Garda. It was a pain to do but I got it unstuck and was able to attach my figure 8 and safely come to the ground. I would have had this all on video as a learning video except I was unable to see my phone while recording and it somehow switched from video to timelapse. I was kind of bummed about it because I think I narrated pretty well and It was a prime example of how things can go wrong and you need to be able to self rescue and descend.

That said, if you are to lose, wether by cut or by failure of a hitch to catch, you will unequally load the Garda. In my case with dynamic rope it loaded it much more (locked it down) since it continued to stretch and load the Garda hitch as the hitch slipped. If you found yourself in this scenario, how would you get out of it. My understanding of this system is that you do not carry a spare tether or lanyard so the scenario is, one mich fails completely and your Garda binds up (saves you but now you are stuck). What do you do?

Thanks!
Ok so, if your system is properly rigged, you can loosen or remove both of your friction hitches and you will be safely hanging from your garda hitch on your best friend Loop in your lower Bridge. You don't even need your feet in the stirrups. That Garda hitch will hold you and you can retie your friction hitches, if necessary adding another turn. Was that the case?

You cannot open a garda under load.

You have just given me a reason to provide more specific content. I will do so asap.

I will be offline for a while tonight... will reply asap.


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Ok so, if your system is properly rigged, you can loosen or remove both of your friction hitches and you will be safely hanging from your garda hitch on your best friend Loop in your lower Bridge. You don't even need your feet in the stirrups. That Garda hitch will hold you and you can retie your friction hitches, if necessary adding another turn. Was that the case?

You cannot open a garda under load.

You have just given me a reason to provide more specific content. I will do so asap.

I will be offline for a while tonight... will reply asap.


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That was the scenario in my case but instead of retying and continuing the climb I chose to recover by attaching a lanyard to the tree, unweighting the Garda and come down.

the question posed to you is if you lose a Michoacan completely and the Garda catches you, then what do you do? You often mention that you could cut a Michoacan and you would be completely safe by the Garda hitch. I don’t disagree as I experience yesterday,and so the question is once that happens how do you get down. Assume you can’t retie or recover the hitch for whatever reason.

no rush, everyone is busy. Hope to hear from you soon. Thanks for keeping up with this thread.
 
That was the scenario in my case but instead of retying and continuing the climb I chose to recover by attaching a lanyard to the tree, unweighting the Garda and come down.

the question posed to you is if you lose a Michoacan completely and the Garda catches you, then what do you do? You often mention that you could cut a Michoacan and you would be completely safe by the Garda hitch. I don’t disagree as I experience yesterday,and so the question is once that happens how do you get down. Assume you can’t retie or recover the hitch for whatever reason.

no rush, everyone is busy. Hope to hear from you soon. Thanks for keeping up with this thread.
Ok, so here's the situation: one friction hitch or the cord used to construct it has either broken or become damaged to the point ya can't use it. Note that if this happens in MRS/DdRT, your in big trouble, likely falling. However it went, when one is removed, your rope moves in the crotch a few inches until the tension is even on both sides and you are attached by your Garda and "best friend" which is attached to the redundant bridge. (Assuming your geometry is good, the footloop is adequately long that you can still step up off the best friend and onto it again when you need to. If it's not, you would need to untie the bottom part of it from a double loop into a longer, single loop... assuming you can get your foot out of it to begin with.) At this stage, we have a partially compromised system. Our risk profile is higher than it has ever been. We are in Uncharted Territory. We always should make a phone call even if we're going to proceed on our own.

System repair options:

Option 1: reach into your saddle bag and grab whatever your emergency cord is. Or emergency prusik loop. Tie that using your preferred friction hitch to repair the broken device. Any hitch will do provided that you could break it under load. If you can't break it under load, you can always pull up that boat clip that's on the end of your line and use it as a breaking device. As an absolute last resort, i always have a 96in web loop i use as a deer drag. It can be used to make a Bachmann with a spare beaner.

