Glacier Training: Prusik

The essence of human-powered ascent, by any means, is a lift followed by a rest. When climbing stairs, you lift yourself then stand while hoisting your free leg to the next tread. When climbing a rope, it's quite beneficial to have similar options. It is ideal if your legs can bear most of the lifting load, yet at any point relax while muscles regain strength.

Enter the prusik hitch.

Three-wrap prusik hitch:


This is a simple knot that may be tied from a loop of line that grips a climbing rope with great force when loaded, but when unloaded may be moved upwards or downwards. A pair of these hitches may be used to ascend a climbing rope as follows. A short loop makes the "waist prusik" and includes a three-wrap prusik hitch around the climbing rope as illustrated above and links to the climber's harness via a locking carabiner. A longer length of rope makes up the leg prusik; stirrups at the ends tie around boots.

To ascend, start from sitting, suspended by the waist prusik with legs in stirrups of unloaded leg prusik. Employ the following procedure.

1. Stretch out legs and attempt to stand in leg prusik, using arms to maintain vertical posture


2. Use free hand to move unloaded waist prusik hitch as high up on the rope as possible


3. Sit in (now raised) waist prusik which should immediately grip climbing rope. You are now ~8 inches higher than you were before.


4. Fold legs inward, unloading leg prusik


5. Use free hand to raise leg prusik upwards, just below waist prusik


6. Repeat until at top of climbing rope

To descend, the same process is used but in reverse, but you must govern yourself and not be too greedy. Only attempt ~8 inches of down-climb per iteration.

1. While sitting, lower leg prusik 8" from below waist prusik hitch


2. Stand in stirrups, unloading waist prusik


3. Lower waist prusik to top of leg prusik hitch


4. Sit in (now lowered) waist prusik to unload leg prusik hitch


5. Repeat until on ground or bottom of climbing rope

After every eight to ten feet of elevation change, it would be nice to save progress so, in the event of slippage or other accident, you do not wind up at the bottom again. To accomplish this, make a "bight" in the climbing rope just below the prusik hitches and tie a figure eight knot. Clip this into your climbing harness with a free carabiner [NEVER open the gate of a carabiner that is providing protection to you or your gear]. Once this is done, a fall will at most set you back to the highest safety knot.

If carrying a heavy backpack, it's very difficult to execute the above without quickly fatiguing. The pack moves your center of gravity outward putting more load on your arms. The only viable solution we were able to work out was to attach a third prusik hitch between the bag and the climbing rope below the leg prusik hitch.

The sequence is modified by performing the following during every iteration:

1. While seated, after raising leg prusik, lift bag hanging below.


2. Use free hand to raise unloaded bag prusik hitch to below leg prusik.


3. Resume basic prusiking process, but execute this procedure after sitting every iteration.

Other options beyond a bag prusik were attempted, but none of them yielded satisfactory results when clipping into knots in the climbing rope. One method was to carabiner the bag to a loop that forms in the climbing rope, but this adds weight and pulls downward on your harness reducing the distance change per iteration. Another method ties the bag to the end of the climbing rope, but the first safety knot you make will transfer the bag's load to you. Neither of these were particularly satisfactory or as elegant as the third prusik.

I took this camping:


Coming soon: glacier traversal