Vertical caving terminology and methods > SRT basic terms
A few metres above the bottom of a hang, the weight of the down rope is usually enough to allow it to feed conveniently through the lowest ascender when prusiking. However, for the first few metres, it often fails to feed through. This can be solved by trapping the down rope between your feet when standing up and releasing it when sitting, when using the frog system. It works best if using a single footloop shared by both feet. This approach may also be used for the Texas system or singe system, but this happens at the wrong time in the sit-stand cycle for it to work properly. It can be solved by looping the down rope under one foot and pulling upwards with a free hand (if there is enough excess) when using rope walking, the another prusiking system, the inchworm system, the singe system or the frog system. It can also be solved by using a relatively weak foot jammer with the frog system, Texas system and the another prusiking system, which slides up the rope with much less weight of rope below, such as a Pantin. Alternatively, there is the frustrated manual tug on the rope below a chest jammer when using the frog system, the lower jammer when using the Texas system or Gérard Alpine technique, or the lower of the two top jammers with the Jumar system - a painfully common occurrence. It can also be solved by manually pushing the cam open on the lower jammer with the Mitchell system and Texas system, or the lower of the two top jammers with the Jumar system. Alternatively a fellow caver can gently pull on the down rope for as long as needed. Another alternative is to hang a heavy tackle bag on the bottom of the down rope, but this makes it almost impossible to do a mid-rope changeover if needed, since the weight will prevent abseiling (though the tackle bag could be hauled up first, if the rope is not tied to something else below it). This method also only works well on the end of a rope, since it would get in the way of the next caver at a rebelay. A few types of ascender are almost immune to this problem, such as a free running Gibbs ascender, but these may need a more intentional downwards movement to make them grip in the first place, and cannot be held in the hand during use, which can make them quite undesirable for many cavers. Traditional clamping jaws ascenders almost remove the need for bottom weighting, due to the motion used to move them up the rope also causing the cams to completely disengage. However, these are no longer manufactured, and normally rely on having two hands or two feet to be used at the same time, which limits their uses.
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