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Cleaning an anchor
Planning the climb
Before anyone leaves the ground you should satisfy yourself that both you and your climbing partner have both the skills and equipment necessary to complete the climbing process.
Once ALL the climbing has been completed we start the cleaning process.
(1) Secure
Redundantly secure yourself to the anchor, this can be achieved numerous ways, from slings to prussiks or quickdraws. So long as it is adequately strong and redundant. Try to attach yourself as close to the bolts themselves as is reasonably practical, thereby reducing the number of potential points of failure.
Ease yourself onto your safeties, inspect and assess them and if all is well call “secure” to your belayer who will then take you off belay and call “off belay”.
(2) Don’t drop the rope
Haul up 3 or 4 metres of slack and tie the rope off onto your harness. A clove hitch onto a quickdraw is a quick & easy way to achieve this. We include this step to ensure we can’t drop the rope.
(3) Untie and feed
Now that you and the rope are secure you can untie the rope from your harness and feed the rope through the anchor.
DIAGRAMS OF VARIOUS ANCHOR CONFIGURATIONS
Tip: Remove the quickdraws to reduce clutter.
(4a) Abseiling off
If abseiling off, once you’ve fed the rope through the anchor, tie a stopper know to prevent accidentally abseiling off the end of the rope (the other end should be tied off onto the rope bag or otherwise knotted). Disconnect the rope that is connected to your harness (so you didn't drop the rope) and then feed through sufficient rope to reach the ground, if you are unsure if your rope has reached the ground it is better to measure out half of the rope than end up 2 metres off the ground.
Clip your belay device onto the belay loop of your harness and feed both strands of the rope into your belay device to rig for abseil. Arrange your back-up (eg. Prussic, fireman’s belay) and take in sufficient rope to shift yoru weight from your safeties to the rope.
Perform a thorough final check (harness, belay device & carabiner, helmet, back-up, anchor and threading) then remove any other personal gear, unclip your safeties and abseil off.
(4b) Lowering Off
In some circumstances it may be preferable to be lowered off the climb rather than abseiling, such as when cleaning an overhung or wandering climb.
Upon feeding the rope through the anchor, tie back into the rope, remove where you tied off the rope to avoid dropping it, call “on rope” and wait for your belayer to call “on belay” then get them to take in until your weight is shifted off your safeties and onto the rope.
Perform a thorough safety check and remove your safeties.
Tip: Clip a quickdraw from your belay loop to the rope running up the cliff to pull you close to the draws, this will make cleaning overhung climbs easier.