Hauling Giant Big Wall Bags up El Capitan

Let's lift some pigs. Yeah, let's get at it. We're going to show you how to haul on a big wall in this How Not to Big Wall course. My name is Jeremiah Letourneau, and I have so far done eight walls in Yosemite Valley. I've been climbing Yosemite since 2021, but I'm originally a climber from the Midwest, and I'm a high school math teacher. And I was a painting contractor for 20 years before I started doing this full-time, and I climbed big walls a lot before I started this channel. And it's exciting to come full circle and be able to take what I've learned in the YouTube world and be able to go back to what I originally loved doing. And I've done 18 walls successfully, and I also had 10 unsuccessful walls, which gives me a lot of experience and what not to do. And most of that comes down to preparation. Now, hauling can be a horrible experience or just a chore on a wall, depending on your setup. A lot of our focus is going to be how to minimize going to a three-to-one system, where you get three times more mechanical advantage when you're hauling. That sounds nice in theory to only have to carry up one-third of the weight, but mechanical advantage is a myth when there's rope stretch in the system. And you have to actually haul more than three times the amount, a little bit more than three times, when you're doing a three-to-one. And where I get tired is after I push down and I have to come back up is when standing. And if I'm squatting this like three times more or more, I'm gonna get tired. And the way that I haul, I always haul off of a dynamic rope, which adds even more stretch. And that's always so I have a second dynamic rope in case I core shot my lead rope. But Ryan might do something different because he might want to use a static rope for some of his projects. Yeah, I just, yeah, I just have a static rope. That sounds awful. Like you're hauling like 20, 30 feet up before the bag even leaves the station. Exactly. So I, but I like having a backed secondary rope that I can use in case I ever damage my rope. So what's really cool is we have not done a big wall together. And that allows us to bring two very different experiences where how we came into big walling really shapes how we do it, bringing you two different experiences. And what's even cooler is on the bolt, bolting Bible, big wall Bible. We're able to add your video. If you want to shoot horizontally and already ready for me to post you doing this and feature it in the big wall Bible, where we can get maybe 50 different ways of doing this. So people who have never done it before can see all the different contexts and then go try it themselves. And where can we find that big wall Bible, how not to.com where you can find the bolting Bible and all of our other content that we just now put out with a nice filter, kind of like a store filter, filter out exactly what you want to see. If you want to see mechanical advantages of myth, if you want to see pitons blowing, if you want to see some of our big wall content, of course, in the big wall Bible, we are going to feed all this information to you where it would be relevant. And it's basically the bolting Bible and the big wall Bible is just like a playlist on steroids. Yeah. It's a great supplement to this course. This is only a smaller piece of a bigger project. As you can see, Jeremiah is already suited up. He's going to show you the classic one-to-one system on his anchor. I'll do the same. And then he can show you the fancy three-to-one in case you end up needing it, which is also a great rescue tip. If you did have to haul up So let's begin. Let's look at our one-to-one system here. What I have is my original anchor that I showed up to. I prebuilt it for this demonstration. As you can see, it is a super figure of eight where I have some attachment points that I'll be using here, as well as a place on the right side for my bag when I need to dock it. I'm originally looking at that ahead of time because my route will be going to the right eventually. So I need to be mindful when I build this. So the first thing that I'm going to do when I arrive to my anchor is I'm going to go ahead and just get myself attached to the wall just super quick. It doesn't have to be anything long-term or permanent. Just gives me a second to kind of relax that I am in on something. The next thing that I'm going to do is I'm not even going to worry about hauling. So yes, the very first step to hauling is not to worry about hauling. My first job is to get my follower set up to jug. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to go ahead and get in on my clove. So I'm going to go in on my anchor. I'm going to pull up more than I would on a multi-pitch. I don't want to be tight to the wall. I want to have some distance to be able to move. