I'd Rather Be Canyoneering
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I'd Rather Be Canyoneering
Katie's Canyon Warm-up
Get your mind and body in canyon mode before your next outing with Katie's canyon warm-up!
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Hey everyone. Thanks for joining us. I'm Katie
Carma:and I'm Carma and you're listening to, I'd rather be canyoneering.
Katie:We're best friends who totally geek out about canyon rigging and beautifully slot canyons. Basically we'd always rather be canyoneering. But when we can't, we spend every spare minute, we have talking about it.
Carma:This podcast is for entertainment purposes only. Please seek professional instruction and practice technical skills in a controlled environment before entering slot canyons. Your safety is entirely your own responsibility.
Katie:Welcome to our canyon crew!
Carma:Katie, you're getting ready for a trip like tomorrow, right?
Katie:Yeah, I'm getting my gear together and, um it actually made me think I've gotta text karma because there's this new thing I'm doing called a canyon warmup and I have to share it with you, so I just texted it to you. So check out this list with me. this came to me while I was in Costa R. It had been a really hectic time getting down there. There had been this ice storm and the airports changed our flights by three days, and I had to reorganize my entire travel plans and canyon plans. We got in at like midnight instead of noon, and then I had to go back to the rental car place at 6:00 AM and then drive out and, and meet people for the canyons first thing in the morning. So we're driving at like 6:00 AM and it was a nightmare to start. Ugh. And I got into my first canyon and I stepped up to the first repel anchor and went to set it up, and my brain just went blank for a second, and I was like, Hey, Johann, why don't you rig this first one and I'll double check you because it takes a second to flip into canyon mode when you've been in such logistical planning mode. And I realized, it could be really beneficial to get my hands on my gear the night before or the morning before. And so I put together this list of like 10 to 20 things to just do with my hands the night before or the morning of to get into canyon mode and just like connect my body and my mind and make sure that my body and my mind are on the same page. To me. It's like I kind of pulled from my days of soccer.
Carma:Yeah.
Katie:I would never start a game without doing a warmup lap and taking some shots on goal and just like getting my mind and my body working together. And that's kind of what inspired.
Carma:Yeah, that makes sense. Especially since it's winter right now. And it's been a crazy winter in Utah and a lot of us haven't gotten out very much into the canyons lately. And so there's things that we've maybe done a hundred times, but it's been a while since we put our hands on our gear and actually, you know, like tied to knot.
Katie:So what I'm doing tonight is I am stepping up to my practice bolts. I have a Freestone Rems board downstairs. There's also practice bolts that are magnetic, that you can stick to a car or your fridge, or, uh, you could also hang a piece of webbing from a carport. I've got that out back when it's not snowing. So you can do any of those things. Grab your gear and hang a rope, and here's the list. The canyon warmup list starts with locking off your repel device. Then I tie a friction hitch for a hands-free backup, also known as a third hand. You know, I'm the first person down, especially, then I tie a water knot, also known as a ring bend. Next, do something for a single point anchor. So this is when you're gonna tie an anchor around an object like a tree. You could do a single wrap. You could do a basket, a wrap, two pole one, tons of options here, whichever one you want to try or to practice is good. Then a clove hitch, then a figure eight on a bite for rescue loops. Then an alpine butterfly to isolate a core shot or a damaged section of rope. Next, do a knot for joining rope. So this could be, for example, a figure eight, bend a double fisherman, some version of an E D K, whatever your favorite is. Then I'll rig some sort of releasable rigging. So maybe a compact, secure, or maybe an E M O, maybe a totem. Whatever it is you wanna use this time around. Next, I just run through my whistle signals. I like the international system. It goes in order of most important and most used first. So one is stop or attention. Two is off rope, three is lower rope, and four is take up rope. Then I do a mariners's hitch for rescues, and then I tie some courtesy rigging or a frost knot. Same thing. And especially if you're going to a place where there's going to be a lot of courtesy rigging, like over in Capital Reef, then you'll wanna at least look at it and recognize. Then I'll do some sort of mechanical advantage. I like to do a three to one and then convert it to a five to one, but a three to one's. Really basic. If you wanna just start there, it just takes aole and a tip block. Then the last ones here are a little more involved. And if you don't have a weighted anchor, you can either stop here or just put the items on the rope instead of actually getting on rope and pulling the bolts outta your wall. But, uh, the last ones here are to practice the setup for a self rescue, the setup for ascending the sequence for passing a. And then last, if you're using any specialty equipment on this trip that you haven't pulled out for a while, pull that out. And that's it. I absolutely recommend this list to anyone who's going out, and especially if they're gonna be leading a group. What do you think?
