The next day, we decided to have another practice run up to sickle
ledge on the nose. The first 4 pitches are tricky and with some practice
could be sped up quite a lot.
This time, we all used jumars
rather than trying to simul-climb at all. It made a lot more sense and
it looked like that would be the method used for most of the climb.
We
met some other people up on the ledge who were just heading up the nose
and had jumared up the fixed lines that now went down. They were
hauling their bag, using a technique called air hauling, where the guy
would counter his bag's weight with his own by hanging over the cliff
and then when he got to the bottom of a fixed rope about 5m long, he
would jumar back up and do it all again.
It was quicker
to go down on the fixed lines and it was getting dark, so we did that.
You have to be very careful when being on other people's fixed lines
that you always check them first to make sure that the one you are on
goes all the way to the next anchor and isn't just a loose end. As if
rappelling at night isn't scary enough as it is.
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