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Originally Posted by Tim Craig I don't think you'd be footlocking a single line...... |
When you ascend and footlock, using a traditional 2:1 friction hitch system, how many lines are you locking with your feet?
answer: 1
The difference between using a 2:1 DdRT friction hitch system, and that of SRT is that
with the 2:1 doubled you have to footlock twice as much rope to get the same gain. That's all. It's exactly the same motions.
If you had two identical hills next to one another, and two men who were equally as fast as one another on equal ground and they were going to race to the top of their respective hills, who would win? Wait, there's one more thing.... One hill is soft sand, the other is paved all the way to the top.
On the sand hill, because of the inefficiency of running up a slope of sand, this runner needs to take two steps for every one that the pavement runner takes.
If they both run at the same rate, the pavement runner will make it up in half the time as the sand runner, OR the pavement runner can trot at half speed and they'll get there at the same time. Either way, the sand hill guy is going to be more wiped when he gets there.
2:1 ascent vs 1:1 ascent is analogous to this hill example. Additionally, in 2:1 your friction hitch offers friction on your way up, or locks up when you weight it. More additionally, the rope offers friction on the crotch at the tie-in point
on every single centimeter of your ascent (we sink friction savers to combat this problem).
2:1 is really doing it the hard way. Its no surprise a lot of guys have a hard time footlocking on this system. I think you'd actually find SRT on an ascender much, much easier, like running up a paved hill, rather than a soft sand hill. It's frustrating to many to footlock a length, and only gain a half a length in ascent.