Hauling with a mechanical advantage

By Heinz (Henry) Wurzer, Munich, Germany

especially when light-weight persons are involved in the climbing, the best is to use 2 static lines and a 2:1 pulley system. that means, the load to haul is 50 %. For example. 80 kgs to haul means to haul really 42 kg (really pulley factor = abaut 1,8), which can be done by everyone on a big wall. a very light person can counterweight-haul all that stuff, but needs a 4th rope (which is the 2n lead line) as a rappel-line and jug-line in order to control and balance out weight (not to shot down).

the advantage is to half the load, the disadvantage is on a straight 60 m distance you have to haul 120 m of rope. but it is definitely better to haul in more rope that get sucked and exhausted on the weights. another advantage is the emergency case: used to the 2:1 pulley system you can bring up an unconcious or severly damaged partner to the belay or on the portaledge in a reasonable speed.

for a lighter person it is much more energy saving to do more light body hauls than to less body hauls with hell weight on it, watch your waist and skin under your harness after finishing such a iron-man hauling work.

here it pays to have a good strategy to do hauling on every 2nd pitch, if possible.

but there is another point to watch carefully: the pulley roll at the haulbags (2 rope going up) must be soundly protected against servere rock contact and the force applied on it. here helps the 2-slot-rappeling device put over the pulley roll protecting it.

the setup is as follows (top-down): fix one static line (blue or red colour) on belay, second static line (white) goes thru wallhauler on belay. pulley-protection (best metal rappel-device) pulley-roll ropes thru pulley, connection knot (protected with plastic bottle neck or equal) on rope going up to the wallhauler locking biner swivel (if available) locking biner haul stuff (bags, portaledge etc.)

start hauling with body or by counterweight after 60 m hauled rope the bags are 30 m higher (jug up in case of counterweighting). arrange system to change ropes on wallhauler due to the knot showing up. don't get lost of the first static line continue same method hauling.

it s not to mention that to much foce applied in case of encountering a stop during hauling may lead to disaster (broken pulley-roll, severe damaged haulbags or getting lost of all the stuff). better be too careful in that situation.

when is it appropriate to apply the 2:1 system ? a) hauling stuff has more than 40 kgs b) hauling over slabs or other terrassed terrrain increasing the load by a friction factor up to 1,6

i personally applied this system when climbing with my wife (55 kgs). due to her little weight she never had problems jugging up 2 times and enjoyed counter-weight hauling. in my case I applied body hauling on the 2:1 system applying a body force for 30-40 kgs on a load of 60 to 80 kgs.

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