Carma:that's a comprehensive list, but I think if you have all the gear on hand, you can do it pretty quickly. All of those steps. And if you don't remember one, you might just need to watch a video to refresh yourself, and that's the whole point, right? To get ready to go.
Katie:And I wanted it to be fairly comprehensive so that I'm not just going, oh yeah, I remember everything. It's like, no, wait, there's one. Oh yeah. Let me go look at that courtesy rigging again, I, I haven't been in Capital Reef in a while and it, it's supposed to catch me up and say, Hey, get your hands on this. Make sure that everything is in a confident place,
Carma:Yeah, and especially if you're leading two, you want to be able to check other people's stuff and be able to visualize things really quickly. So if something's like funky in the canyon, you'd be able to tell. Because you just reviewed it
Katie:Right, and if something doesn't look right, you can kind of think of why it doesn't look right.
Carma:So Katie, can you tell me just a little bit more about each of the items on this list,
Katie:yeah, so let's run through'em one by one and talk a little bit more about them. And then this is also another good chance if somebody wants to do it along with us, they can be doing these while we're talking about the details. So starting again at the top of the list. Number one is locking off your rappel device. Make sure that you know your own lock off. I like to look up whatever the manufacturer actually recommends. And then maybe if someone's bringing a device in your group that you don't use all the time, then look up that lock off as well. Somebody I know just bought a ridiculous squirrel, which is like the only lock off. I don't know. And now I have to go look it up and I might need to buy a squirrel just so that I can also do that lock off and practice it.
Carma:Hmm? What? Me? No.
Katie:Yeah. Right? Mm-hmm. So, or you can teach it to me.
Carma:Yeah, I can teach it to you. Like you said, Katie, it's nice to have the actual P d F from the manufacturer of how to do it. I recently found all the PDFs for the common canyoning devices and I downloaded them to my phone locally so that I could bring it with to a practice session with my friends, cuz I knew that. There were a bunch of different devices that people had, and I don't have them all memorized, and that way people could refer to them and I just have them on hand all the time, and I can double check their work and make sure they're doing it correctly.
Katie:We should put that in the show notes too.
Carma:Yeah. I will.
Katie:That'd be awesome. Number two is a hands-free backup. Like I said, this is also known as a third hand. This is to back you up if you were to lose control for any reason while repelling. So It's particularly helpful if you're the first person down. Um, go ahead and practice your favorite method. I really like the Velda 10 Trust and an auto block. Those are kind of my two that I use the most often. The Velda 10 trusts is really cool because it's releasable under load, and so I like that one when I'm rigging it above my repel. Because it can take the full load of my body and still release really nicely. And that also makes it easy to tie off my critter when it's all above up there. But there's times when I don't want it above and I want to be able to come down, uh, with a free hand to maneuver around. And that's maybe when I tend towards the auto block below my device with an extended repel. So kind of think through a few of those things when you're deciding what hands-free backup you wanna practice with. Or maybe you wanna have a couple in your belt.
Carma:Yeah, I like having more than one option so that I can pick the best one for that particular repel that I'm at. And we've talked about it extensively, which one is the best? And we have not been able to narrow it down to one. There's there's more than one good option.
Katie:Yeah, start with one and then expand your toolkit.
Carma:The next one you have on your list is the water knot, also called a ring bend. That's the primary knot that people tie into webbing for anchors. So that's something that even if you don't know how to tie it yet, you can still get familiar with inspecting it, making sure that it's got long enough tails and that the tails are going out different directions and that you've checked that all your webbing is good and hasn't been, torn up.
Katie:Yeah, know how to tie that knot. You've got your hands on some webbing so you know what, good webbing should feel like. You know, we're connecting that mind and body here. You know that it shouldn't feel crunchy, it shouldn't feel like it has rough spots, and you'll be the one checking to make sure that no mice have chewed through it either. Next up we have single point anchors. Like I said, this one is when you've got a strong. Object that you're tying the anchor around. So maybe it's a, a solid tree or a big boulder, a big chalk stone, something like that. And there's a lot of ways to do this. A simple wrap, you see that a lot where you just tie a water knot and it has a wrap heat or a quick link on it. And if you kind of practice thinking about, oh yeah, if I put that knot on the back side of the tree, that's cool. If you wanna start looking at some of these, like a basket is one where you have a loop and you put it around a single point, and then you pull those two loops together and put a ring through'em. That's another option. And then there's a few where you have multiple wraps, so maybe it's a wrap two, poll one or a wrap three, poll two. These are ones that you might be trying to add redundancy or some other element, but go ahead and practice the ones that you know, maybe all the ones that you know, or maybe just the ones that, you feel like you need a refresh.
