What do you do when you're rappelling a halfed rope and you run out of rope on one side?

Question

So this happened the other day; shouldn't have happened if I had been taking my time and paying attention to what I was doing, but it did:

I was cleaning several ropes from the top of a short crag after a session of climbing with a small group. After cleaning the last top rope anchor, I quickly pulled the one end of the rope up so I could feed it through the rappel ring on the belay station and rap down instead of hiking out. I was rushing a bit because everyone else had already walked off except one person, and truth be told I didn't have much on me at the time (long story short, I was climbing barefoot in a variation of one of these, and didn't bring a descender with me). So I fed the rope through the ring, dropped the end back down, quickly tied a munter and jumpped off the overhanging top. I got about a halfway down when I noticed that one of the ends of my rope wasn't touching the ground... In fact it was probably about 10-15ft above the ground. After rolling my eyes and chastising myself for being so careless, I had to decide what to do in order to prevent myself from running out of rope and taking a fall (I was free hanging and a good ways away from the wall).

Obviously, I should have confirmed my rope was on the ground and knotted the ends, but what I should have done couldn't help me after it was too late.

I know this is something that can happen when descending on two different sized ropes that are doubled up, because the smaller diameter rope will go through your device faster that the larger rope, and ergo come up short when you get to the bottom.

Despite whatever circumstance may put you in this situation, what is the proper way to get out of it?

Answer 1

One thing you can do if there isn't too much friction in your rope, is lock off the short side of the rope, and continue to descend on the long side.

With the short end locked off, you can lower yourself on the other end as if you have yourself on top-rope. Do this until the short end is touching the ground, then you can continue to descend as normal.

This method only works effectively if you're descending off of a rap ring, it's not guaranteed to work in all situations.

Answer 2

I am sure that's not what you want, but from the exact situation you describe, there is another pretty simple (though still more involved than @ShemSegers variant) solution based on this:

[...] everyone else had already walked off except one person [...]

Tell this person to pick up the end that is on the ground and to take you on belay. Even if he doesn't have any gear, instruct him how to use a rock/tree/... for "belaying". Attach yourself to the short end as closely to the munter as possible. Then if you can unload the rope for a short time, do that and untie the munter. If you don't, you need to make a foot sling from the excess rope to do the same. After that you are let down to the ground by your belayer.

StrongBad brought up the point of unsuitable rappel wrings that may break from the rope friction: I have never seen a rappel ring like this and can't imagine any metal being abraded to the point of breaking by one slow descent of 3m. However I do hear some scary stories of material in place on the other side of the great pond, so who knows :P

Answer 3

Basically this is almost the textbook worst case scenario lacking only on not being hurt, completely alone in the dark and bad weather.

To summarize the situation you have a piece of rated webbing you are using as a harness, a single locking carabiner and the rope. The rope is running through a rap ring of unknown strength.

While you could try and adjust the lengths of the ropes, the problem is that they need to be unweighted to do it safely because many rap rings can wear through if a weighted rope is pulled through them. Things are even worse since you are using a Munter because if you hold one strand fixed and allow the long strand to move this can saw through the rope. You could attempt to have the strands move at different rates, but this would still cause the weighted rope to run through the rap ring. If you wait until you are very close to the end of the rope, then if you do saw through the rope or rap ring, the fall will not be very far (and you may even make it to the ground). If you do this, make sure you hike back to the top and replace the potentially compromised rap ring.

Depending on the exact heights, you might be able to safely rap off the end of the ropes. If the end of the rope is only 10 feet up, your feet will only be 7 feet above the ground when you get to the end of the rope. Hopefully with the additional rope stretch you would make it (or at least be close enough to not get injured in the drop). Being bare foot adds to the risk.

The best option is to go up and not down. You can ask the person on the ground to tie some extra gear onto the long end of the rope (a couple of slings and carabiners is all you need). That said, you have enough gear to rescue yourself since you are using a swiss seat harness made from webbing (if you were in a modern harness and alone, I think you are screwed).

The key is to use the webbing from your harness to create a klemheist and the carabiner from the Munter to ascend the rope. Of course you have to first free up the webbing. To get the webbing, you need to create a second swiss seat harness from the running end of the rope. Then use some extra rope to saw through the webbing harness (bet you wish you had a small knife). Depending on how tight the second swiss seat is, you will fall a little. All of these steps could be eliminated if you had a piece of webbing or cord (maybe from your chalk bag).

Once you have the webbing make a klemheist and a foot loop (if needed, use some more rope). Push the klemheist high, step up, clip in with the carabiner, sit down, repeat. You should tie in short frequently since otherwise when you open the carabiner to reclip in, you will be out of the system (a second carabiner would be super helpful here).