Of all the rope skills required to guide at the “IFMGA level,” short-roping might be the most subtle, tricky, and difficult to master. Combine the ongoing calculus of the consequences of a fall versus likelihood of the same, speed versus safety, security versus client enjoyment…and your brain is like 21 hopped-up rats running on a treadmill, while your body’s trying to deliver on whatever fevered decisions you’re making on the fly. In short–it’s hard, potentially risky, and also invaluable.
Short-roping is an essential tool for any guide working in complicated terrain, be it snowy, rocky, or a combo of the two. It’s a safety technique that falls short of pitched-out, belayed climbing, but offers more security than coaching a client or demo’ing/modeling for him or her. Typically a guide will shorten up the rope by coiling it around her shoulder and leaving only a few meters of rope between herself and a client or two (occasionally, but less frequently three). The guide might wrap the rope around natural features or place the occasional nut/cam/screw for security, or perhaps take a braced stance and hold the rope right, body belay, or even give a true belay via Munter hitch or with a device. Short-roping allows the guide and client(s) to negotiate moderate terrain, thereby saving time and often offering better security (particularly on up-down, undulating, complicated terrain).
A guide short-ropes when a route is moderate enough that he can prevent a slip from becoming a fall. That said, it’s essential to keep slack out of the system for obvious reasons–if a client slips, gets some momentum and then shock-loads the guide’s grip on the rope…disaster is inevitable. Every few years we read of a guide and a client dying in a short-roping accident. So why do it?
Speed. Pitched-out, belayed climbing is relatively slow. On vertical or difficult terrain, this is obviously a must, as it offers appropriate security because a fall can be likely (on difficult terrain) and the consequences dire (vertical terrain, or ice and snow). Further, a guide will not be able to stop a client from falling down a vertical face, simply by holding the rope or perhaps looping it over a rock horn (though you’d be surprised just how much one can hold with natural features like horns and flakes!).
Imagine doing a 12-pitch route, graded 5.10. For many of those pitches it’s plausible/likely that a guide or client could fall off–so a strong belay from an anchored position is appropriate. When the hard climbing stops, though, it would be laborious, tedious, and potentially unsafe to pitch-out a bunch of 4th-class terrain at the top of a feature (think 1st Flatiron, getting to the rap on the Wind Tower, or the top bit of Kiener’s). If we pitched out terrain that we could otherwise motor through, perhaps we’d get benighted, stormed on, fatigued, etc…by slowing down and improving security, we create other potential problems. Short-roping lets us keep moving and do the downclimb in daylight, for example, or beat an approaching lightning storm, or just get in another route!
Security. Certain routes, like the “Standard East Face” of the 1st Flatiron (5.6), end up on a ridgeline–the terrain goes up in spots, then down in spots. I’ve seen very, very good climbers taking less experienced climbers up the 1st, then pitching out the ridge–this is not only slower than short-roping, it exposes their second to potentially disastrous falls with enormous pendulum/swing potential on the steps down/traversing sections. Rather than just stretching the rope across convoluted, up-down terrain, a guide can offer a belay from above on the numerous steps down, then move ahead and secure herself/the rope from above. The client is actually far safer moving like this, rather than just hoping not to fall on the short downclimbs.
By now you’ve probably guessed short-roping–like many other guiding tools–is applied at the guide’s judgment, making it impossible to set within a rules-based decision making framework. It takes a lot of practice to learn how to do it, and way longer to know when (and when NOT!) to use it. With that in mind, we were out today in a wet, soggy Eldorado Canyon, practicing on the “Quartzite Ridge” at the west end of the park. Markus Beck, IFMGA guide and owner of Alpine World Ascents, did a little guide training for me and Mike Arnold, another soon-to-be IFMGA aspirant (and an all-around nice guy). It was foggy, cool, and slicker than Dick Cheney in a national security briefing.
Markus has his short-roping dialed from many seasons taking clients up and down the Matterhorn, across the Eiger traverse, and a bunch of terrain Stateside. He’s my primary guide mentor and I’m lucky to get to pick his brain on short-roping and beyond. I led one lap up, doing my best to solve little guide problems as they arose and (much harder) to anticipate the terrain to come and have a game plan in my mind when we got there. In short, you’re trying to keep the flow going with short-roping, but on tough terrain and onsighting–it’s DIFFICULT. I felt better as they day went on, but man…it’s hard to know when to push it a little and when to play it conservative. It depends on your clients’ skills, the consequence of a fall versus the likelihood of it, and managing other problems (darkness, storms, fatigue, Markus’s Swiss “sense of humor”).
I’ll be taking my Rock Guide Course through the American Mountain Guides Association this fall, in Red Rocks, Nevada (I hope–I just sent my resume in and I’ve yet to hear if I’m officially “in”). It’s the rock equivalent of the ski course I did this spring in Valdez, Alaska. Red Rocks is notorious for its challenging descents–the terrain goes from desperate slabs to cruiser ramps to vertical rappels, all within 20 minutes. It’s essential to keep the group moving in such terrain, so transitions are paramount, as is the judgment to know when to short-rope, when to lower a client, when to set up a rappel, and when to sit down and whimper. Hopefully I won’t be doing much of the latter…
Short-roping is gorgeous, flowing, and efficient when done correctly…and downright infuriating when executed clumsily. I’m hoping I’m somewhere in between at present…and moving towards the right end of that spectrum throughout the upcoming weeks. Today was tough–slick rock, a tough little ridge, and onsighting had me on my heels quite a bit. Thanks to Markus, and my buddy and fell0w aspirant guide Mike Arnold, for getting out for a bit of training today!