Carma:Next on the list is the clove hitch. So you wanna practice tying that and being able to inspect it. Most of the time we use releasable rigging now, so we honestly don't use our clove hitches as much anymore. But for a lot of people, it's the primary way that they rig. They put a clove hitch on a carabiner and set up a block. And even if you aren't gonna use it for that purpose, a clove hitch is really useful for putting someone straight into the anchor. And you wanna make sure that when it's tied, that it's dressed well.
Katie:Yeah, no sloppy knots.
Carma:yeah, if it's sloppy, it's gonna slip. So make sure that when someone does tie a clove hitch that it's tightened down and ready for someone to put weight on it. And whenever you're setting up a block, whether it's static or releasable, you have the option to also safety it off so you can take, a bite of rope. On the pull side and tie a figure eight on a bite and clip a carabiner to that, and then clip that up to the anchor so that if by accident someone were to try to repel on the wrong side of the rope, that they, they won't fall, right? It'll hold them. So That's one use for figure eight on a bite. Another use for figure eight on a bite is when you need to drop a loop to someone for a rescue situ.
Katie:Very useful. Then number seven is our alpine butterfly, to isolate a core shot or a damaged piece of rope. and a lot of climbers and cavers are gonna be familiar with this too. So if you're repelling down and you come up to a piece that has a big old slice in it and it's not safe to repel past that, then you can isolate it with an alpine butterfly. What I started doing to practice the alpine butterfly is I actually have the middles marked on a lot of my ropes, and so I actually take that middle mark and pretend that it's the core shot, and then I can get familiar with how to make sure that that part ends up out in the alpine butterfly loop. I, I do the hand wrap one and I put it in the center of my hand wraps, and then that way I'm pulling that center piece and that's what ends up being my loop. It's a really cool way to practice that and make sure you're actually able to grab a core shot and isolate it and know where it is in the rope.
Carma:And when you need to use an alpine butterfly, it's probably gonna be a really stressful situation. You really need to have just that muscle memory so you can bust that out when you need it. And kind of the same thing with locking off your device when you need it. It's going to be stressful. You need to have it memorized. It needs to be able to just happen. And I promise you. If you're trying to help somebody else who needs to lock off, like they need to know it ahead of time, you're not gonna be able to teach it to them on the fly. I promise. I have tried
Katie:Oh no.
Carma:I've tried. Yeah, someone's partially down a repel, and I'm trying to teach them how to lock off and I can't touch their rope and they don't know what I'm talking about. I promise it's not gonna happen. So learn it before you go.
Katie:Good insight. Number eight is our knot for joining ropes, and there's a lot of knots for joining ropes. So again, this is dealer's choice. The common ones are the Figure eight Bend. The double fisherman or some variation of the E D K, which is a flat overhand bend or a stacked overhand. The figure eight bend is probably the most recognizable for people cuz it looks like the climbers ate knot. But you're actually connecting two ropes. It's a little bigger, so it can get stuck a little bit more easily. And you also shouldn't do it with ropes of different diameters. consider what ropes you're taking down in the canyon with you before you choose you're knot that you're gonna need to join the rope. I like a double fisherman as well. That one kind of rolls nicely over things. It's a little smaller and doesn't get stuck as much, but it's also really difficult to untie after it's been weighted. So a friend of mine suggested tying a square knot in the middle and then the double fisherman on the outside. I do that. You guys can experiment with what works for you. There's also the e d. And I prefer to do the stacked version of that. And that asymmetry about the E D K allows it to go over edges really easily, and it really doesn't tend to get stuck. So these are all choices and variations. Research the ones that you wanna look at. Learn the nuances of each of them so that you know what you're specifically looking for. To dress that not properly and to make sure it's absolutely right. But these are some of the common variations you might.
Carma:Sweet. Yeah. The next thing you wanna practice is your releasable rigging of choice. Again, there's. A lot of options
Katie:Right, tons.
Carma:if you want to review some of the options that we have talked about before, you can go back and listen to episodes two and three to find out more detail. But kind of some of our go-tos are figure eight blocks, like the compact, secure and the E M O, and then maybe like a totem block. You also have twin system options like adjuster or a joker. So maybe pick one or two favorites. And practice rigging them and then go through the sequence of releasing them so that you are confident in your ability to do that in the canyon if you need to.
