Rigging Pitches in Austria

Rigging pitches in Austria is a little different from rigging on a typical vertical trip in Yorkshire. For a start, the pitch may remain rigged for a whole expedition, so consideration has to be given not just to avoiding water in current conditions, but under much wetter conditions during a thunderstorm on the surface. The extra traffic on a rope over several weeks and the general sharpness of the rock mean that rubs must be even more assiduously avoided, and ropes checked for damage on each descent. Loose rock is much more of a hazard on pitches which have seen little or no traffic, and natural belays may be scarce or absent. On virgin pitches, new bolts must be placed in the hard rock, whilst on previously explored pitches, old anchors must be found and their safety assessed before screwing in new hangers.

Often, new pitches will be rigged "quick and dirty" for a first descent to see if they go anywhere, and then must be rigged to a much higher standard on a subsequent descent if exploration is to proceed beyond. Rerigging is also needed if the rope originally used was much too long or too short, as is frequently the case when descending unknown pitches.

Although progress is achingly slow, there are some bits of a CUCC-specific rigging chapter for this expedition handbook. So far we have:

Expedition Handbook: Rigging Guide
Rigging Guide: Introduction
Rigging Guide: Placing Bolts

As this doesn't coiver very much, we recommend you look at Sherry Mayo's Rigging for alpine SRT (Beta version). This is aimed at users in Australia, but is based on York and Oxford U.C.C. practices in the Picos de Europa (N.Spain), which is in many ways similar to Austria. If you are reading this page from a local disc or CD (rather than over the net from chaos) you may find that there is a local copy of this guide.

It is intended to add rigging guides to the descriptions for each pitch series in CUCC's major caves - these will be graphical, and based on sketch rigging guides currently in various survey and log books. Look for the symbol

Rigging Guide

Tina White approaching a typical rebelay in Austria - one of a series of illustrations which will eventually form part of this Expo Handbook section.