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to pull up a certain amount of distance depending on the ledge size or how far I need to move when I haul. I'm going to do my clove. So you can see here that that's me and I'm attached to the wall here. This other part here is where I'm going to do in my alpine butterfly. And what you can see here now is that Ryan is attached to an alpine butterfly on one locker, but he is still backed up with a second point. So in case this was to fail and the rope would break, he should still be attached to something else backing him up. So as soon as that is done, I like to yell down to Ryan and say, Ryan, line's fixed. That's just my step that I like to do to let him know that he's good there, just confirming that. The next step I like to do is now I don't have to worry about my ladder if I need to, or I can kind of move the distance. So I'm going to move it down a little bit so I have something to grab onto as I start hauling and need to move back upwards. Then I'm going to take my hauling kit off of my little tag line. So you can see again, I'm hauling this off of my little loop. I'm never hauling it off of the big loop. I'm taking it off and I'm going to attach it to as high up as I can. I'm not going to put it into the bolt because it's too tight to fit in there. This is going to be used for docking later. So I'm going to keep that one open. That's why I'm going to that beaner right there. A hauling device is a pulley with a When this catch is engaged, it will allow rope to pass through in one direction, but not the other. When the catch is released, rope can pass through in either direction. This is especially useful for hauling because the catch locks and captures your progress. Use a wide carabiner so the force goes in a straight line through the centre of the pulley. D-shaped carabiners will Other point is I like to have this pre-rigged so you can see that it is already ready to haul. It is attached with a backup. Now I can move this to a different point if I need to. Like I can move that up there. I'm just going to keep it on here for now. It's pre-threaded. Now the next thing I can do is I can close this and keep this clipped. What's your thoughts on that? Should this always be clipped or is this okay? I don't know. I don't either. I like to have this in case I need to set up some kind of mechanical advantage sometimes too. It depends if I'm pulling straight. If I'm pulling straight, super safe enough. If it's going to do something weird, I close it. And then the next thing is this is my backup line. So to keep this oriented nicely, I'm going to take this off really quick and keep it right tucked behind. That is so then if the bearing was ever to break or anything like that, the rope would get caught on this beaner and at least keep it backed up. Some people find it unnecessary. I find it a very helpful tool just in case it's keeping things redundant, right? The two lockers is way overkill. So I do lockers because I got sick and tired of non-lockers catching as I move things around and that's clipping to things. I just got sick and tired of it clipping to things. So I was like, I'm going to stick with lockers. I know it's overkill. Also, I like to use a dog bone because I found out an alpine draw gets sucked into this sometimes. So I like to use a dog bone rather than a sling. My next step is to start moving the haul line up. So I'm going to start pulling this down until I know that it is tight up against the haul bag and that's what it seems like that it's tight against the haul bag right now. So that is my indicator that I can go ahead and start getting everything set up on this. So I like to use a NanoTrax, MiniTrax, MicroTrax, whatever I need to use, or even my GreeGree, but I do like to use this guy. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to feed it onto the brake strand, the strand I was just pulling, and then this is going to clip down onto my belay loop. So I'm ready to go ahead and start hauling. So I'm going to yell down to Ryan, Ryan, ready to haul, but he can't hear me. So I'm going to use my Rocky Taki to say, Ryan, I'm ready to haul. And I'm going to go ahead and just start hauling. He might say, haul away, but at least he knows I'm ready to haul. So he's going to go ahead and start undocking the bag. As I go up, I'm going to just sit against the wall with my weight and push down. And I can start feeling that bag moving. And I'm really going to push, push, push, push until I'm as far down as I can go, whether I hit my leash or I'm as far back as I can go. Then I'm going to kind of pull back in, pulling up on my hand, trying to get back as high as I can. And then I sit down again. I'd like to just do a shout out real quick for Super Munters. This is amazing. It really feels like the real thing. I'm glad you think so. So you can do big hauls like that if you need to, or what you can do is you can just stand on the ladder, grab anything and just do a bunch of little hauls. Yeah, that's my style. So I'm having to move a lot here. You know, it's a lot of cardio, get your heart rate up really good, but it is continuously moving it compared to if I do this and a big, big haul, it is moving it a lot. But then the timeframe that it takes for me to reset might be a little bit longer. Sometimes I like to do a little bit of both to give myself time to breathe because hauling a pig is heavy. How much hauling do you want to do, bud? I'm going to get a couple reps because then you get good action shots, but I'm not afraid to use my weight. The other thing that you can do is what I call a Maeda one. A what? Maeda one. Okay. Because I go ahead and trusting this, I'm