Courtesy Rigging

Probably the best stopgap solution for rope grooves

Spry Canyon in Zion NP. The poster child of the result of American Southwest wrongheaded anchoring practices. In the photo, you can see the Courtesy rigging in Courtesy Mode . Last person unhooks the orange HMS carabiner, and lets the master point get past all those rope grooves.

In the absence of well placed bolts, Courtesy Rigging is probably the best stopgap solution for clean rope pulls, and stop rope groove damage in canyons.

Recently, Courtesy Rigging came into the radar as a topic of discussion.

After years of watching courtesy rigging anchors cut, knotted and botched in other ways, I figured that the technique had failed to gain adoption.

Five Years

It looks like many things in canyoneering have about five year cycles. Like people entering and leaving the sport, and different kinds of rigging getting adopted. For rigging, the cycle looks something like:

• Some rigging enters a community range of awareness.

• Gets dismissed as not necessary, or too complicated.

• Gets adoption in silence by members that see the value.

• The “too complicated” types revisit the rigging and try to put a “bow” on it to call it their own and adopt it.

• This cycle usually takes around five years.

CR: Courtesy Rigging.

In the American Southwest, where communities have fought well placed bolted anchors for decades, dirty rope pulls, rope grooves and stuck ropes have become part of the course. To solve all these self-inflicted wounds, people have come up with inventive ways to alleviate these problems. Courtesy Rigging is one of the ways to avoid dirty rope pulls, rope grooves, and stuck ropes.

How?

Dirty rope pulls, rope grooves and stuck ropes are the result of a Master Point (MP) that is too far back from the rappel edge. In order to avoid this, you can move the MP so it is visible from the bottom of the rappel. But this results in a very awkward rappel start. Courtesy Rigging introduces the concept of a Courtesy Point (CP) to retain easy rappel starts, and the last person switches from the CP to the MP for an easy rope pull, but a difficult rappel start.

How does it look?

For someone not familiar with CR, it looks like webbing on a natural anchor that is way too long and close to the edge, and one strange extra loop (the Courtesy Point CP).

Classic CR: Frost Knot at the anchor creates a Courtesy Point (CP). Overhand on a bight, creates the normal Master Point (MP)

Confusion

People not familiar with CR, end up cutting it, and installing a regular far back anchor that keeps damaging the canyon, or...they throw a bunch of extra knots to shorten the CR.

CP - Courtesy Point is at the tree, and MP - Master Point is over the edge.

For exploration or established routes?

For both! But especially for established published routes without well placed bolts. Competent webbing-craft can result in community shared semi-permanent anchors that preserve canyons.

Instructional video

Here is the best source to learn CR. A video from Rich Carlson that covers that main ways to rig CR:

Want to dig deeper into adding bows to CR?

If in order to adopt CR you need to “make it yours” by adding some “bow” to it, here is a list of suggestions:

Master Point BOW

Since I’m not immune to the appeal of “bows”, during the American Canyoneering Association 2017 Leader Assessment, I added a literal Frost bow to the master point. Why? When hooking the rapide back to the CP, and tigging releasable, releasing continually jammed due to a crowded rigging point. Splitting the MP and the “hook back loop” solves the problem.

Floating Ghosted CP

There are situation where putting a Frost Knot at the anchor is not practical. Like in the case of a Deadman anchor. For those cases, I have been using a “web-lock”. In this photo, implemented with a Totem. This creates a temporary CP that can be easily removed

Here you can see the Deadman anchor ready for the last person once the CP web-lock has been removed

Other recent crowd-sourced Bow suggestions:

• Clove Hitch as a Courtesy Point

• Alpine Butterfly as a Courtesy Point

• Marlin Spike Hitch as a Courtesy Point

• Noeud Sanhneux as Courtesy Point

Whatever bow you pick or come up with, consider that CR is a community shared resource. So if you leave CR behind in a canyon, make it a A++ one. Well dressed overhanands, and overhand variations that are inspectable by following parties.

I hope that CR get a boost with the latest influx of newcomers!