Option 2: pull the long side of your rope up from the ground. Using the last 4 feet, tie a knot to your main bridge and the end gets a Blake's hitch. If you understand what I'm saying, the last few feet of your rope become a Blake's hitch repair for the missing friction device.

Option 3: untie the surviving hitch. Carefully (dont drop it), construct a loop out of it with a secure bend, Hunters is fine. Form a Klemheist which grabs BOTH lines. (This is the same method that arborist use for foot locking). Clip into that with you main bridge.

Ok, no matter which option you chose, now you need to step up onto your foot Loop and slide your friction hitches up to take load and unload the Garda. Then remove garda and rappel as per normal.

‐----------
All of this is under the assumption that you don't have your system rigged for the next strap option. If you do, there are already a pair of spare friction hitches on the ground tied to your ends. You just pull one of those up and use it. Of course, you will need to untie it and retie it so it passes over the garda.

And the last option is one for the future: break the garda under load. How? I have a way. Let's save that.

Hmmm. I just thought of something. What do you think of this idea: one way to make sure that the users of the system always have a spare cord is to have them tie it onto the long side of their climbing rope when they first rigged their system. It will always be there just waiting for an emergency. I think it's better to have it tied onto the Rope then assume they still have it in their saddle bag. What do you think?

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Ok, so here's the situation: one friction hitch or the cord used to construct it has either broken or become damaged to the point ya can't use it. Note that if this happens in MRS/DdRT, your in big trouble, likely falling. However it went, when one is removed, your rope moves in the crotch a few inches until the tension is even on both sides and you are attached by your Garda and "best friend" which is attached to the redundant bridge. (Assuming your geometry is good, the footloop is adequately long that you can still step up off the best friend and onto it again when you need to. If it's not, you would need to untie the bottom part of it from a double loop into a longer, single loop... assuming you can get your foot out of it to begin with.) At this stage, we have a partially compromised system. Our risk profile is higher than it has ever been. We are in Uncharted Territory. We always should make a phone call even if we're going to proceed on our own.

System repair options:

Option 1: reach into your saddle bag and grab whatever your emergency cord is. Or emergency prusik loop. Tie that using your preferred friction hitch to repair the broken device. Any hitch will do provided that you could break it under load. If you can't break it under load, you can always pull up that boat clip that's on the end of your line and use it as a breaking device. As an absolute last resort, i always have a 96in web loop i use as a deer drag. It can be used to make a Bachmann with a spare beaner.

Option 2: pull the long side of your rope up from the ground. Using the last 4 feet, tie a knot to your main bridge and the end gets a Blake's hitch. If you understand what I'm saying, the last few feet of your rope become a Blake's hitch repair for the missing friction device.

Option 3: untie the surviving hitch. Carefully (dont drop it), construct a loop out of it with a secure bend, Hunters is fine. Form a Klemheist which grabs BOTH lines. (This is the same method that arborist use for foot locking). Clip into that with you main bridge.

Ok, no matter which option you chose, now you need to step up onto your foot Loop and slide your friction hitches up to take load and unload the Garda. Then remove garda and rappel as per normal.

‐----------
All of this is under the assumption that you don't have your system rigged for the next strap option. If you do, there are already a pair of spare friction hitches on the ground tied to your ends. You just pull one of those up and use it. Of course, you will need to untie it and retie it so it passes over the garda.

And the last option is one for the future: break the garda under load. How? I have a way. Let's save that.

Hmmm. I just thought of something. What do you think of this idea: one way to make sure that the users of the system always have a spare cord is to have them tie it onto the long side of their climbing rope when they first rigged their system. It will always be there just waiting for an emergency. I think it's better to have it tied onto the Rope then assume they still have it in their saddle bag. What do you think?

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I like the idea of the spare cord tied to the rope. Hard to misplace it or lose it that way. One would hope to never use it but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be prepared.