backed up with two other systems. I don't need to hold onto this. I want to hold onto the pig and I want to pull up on the pig as I'm going down, grabbing onto the pig strand. And then I'm pulling up as I sit down. Why is that called a Maeda one? Because I'm doing a lot of lifting. Not so much my weight. You called it a Ryan to one once. Oh, Jeremiah to one. My nickname is Maya. Now the bag is getting very, very close. As I've continued to haul, one thing that I have always done is go ahead and just keep the rope organized. So all the rope that I've pulled through the system as I've hauled, I periodically take a break so I can breathe. And that time period is me to reflect the rope into a double length sling. It can either be done like this or keeping it short. So, or you can wrap it. The main idea is that it just doesn't go and blow everywhere and get hooked around on something. So stay organized and keep it out of the way. The next thing I'm going to do is I'm going to keep on hauling until I can get the bag as high as possible, but where this does not collide into that, I want to get it as high as possible. Starting down here where I was showing earlier that I have my long strap connection to my short strap, which is then connected to my swivel. And then on my swivel is I have a, I like a big steel locker here because it's holding everything and it's holding all of them, the weight. So that's connected to my docking cord, which is incredibly beefy. I understand that it's what I have and I don't really care. So then that is fixed, backing it up. And then on here is the mini traction. So what it is, is it's a way that I from down below can actually help haul and pull the device up if I need to, which allows that I don't need a bottle for that. So that's fed through here and then it is hauled purely on that. If you start noticing that this starts getting kind of worn out over time, I do like to kind of shift it around a little bit. So it's always wearing a new spot, not a big deal. Then I'm going to finish hauling the rest of this up here, nice and tight, but not where it collides, not into the protraction. And then I'm going to take my docking cord and I'm going to get a motor ready and I'm going to attach it to that spot. The next thing I want to do is I want to make sure that this is not going to flip, but it's nice and tight. And then I barber pull it down. Very similar to the VT. All right, I feel like that's good enough. And then I'm going to tie it off with that square knot. There's a square knot. And then the next thing I'm going to do here is I'm going to go ahead and try to release the protraction. So I've pulled up tight so I can use my weight still. As I sit down, you can see that that lifts a little bit, right? It lifts. I'm going to lift it up, hit the button to keep it open, and then I'm going to stand up. And if I can unweight the system here, come back down, all of the weight you can see is now onto the barber pole. And then I open that up and that is bag is docked. It's fully on the anchor right now and I can come off of this. And then the last thing, not necessary. I've actually hardly truthfully do this, but maybe backing it up with something else. So you can use an adjustable daisy or something just to kind of come up and back it up to something. Cool. That's all there. And I can deal with making sure that this is all nice and neat. And you can see that that bag is docked very nicely. It's on there and it even has a backup. I can take this and connect it somewhere else or down low if I want to. Whatever is the case. Pop quiz. Where do you put that thing in your left hand now? Oh, so the next thing I'm going to do before even starting is I'm going to go ahead and I'm going to pre-rig it. It's all ready to go for the next pitch. And then I might get it all nicely organized. So then when my person arrives to the anchor, they can get in, but then I'm going to either clip it to me or off to the side. So then the next person can grab it. But again, this is going to go back onto my. So now I'm going to show you my setup, which is going to look very similar. So I'm going to focus on some of the differences. So you're getting more of a complete package as it's hard to think of everything when you're trying to do this in just a couple minutes. I'm doing this off of a quad anchor and I'm going to use a protraction into a one-to-one. A lot of how I do this is me communicating with my follower where I am at this stage, because many times you're around a corner or there's wind from like 12 to five. That's so loud that if even 10 feet away, if the wind's blowing that direction, I can't hear them talking your ropes, the way they move a signal, what you're doing. And it's important to know what that is. And Jeremiah and I talked a lot today before even starting to film how to communicate. And we were kind of arguing the same side of the coin on what does it mean when the haul line goes up? The haul line's going up and, or you're hauling that means this, this is the climbing rope. The haul line's down here. That means this is fixed. That means you're not touching it. It's like, oh, I want to change something. I'm going to pull this up and then, and then throw it around that other thing. Bro, I