Katie:Great. Number 10 is whistle signals. And this is really helpful for canyons where there's loud waterfalls or even just places where there's a lot of wind karma, and I ran into that.
Carma:Yeah, we were in Vegas and it was crazy windy. We could not hear anything that people at the bottom of the rappel were saying, and on a lot of the rappels, we couldn't see them either.
Katie:Yeah, cause it was such a twisty, winding canyon and I remember it was cold and we were trying to avoid the icy water and there's like one repel where I wanted to tell you to give me more rope because. I wanted to avoid the water. There was a walk off, off to the side, and I needed enough rope to get you safely over to that walk off, and I wanted to just tie it off to a tree so that you just had kind of a line that led you over there. So I was able to whistle for more rope, and then when people started coming down, I was able to whistle for attention and have them, oh, oh, there you are. You know, they, I couldn't tell them before the repel what they needed to do, but they saw me and came to me. So that worked really well.
Carma:Yeah, it was super useful.
Katie:Yeah, so I like the international system the best because I feel like some of the other systems are a little harder for me to listen to short blasts and long blasts. So I like this one. It puts the items in order of importance and how often they're used. one is stop or attention. Two is off rope. We use that a. Three is lower rope. So this is really useful in aquatic canyons where you set the rope short and then add some on purpose. And then four is take up the rope. You just gave me way too much. And then anything five or more is emergency. Things are freaking out. So I love this system. The only thing that sometimes comes up is that people get confused between number three and number four but I did figure out a really cool way to teach this to someone, and that is karma. If you wanted to lower the rope, hold up a W with your fingers.
Carma:Okay.
Katie:How many whistle blows is that? Yep, you're holding up three fingers for three whistle. So lower rope is three, and if you can remember that, or you hear three whistle blows and you hold up three fingers and you see the W for lower, then you can figure out by process of elimination what the four is.
Carma:Nice. Yeah. Okay. I'm totally gonna use that.
Katie:mind and body together. Hold up those fingers.
Carma:Yeah. And none of the other ones have a W in any of the words, so that helps you remember.
Katie:Exactly. Those are like the top 10 and those are the ones you can run through really quickly. We're gonna jump into the last few here. And these are, like we said, a little bit more advanced, but they're also really good.
Carma:The next one on the list is the Mariner's hitch. The Mariner's hitch is super useful. For quick lifts and to convert a static block to a releasable block in a rescue situation. So if that is one of the things that's your go-to for rescuing, then you should grab your long sling and practice tying that.
Katie:Great. The number 12 is courtesy rigging, and that's a Frost Knot and even if you don't know how to tie it, Maybe just look at a picture so that you recognize it and how to use it in a canyon. It looks like a cute little bow tie at the end of the webbing. And it's used to allow an anchor to be pulled up short for the first few repellers, and then extended for a harder repel for the last person, but a much easier pull so you don't stick your rope. So just take a look at what that looks like or practice tying.
Carma:And that last person gets to ride the ride, right? They, they have to do the awkward repel. That's usually you, Katie.
Katie:Oh man, I've been on so many awkward ponies. Yeah,
Carma:I'm usually next up, but, um, yeah.
Katie:we'll put you on the chopping ma Luck.
Carma:All right.
Katie:13 is mechanical advantage, and that would be for rescue situations from the top. Don't let mechanical advantage overwhelm you. Do not get lost in the forest for the trees. I'm just gonna throw out two that I think you can start with. And they build really nicely on each other and they use minimal gear, With one pulley and one rope grab, like a tip lock. You can build a three to one system. And that's where I think everyone should start. And I swear, I just wanna like make a sticker of the three to one, because more than trying to remember tensions or pulling or this or that, if you can just like picture oh, it's a table like and a pulley. I can see it. For me, I just see it and I know it's right. I don't even have to explain it in my brain. So the three to one is the basic one, and then you can build off of that into a five to one, and that's really nice. Or you could convert it to a nine to one, whatever you wanna do, but just start where you are and just try to get more familiar with these things.
Carma:Yeah, I remember when we were learning different mechanical advantages and rescue systems, it got like so mixed up in my brain of like, which one do I use when? And I really had to go through and sort it out. But like you said, just focus on learning that three to one first, and you can build everything else off of that.
Katie:Yeah,
Carma:Next up is your setup for self rescue. Self rescuing is anytime that you have an issue with your rappel device and you need to unweight it for some reason. Maybe it's your hair is caught or your backpack strap is caught, and you need a way to get your weight off of your rappel device. So in order to do a self rescue sequence, you're gonna need to take a rope grab and put it on the rope above your repel device, and then you'll attach your foot loop to that. And then when you stand up in your foot loop, you're gonna use your tether. or your personal anchor system to clip in short to that rope grab so that you can then sit on your tether and take the weight off of your rappel device and fix whatever funky thing is going on with it.
