21 May 2005: Hocking Rappel / Ascending Weekend

Saturday and Sunday we went on another trip to southern Ohio. Our destination this time was Hocking Hills State park for a bit of rope work. We would be camping near by and get two days worth of rope ascending and descending practice using a variety of techniques. The strangest thing about the weekend was paying for camping though. And the site was sixteen bucks! I'm either camping for free or paying a lot less for a great little hostel or hotel somewhere in a foreign land.

Sunday we rigged the ropes at the highest cliff which was about a 120 foot rappel with about 110 feet of that being free hanging. I went back to using a rack for all the raps and ascended with the tried and true Texas prusik and the new-for-me frog system. I never realized how inefficient and slow prusikking up a rope can be. In an alpine or glacier environment climbers usually don't really have to climb very far. When I put on the frog, I flew up the rope. Quick and fun. I'm sold on using that for long rope climbs.