do not know if you're fixed or if I'm unfixed. If you change something, I will not put my ascenders on as a follower, which is going to be an entire video is how to follow. I'm already five feet up waiting for you to get the bag off because I'm trying to blast as fast as I can. So I want to know that this is safe. And I see you start messing with the haul line a lot. That means this is fixed. And we realized that most of the communication issues where you're waiting for a certain thing to happen in order to do another thing, like I'm not going to take you off the life. I'll just feed it the whole thing through the Grigri and be like, that's me. If you can't hear that's me, you tug enough, you'll know that's me. And so we realized all of this communication can be solved with, this is not a plug, listen to me out a walkie talkie. This is a rocky topic. I did not have a reliable walkie talkie when I was big walling. And so I learned how to do all this stuff without even communicating. I wouldn't even yell off belay if I didn't think you could hear me. I think you could hear me. I would tell you, but most of the time you can't. And now that I've started doing such bigger projects where we rigged a kilometer long zip line, a two kilometer long highline, a 700 foot rope swing, like I have to communicate. I'm not doing these things where there are cell service. And so this has actually really changed the game on how I even do what I'm going to show you because I have a rocky talkie. Now I hit them up because I was like, you finally made a walkie talkie that's durable, lasts a long time and is powerful, but I don't need a license. I hit them up and be like, and I use them on all those projects. And so they're investing in this thing to make this free for you guys. They're climbers themselves. They've invested over $25,000 last year into search and rescue or SAR units that are underfunded. If I can't say you're fixed, then I'm going to show you that you're fixed by starting to mess with the haul line. The only exception I'll ever make to this is this is by the way, attached to the little string in the back, not my haul loop in case the bag got undocked somehow and I didn't want it to pull me down. I want that to break first is I might take it off and clip it to something just to get it off my waist. And honestly, like some of this is pretty heavy stuff just to take a little bit off. I might do the fours, the threes and the twos and just clip this off off on the side. What's kind of cool is the walkie talkie beaner is fully rated. So now I'm a way more comfortable. Just like Jeremiah did. I took enough rope to do what I'm about to do, clobed it and connected it to one carabiner. And then I tied him with a figure of eight, which I think is super good enough since he's the only one really pulling on this on one beaner because he's so closely backed up. So that keeps this thing quite simple. And now I can start to haul. And in this case, I decided not to pull the rope up because he's willing to deal with it anyways. So I've already put this on the bowl. Now, this is not a fair example. I am standing on the ground. So I'm going to, for the remainder of this stand in my aiders like I would if I'm aiding. Something that's very important to me is to be as comfortable as I can on the anchor. Otherwise, you kind of wear yourself out. If you're flagging your body, you just have one foot on. I don't like doing that. So I go to the furthest outside. That makes sense if these are the bolts I have. One aider on this side, one aider on this side. And this is what I'm grabbing to stand up and do my hauling. Now, this is a nylon sling that I girth hitched to the bolt directly. That is frowned upon by almost everybody who has a brain because that is a sharp object up here. However, be mindful about what you can and cannot clip to it. If it's only holding 200 pounds or less, it's definitely super good enough. A Dyneema sling will break even lower, but I've reduced the force by at least 50% of what that sling is rated for. But it's really nice to connect this to it. So I have this carabiner here to connect my protraction. I can smell the trolls coming out from under their bridges now. I use an oval and unlocking carabiner. And I don't want this to be sideways against the wall like this. I want it to come out towards me because that's the way I can push. So in order for this carabiner to be orientated this way, I'm going to clip that right there. And now I want to be mindful of where I'm going to dock the bag. I'm either going to dock it on my pear-shaped carabiner. And once you put a bag and its weight on something, it's going to smash and make permanent whatever it's on. So what I might do is go like that and clip it in here and then put the weight on. Because I don't need this carabiner until I'm ready to leave the anchor. But I could disassemble all of this while the bag is still hanging here and I'm on my ascenders ready to go for the next thing. You're planning your exit while you build this now. And if the haul bag is going to go that way, you're going to dock it on this side. You don't want the haul bag here and it has to go over your body to go up. If it's going straight up, it doesn't matter what side. Don't haul if