It had been several years since I last went up my mast, and this year it was time for a thorough rigging inspection. At 77 years old, the thought of having my crew haul me up briefly crossed my mind, if only because of my age. But I have not had anyone haul me up the mast in decades, and this climb removed any lingering temptation to go back to that. The bottom line is I feel safer putting my life in my own hands.
I have tried dozens of ways to climb my mast. In the process I have accumulated way too many ascenders, rappel devices, carabiners, and a GriGri. I think this climbing system is the best. It is simple to rig, quick going up, requires very little to transition from up to down, and is very fast and controlled going down. It takes just a couple of minutes to get down, including rigging the rappel device.
The article starts with a short (4 1/2 minute) video that gives an overview. Start there.
I use the GriGri system to climb my mast although I still don't recommend it because it is a bit complicated. But I find it just too easy to use to pass it up. Initially there were a number of problems that made it unacceptable but now that I have solved those, I wanted to share the tricks that made it work.
Six methods to climb a mast unassisted are reviewed including a modification of mountain climbing techniques adapted to climbing a mast that has the best score of all six. This articles represents many weeks of testing and improving the techniques presented. It is the result of over 20 years of frustration with trying to find the ideal unassisted mast climbing technique.
The setup of the modified approach is fairly simple. The boson's chair is attached using a carabineer to an Microcender. The foot loops are made of climbing grade tubular webbing and are attached below the microcender to the lower basic Petzl ascender. The attachment is with a second carabiner and it is hooked through the top hole in the Basic Ascender. The reason for using the top hole...
NOTE: The link for this article was broken when first published. Here is the corrected version.
The Black Diamond Bosun's chair is a well made chair produced by a well known supplier of equipment for climbing. It has a padded seat, is comfortable and adjustable. There is only one problem with it. It is not a Bosun's chair.
According to Black Diamond technical support this is not a life support chair. In other words, don't let your life depend on this chair. They purposely leave off any specifications on the strength of this chair because they don't want people using it for life support.
In the article on Unassisted Mast Climbing I prefer the modified method but mention that the GriGri method is easier to use. There are two things I did not like about the GriGri method 1) It requires re-rigging the setup at the top of the mast. That is really a most unpleasant experience. 2) The descent, while quick and easy, it jerky and can be frightening and if you panic, can be really scary. I have developed a new method for the re-rigging and descent that solves the second complaint but you still need to do the re-rigging. This article presents that technique and reviews the GriGri method.
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