Learn About Self-Equalizing Anchors While Top Rope Rock Climbing

Video Transcript

"Hi! I’m Bill with Zoar Outdoor here on behalf of expertvillage.com. We are here today at Chapel Ledges in Ashfield, Massachusetts, the trustees of the reservations property. In this series, we are going to be talking about anchors for top rope rock climbing. Therefore, equalizing my anchors and letting the direction of pull move is called a self-equalizing anchor system. Here is one way to do that with slings. So clipping my sling into 2 points just for the purposes of clarity, I have attached them. Now if I were to clip here, this works fine as a self-equalizing anchor. However if one of these were to fail, I have lost my anchor; catastrophic failure. So in order to do this correctly, clip your sling here, take this piece in the middle, twist it once, and then clip them together. We still have self- equalizing. If I lose one, it is still attached. Therefore, that is with two of them. Do the same thing with three. Just looks a little more complicated. Clip them all together, grab the two in the middle, twist them into those x’s and clip it all together. Therefore, there is 3 points, self-equalizing with the webbing sling. Remember your magic x is here. "