Originally Posted By: Pete
To a big extent this hypothetical discussion is a bit silly. But for me it's raised one obvious practical outcome ...

I've got 200 feet of static line sitting in my garage. So I'm going to coil it and move it to my truck where it's accessible, along with a harness, some carabiners, some slings, and a rappel device. If you are going to get a job done - you need to use the RIGHT tools. Pete #2


You also need the RIGHT training...Rappelling mistakes are more often then not, unforgiving and here is a perfect and very timely example of the consquences when rapelling goes wrong.

No matter what, David Cicotello knew he had to survive. Cicotello, 57, was stranded on a ledge in No Man's Canyon, in the rugged wilderness some 180 miles southeast of Salt Lake City. His climbing partner — 70-year-old brother Louis — laid motionless on the ground 100 feet below, having fallen while rappelling.

By the second day, the brothers were in the North Fork of No Man's Canyon. They rappelled 40 feet to the ledge in a crevice. There was 100 feet to go to the canyon bottom. The plan: Eat lunch after rappelling down, then walk an old horse trail back to the rim.
Louis set an anchor and fed rope through a rappel ring. And then went over the ledge. Moments later, the rope whipped through the ring and disappeared. David called out to his brother; there was no reply.


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Earth and sky, woods and fields, lakes and rivers, the mountain and the sea, are excellent schoolmasters, and teach some of us more than we can ever learn from books.

John Lubbock