the bag is coming from over there on this side. It doesn't matter where it's coming from. It matters where it's going. He's fixed. I'm going to start pulling up the rope. And while I do that, super muncher while Jeremiah stands on it. It shouldn't be this hard. Can I have a little slack? He's fixed and I'm not going to touch that anymore. My orange rope is not tangled. I see that I'm happy with the way it is. So now I'm going to pull up the orange rope. And because I don't have a ton of it, I'm going to just do this. This would be a lot more if I had a full 60 meter here, but what's great about these guys is I can clip it off to a crappy bolt. You would never trust anything to, or put it off to the side or I could, Hey, there's that sling again. I've only got two points of contact here and I don't want that crossing over anything. So now this is the bag. I'm going to put my protraction in this. Now what's great about the protraction over a micro mini or nano is I can open this thing like a boss and push the tab at the top. This is this load strand. And you click that thing on the top, lock the teeth, close this up. And you put a carabiner in here. Most of the time, depending how this is going to be twisted. If I'm going to do more than just a pump, I will close my plates because I have seen this. Oh, that is a hood wire. That does not fit. Good. Fun fact. I will make sure these plates don't open. The, the pulley is not going to just explode out of this thing. What happens is the plate that's holding it is like cocks open. And so, um, in some of our break tests, we have destroyed this on accident. So it depends what happened, what, what broke. So our protraction here, um, no longer goes back together. This plate you can see is kind of bent that way. And this one is bent out. It doesn't, um, go anymore. We are break testing all sorts of things today. That's a real bummer. Sometimes I'll finish pulling up the rope while it's in the protraction. And then as soon as I feel like that's the bag, whatever I'll go like this and I'll drop it a little bit, maybe a couple of feet. And now I can manage the rope. I can orientate myself. Do I like where I'm at? Do I want to be lower? Because I'm going to be on the strand. I get my Ascender ready and I'm going to put my Ascender instead of a micro traction on here. And it's going to go on my load strand, not my load strand, my pull, my haul strand. I'm going to put on my haul strand. This is the side I'm pulling this side. It's going to go up. I like how I feel. A sip of water. I always need that by the time I'm at this stage. And by lowering that a couple of feet, you can't always project what's going to go wrong as the follower. And if some rope got stuck under another rope or something, it's sure nice when your partner gives you 60 seconds to fix whatever cluster you need. If you can't communicate, good to go. If you have the walkie, then you can communicate that. What I'm going to do, I'm going to go ready to haul. Do you not have any other walkie? It's over there. I don't want to walk over there. Rockytalkie.com slash how not to. If you click that, it goes to their page, gives you 10% off and that supports us 10%. So make sure you do that if you go buy a Rocky Talkie. Anyways, so now I'm going to pull it up tight. Jeremiah is going to be a super munter pretending to be the bag. Notice my feet are here. Notice I want to kind of do that. And what I'm going to do is I put my thumb to go up. I want a foot here, foot there, and I can push. Now this is hosing me and I can make that adjustment of my personal anchor. Now I like to squat. So when I go up here and grab whatever I end up commonly grabbing, say this, I can do a bag as heavy as me with this system. I hate three to ones. I hate space hauling. If this is too heavy, a really great trick is Jeremiah is so quick at following. He'd be able to get on this line. I'd let it dangle and then he'd be able to put his ascenders on this. And then I would basically, he'd be counterweighting the bag and I would just be able to foot pump this thing. And I'll show you if it's super light, what to do. But let's say Jeremiah is not with me. I can take my hand. Give me, definitely give me friction. Oh, definitely. Okay. So like, that's how I do that. Micro traction is nice, but that's the way I do that is I can like vector pull this. I mean, I'm, I'm barely holding it. It's a super muncher. You're hot. Can lift it up, grab this, go up. And I try to get 12 inches at least when I do each thing. And if it's stuck, it's his job as a follower to get it out of roofs if necessary. You're right next to your mic. It sounds like you're not far away, but that's good. Another thing I can do is I can pull sideways and maybe get it out of the roof myself. And this is what it looks like. I grab this. I go up there. Notice I don't put my feet up. I feel like that's hard to get back up. It takes more time, but if I can get good 12 inches here, then that's great. My carabiner is doing fine. All this is fine. My foot is not screwing anything up. I'm going to move my foot over because the haul bag is finally directly below me. Instead of coming up from the side rope coil set up and put that in like this. And that's all I've got so far to show