Adaptive Rock Climbing for People With Disabilities: Setting Up

Video Transcript

"Now that we have our volunteer, and the harness, the next thing she has to do is, to take our extra rope, our pulley rope, and take it to the top of the rock climb here, to the top of the top rope. And she's going to do that, and throw the rope from front to back, over the top rope. Because that will give us the least amount of friction, and we'll be able to more easily pull the participant up and down the rock climbing wall. So, Amanda's going to be using her hands a lot when she's up there climbing, so it's hard to hold onto a rope, and climb, and it's not always the safest either. So the first thing we want to do is, we want to take the rope, and we'll get a loop in it, like so, and then we'll just tie a very simple knot, it doesn't have to be tight, just so there's this loop up here at the top. We'll take one of our carabiners, wrap it through there, and then also carabiner this, to Amanda's belay loop. This way she can start climbing to the top and have her hands free, and then when she gets to the top, she can easily unclip the rope, and throw it over the bar. And while she's climbing, I am also going to be belaying her. Belaying is a word for, basically saying, I've got you, and it's a system to make sure that the rope is nice and safe. And when rock climbing, most people don't rock climb by themselves, it's not safe, and in top roping, it's impossible, you need two people. So, I have another carabiner here, which I am going to lock into Amanda's harness here, and it's locked, can't open it, so that's very safe. And I have a system here called a grigri system, it's a belay system that will help me take up the slack when Amanda is climbing. All this slack up, here we don't want to see that when we're climbing, because if Amanda starts going up, and she falls, all this slack is how far she's going to fall. So I want to keep it very tight the whole time. My hands will always be- a hand will never leave this part of the rope. This part of the rope is called the break line, and so it's very important to always hold onto the rope, because it's an extra backup system when using the grigri. So, next thing to do to be safe is, when going up, is Amanda has to communicate to me that she's ready, and wants to make sure I'm ready. So Amanda will say on belay, belay is on, meaning, I'm ready. And then she'll approach the wall and say, can I climb, and if I'm ready, I'll say, climb on."