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On my second move transitioning the Michoacán’s my left mich did not/would not catch. It appeared to catch and then when I sat down it slipped.
Ok, so lets go back to the original problem: the Meech did not hold... How many wraps did you tie it with? Gotta photo? I would like to see it under load if possible. I don't have THAT cord, but do have some 5mm cord, and it holds well on any diameter rope I have hanging here.

And here is another idea.... probably should add this to a future video... I heard this from some arborists a long time ago and it gave me the idea to apply it to friction hitch tests: When an arborist puts a throwball way up at the top of a tree and gets a questionably strong anchor in the canopy, the old-school test was to set a rope and then have the weight of 2 climbers test load it with boots on the ground. The logic being: if it doesn't break during that test with 400 lbs on it, then its not gonna break with only 200 during the climb. Ok, then let use that same principle in testing our friction hitch. @gcr0003 wants to use a 5 wrap Meech, which will hold HALF his body weight on one side of a JRB or an MRS system. Ok, so to TEST that, before we climb on it, the test it needs to pass is that it actually needs to hold your FULL weight without sliding. Same rationale: if the test passes with double the normal load, it should be very reliable when the load is cut in half. So before you climb on it, you rig it up on the ground, just one strand, one hitch and give it your full weight. Move it, test it. And the true test is to WET it. I have often needed to add another turn on friction hitches after WET testing.
 
When you wet test, you dip the rope in a bucket of water? Spary with a hose?
I soak the entire rope in a bucket of water, saturating it. Then test it by sitting in it. Bounce. See if a small amount of finger pressure will get it to slip.

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So I was climbing on 8mm mammut with 5.5 mm beal cord yesterday for the first time. I checked the hitches at the bottom and they seemed to be gripping well. I put my weight on them and got a feel for the bounce or stretch of the dynamic rope. I put my Garda hitch with foot loop on and up the tree I went. I had no issues, I got to the top, switched to my figure 8 and down aI came. I really liked the feel of this system with the mammut dynamic rope and I thought the beal cord worked well too.

I wanted to make another video of me climbing JRB method (the right way) so I went and got my backpack and phone and went to ascend again. This time I ran into an issue. On my second move transitioning the Michoacán’s my left mich did not/would not catch. It appeared to catch and then when I sat down it slipped. I’m thinking that since I already descended on the rope that maybe it milked it down a little bit. It’s either that Ir the beal cordage was worn down too much even though it’s fairly new. Regardless of what caused the issue I had the scenario which would be very dangerous without something to holding both ropes equally. The Garda hitch did its job at holding the rope, however due to the stretch of the dynamic rope in combination with the mich on the left not catching, the Garda hitch pulled a bunch of slack out of one line and nothing out of the other (due to it slipping through the line). This bound up the Garda hitch beyond undoing without unweighting the main lines. I was able to attach my spare lanyard to the tree and take weight of the Garda. It was a pain to do but I got it unstuck and was able to attach my figure 8 and safely come to the ground. I would have had this all on video as a learning video except I was unable to see my phone while recording and it somehow switched from video to timelapse. I was kind of bummed about it because I think I narrated pretty well and It was a prime example of how things can go wrong and you need to be able to self rescue and descend.

That said, if you are to lose, wether by cut or by failure of a hitch to catch, you will unequally load the Garda. In my case with dynamic rope it loaded it much more (locked it down) since it continued to stretch and load the Garda hitch as the hitch slipped. If you found yourself in this scenario, how would you get out of it. My understanding of this system is that you do not carry a spare tether or lanyard so the scenario is, one mich fails completely and your Garda binds up (saves you but now you are stuck). What do you do?

Thanks!
I have experimented with friction hitches and after a few instances where they locked up and a few where they slipped, I gave up before I was injured.. Metal devices were invented for a reason, otherwise rock climbers would still be using only friction hitches. I will gladly carry the extra weight to increase safety.
 
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