for my work. It is recommended. There's a good reason to do it. I just have never done it. I haven't put the quick draw from here back inside of here. I definitely recommend doing it. I just have never done it. I'm just going to be honest about that. What I could do is this and this. And if I'm counterweighting the bag and this were to blow, we would cancel each other out and it's not going to fall. Otherwise it could fall a long ways. Now, if I'm not going to do this because it's just kind of a cluster. And if I'm doing just fine the way I am, then I would transfer that rope set up from here over to here because if the bag's going to go for a ride, I want it on the anchor. This is a foot pump. Notice my foot is now on my ascender. And so I can put my toe on the wall and push down. And this is if the bag is lighter and it can save so much time not having to go up and down. My finger's right here on the trigger and you can see I'm just mindful of it. It's not that big of a deal. And I find something that's easy to hang on to to keep me centered over this because this is not heavy enough to hold my weight. If I were to, by the way, if it gets heavy, I could just do this. Get heavy? If it got heavy, I could clip directly to this and I could sit back and vector pull it, push down. So I think you get the gist of it. Please go to a crag that doesn't affect other people and haul. And practice hauling. If you don't have anything else, a bag of rocks. Figure out how to do this before you need to know how to get your bag up. So we're at the bag. I'm huffing and puffing. And what you're going to see here is how strong I am. I am about an inch away from the top of my protraction here from my bottle that protects my knot. And I just go from a figure eight with a keychain carabiner holding this from sliding all the way up if there's slack to swivel. And this goes directly to the bag with a carabiner going to this, allowing me to open this while this is still all connected. My docking system is just a red cord that goes around the whole strap in case for some reason that were to come off. And then I can dock it with my munter mule overhand. Get it pretty close, but don't get it too stuck because you can see in order to open it up, I pull down, open the teeth very much like an ascender. You see how I do it in stages? I'm on the ground. Go like this, go like this, and go like that. It's good practice to know how to unhaul something if your partner's like, oh slack, slack, I'm not thinking ahead of time and I need you to give me slack. So like it's good to know like if you pull down far enough away, pop it, and you can let stand up, lock it off before you do, you know, get stuck sucked up in there, you can unhaul it. Pass it through either front and back, doesn't matter. Come around the back side, pass it back through. And it's already in the weighted position too, which is really nice. But it's at least still a munter and you never had to open that beaner. And then I can start to mule that, and then my overhand. So that's bomber, but it's also releasable when it's loaded. And so all of this extra rope right here is what I'm going to use to lower out the bag later, or I'm just going to let it hang. So this bag is ready to dock. And if this is heavy, I would just take my ascender and I would be as far away as possible. I'll go like this, and I'd go like that, and I'll go and stand up and I don't want to get sucked up. So I'm going to loosen, do this and finish the thing. And then I'll cinch up my personal anchor, take that off and double check all my work. Now, you have to make sure you understand that whatever this was put on permanent. Now, if Jeremiah was fully loading this, I could still get off my, I could still get off the protraction. Okay. I could still get my ladder off. That means it's solid. Okay. That's something you really need to pay attention for. But I don't trust any single point personally. So let's use the benefit of a protraction and take this off while it's attached to something, take this off, but this is connected to both straps. And so I kind of want to just take a figure of eight. Now I want to clip it to, for now, clip it to, this is the top of the rope. This is the bottom. I'll organize a little bit more in a second, closing that. And if this is the top of the rope and we're sharing one protraction and we're not doing Jeremiah's system with a rigging plate, and this is all you take, then I would clip it to this. So they can't clip it to them without taking it with them because that sucks. If you forgot your protraction, you got to run your rope through here, through this carabiner, and you have no pulley and you clip some gear here. So it stays. And you have no pulley while you repeat everything I just showed you. Try not to forget your protraction. Something I don't like about what's going on here is this was as high as I could pretty much get it. And it's all the way down here. And that's as close as I could get it. In a perfect world, I would love to get this thing closer. Now, if it's lightweight, I could just lift it up, but that's not what's going on here. Notice it's backed up. If you drop a haul bag, you could kill somebody. Neat fact. Cheating. And there we go. There we go. What I