Katie:Super great skill. Much better than someone getting out a knife and getting crazy around the rope. Let's not do that.
Carma:Let's not be cutting anything when we're hanging on a tight.
Katie:Yeah, so just a much better option. And if for some reason you cannot continue to go down, you might have to ascend, and this might happen if your rope's too short and you didn't rig releasable, or it might happen. If there's just something down in a pothole you don't wanna get in there with, maybe it's icy or there's a log jam that you feel like is dangerous and you need to go rethink things,
Carma:Or a snake,
Katie:or a rattlesnake,
Carma:or a snake.
Katie:um, lots of things that could be going on down there. Practice your ascending setup. If you can wait it, great. If not, just put the items on, or refer to a picture. If you're gonna use like a frog system, go ahead and look up a picture of what that looks like, so you just know where everything goes.
Carma:And if you just did your self rescue system, usually the next step after doing that is the rest of ascending. So start one and you can lead right into the other.
Katie:Perfect. And what goes right along with that is also passing a knot. It's all part of the same, you know, reversing, moving around on the rope sequencing, so you can look up the sequence for passing a knot and do it with the same gear right here. It's very much like ascending
Carma:Yeah.
Katie:in reverse.
Carma:Lastly, you wanna look at any specialty equipment you think you might need to use in the canyons. So if you're running a canyon that needs like a sand trap or a fiddles stick or maybe a potshot or something like that, go over setting that up and how you pull that down. I mean, he probably won't be able to practice that in your living room, but as long as you remind yourself how it's supposed to go. These specialty items are things that you don't necessarily use in every canyon. so if you're planning to use one of those, review. Before you head out.
Katie:So specialty equipment makes me think back to our college days when we are looking at those graphs in our recreation management risk management classes, and you're looking at high frequency, high risk activities like repelling. You are doing something that is highly risky, but you're doing it a lot, so you're really well practiced at it versus something that is highly risky and really low frequency, that is the most dangerous thing you can be doing. Just getting those out, practicing'em, looking at all the details of things you need to remember to be careful about. Like, I think about a sand trap and, when you're milking that sand trap, you could be creating a core shot in your rope. So you need to protect the rope, just like little nuancey detail things that I need to just go back and, oh, yeah, did I remember to bring something to protect the rope? If I'm using a sand trap, oh, in my box with my fiddle stick stuff, I a guide draw with two locking carabiners. You know, just like, do I have everything? Do I have all the nuances that go with this gear?
Carma:Yeah.
Katie:And then you can be safe with your specialty equipment.
Carma:Cuz if you just don't do it as much, you're more likely to forget, a step. It takes that risk level much higher if it's already a risky activity and you haven't done it in a long time. So do your warmup lap and be prepared.
Katie:exactly. And that's the end of the list. So To recap, I love my pre canyon warmup and I can quickly go through these things. You know, there's less than 20, so you can run through it pretty easily. And just make sure your mind and your body are in the same place.
Carma:For sure, and it's okay if you don't know everything on this list, like we said before, maybe just practice all the ones you do know, skip the ones you don't, and then pick one of the ones that you don't know as well to. Be your next thing that you're gonna learn. You can ask your team leader to show you how to do something that you were unsure about so that you can keep increasing your skills. We're always trying to learn new things and refresh the things that we thought we knew.
Katie:Yeah, and it's good to do this while you're still at home with wifi reception, access to your books, things like that before you're in the canon going, oh, I can't just look this up right now.
Carma:Right. Yeah, we'll definitely put a link to Katie's Canyon warmup into the show notes so that if you wanna print out your own copy to review as you're getting your gear out and packing for your trip, then you can have that on hand. Or you can just pull up this episode and push play again and do it along with us while we're talking.
Katie:And actually I'd love to put together a video for folks to watch this and do it with me. I don't know when I'll get around to that, but that is something that I would love to do at some point.
Carma:So stay tuned. It's in the works. And Katie, thanks for sharing with us. This is great, and I hope you have a fun weekend.
Katie:Oh, awesome. Thanks. I will. Take care.
Carma:If you're totally hooked on canyoneering like us, remember to subscribe, so you don't miss any episodes and you can also reach out to us on Facebook. with questions, comments, topics you wanna talk about, or just to say, Hey, cuz We would love to hear from you. Thanks for dropping in with us and we'll catch you on the wrap side.
