Learn How Anchors Work

Transcript for: Learn How Anchors Work

"Hi! I'm with Zoar Outdoor here on behalf of expertvillage.com. We are here today at Chapel Ledges in Ashfield, Massachusetts, trustee of the reservations property. In this series we are going to be talking about anchors for top rope rock climbing. In this segment, I want to talk about some basic principles for setting up a top rope anchor system. So there is an acronym that works. The American Mountain Guide Association uses it in their top rope site manager courses. It goes leadster, l-e-a-d-s-t-e-r, and so the beginning of it is limited to extension which means if it something goes wrong in your system, the other pieces that pick up the slack don't end up dropping the rope system too far down the cliff. The a is angle which is the angle between whatever you are using for anchors and that needs to be less than 60 degrees; best case scenario certainly no more than 90 degrees because of the forces generated when you pull on something that is too spread apart. The d's direction which means if I am climbing over there I don't want my anchor to be pointed over here and s is strong. Obviously, you don't want to be trying something that is weak. Timing means that you don't want to spend a lot of time putting it up. You would rather be climbing than spending your day setting up an anchor. The next comes e; e is equalized meaning that if you've got two anchor points, you don't want all of the weight on one; you want it to be shared equally and the r at the end is redundant which means that if one thing goes wrong, there is something else there to pick up the slack and take care of you. So leadster; limited extension angle direction strong timely equalized and redundant."