Carabiner Cross Loading :(

Hello Steph,
I’m not sure how much time you have, and I am just an average climber seeking some advice about solo toproping. I hope you can help answer it for I value your experience.

I have been reading about solo top roping with a min traxion and have found your blog posting to be the best resource. http://www.highinfatuation.com/blog/talking-about-rope-soloing/ Thanks so much for putting it up and sharing. How do you prevent the oval lockers from cross loading as you’re climbing with the mini traxion. I’ve experimented a couple times and I keep being plagued by my biners rotating around on my harness. Any tips for how to prevent this. thanks.
Sincerely,
Keith Hayse-Gregson

Dear Keith,
I’m glad you’ve been experimenting with the system. In my experience, if you have created enough tension on the shoulder slings (which keeps the top, main mini-traxion moving up the rope with you), it won’t lay down sideways or spin sideways. Occasionally, at the bottom of the rope, when there is not as much downward pull from the rope, you have to pull the slack through by hand. In this case, it’s easy for the biners to spin a little. You can solve this by creating tension on the rope. Sometimes I put a piece of gear at the bottom of the route, clip the rope into that as a directional, and then hang some weight on the rope (by putting a clove hitch in the rope, and adding my hiking shoes, extra cams, water bottle). Just make sure to put the directional high enough so that the hanging weight has enough distance below it to not get pulled up and stuck when you are up higher. You will eliminate almost all of your problems by using a static rope instead of a dynamic rope for mini-traxioning. This makes a huge, huge difference, and is totally worth it.
As long as there is always tension in all the right places, and you keep the slack out of the system, your biners should stay up and down. Remember also, when done correctly, the actual forces applied to anything in this system are miniscule. Any “falls” are totally static, toprope “falls”–I could hardly call this a fall, but more like just bodyweight hanging on the rope. That amount of force is essentially nothing, compared to what the gear is built for. Since you have backups for everything, and the force is so tiny, you should be fine.
Good luck!
Steph