like about having the haul bag right here is when I'm done standing in my feet for an hour aiding, I, oh, if you had more stuff in this, this would be comfortable. I like to pull out the snack bag or the one bag I need out of this or a water, clip it to part of the anchor somewhere, and then close this up. And then I can sit on this if I want to. That's assuming I'm not leaving the next pitch. There's a lot of assumptions here. Otherwise I would have put the protraction on me and I would take another carabiner. And I would take that, take that, and I would make sure this is super, super organized before I go up anywhere. And I would make sure I like what's going on here and that this is ready to go. That's the first spot. And then my follower can just maintain that. I'd go like this and I clip to it's all Braille. Ah, you can see my loop there. You can see the little string there. That's what I clipped to. And then I'll lock it in case I take a whipper and it's on top of what's going on here. And when it gets tight, if I'm climbing, get up here, Jeremiah can unclip this and it's ready to go in the direction he's going. And then he can pop all this. We're going to cover this step of releasing the bag in more of the video on following, which is its own art and its own video on a lot more detail. Things we can't say in a video that's already too long. Things we think of later and feedback you guys give and submit through the how not to contribute section of the big wall Bible. We'll show us how you guys dock the bag, what you don't like about this, and you can tell me how unsafe it is on half the stuff I just did. So I'm going to show my two to one system here. So this is not a three to one, even though there is a lot of ropes and three strands, but talk about how this works. So this is why I keep this one open while I'm hauling. So it's available to me when I need it with a micro traction with some material that can allow this thing to rotate to where it can be more efficient. I keep it in the open position so then I can use the bearing in the pulley. So it has better mechanical advantage, but I need it open in order to do this. So how it runs is I have a knot, this is an alpine butterfly clipped to a lock to my belay loop. This runs up to the micro traction. This comes down to a pulley that's on an ascender. This one is all part of my specific kit. It's called the basic ascender. This runs through this pulley back up to a fixed point and what it's going to do, this ascender is going to get a two to one mechanical advantage pulling this strand up. So as I sit down now, it's going to pull it through. So I'm going to push it down as far as possible. It is, I'm going to sit down and what you can see here is it is pulling the rope up, but if I was to just stand back up, the weight of the bag is actually going to pull this back down. So my job is I sit down, I grab the brake and I pull it tight. And then this is where you have to, as you stand back up, push back down and then sit down and hold on. And then you push this back down, grab this and sit down. So what I'm noticing is that I'm not getting as much pull as I could. So I'm actually going to move this strand as high as possible. And I'm going to go ahead and do a clove because I can be a little bit more efficient is what I'm noticing. So now I can ride it back down, squat down as far as I can go, pulling that tight. And then I stand back up, squat down, slide back up. I'm just going to do this like 20 times. So we're going to measure how much progress he's making. Don't sit yet. Nope. He's right up against the thing, right up against the knot. Now I'm going to put my hand right here and pull. So don't pull that if you can. I didn't have a hold on the bunter. It's all right. So I'm, I'm here. Yeah. You have to pull it three times as much. Pretty close to what they say. But you're only getting a two to one because you're redirecting it. There we go. That's probably, that is probably going to be that two to one distance. So that right there is the same exact two to one. It is a two to one. Either way, that's a lot more motion. A lot more pumps. So if you have a heavy bag, how much, it doesn't help you. It doesn't make it twice as light. No, it's like only like 1.3, 1.4. Because of friction and stretch. So that is a system. I'm just going to show one other kind of similar one. So one component, two components. I'm going to show this. You said this was permanent, you said? Yep. I just keep this all in one big configuration. So this whole thing. Why don't you just use this as a pulley? Or why don't you just buy a cheaper pulley than that? I had one and it melted. What does that mean? See this? That's from a pulley. What melted? The pulley? It was so much heat and friction. I should use a more dynamic, more static material. This is all I could get. But if you can get like an actual like... It's a high-tech cord. Yes. Then it would be great. So I just kind of take this, fold it up, and get stuffed. Stuffed in a little baggie that is prepped with its own beaner. And this just goes inside of this. So then all I need is I pull that out and I attach it to my pulley when I need it. Now I'm just going to do like a simple three-to-one. Actually, it's called a complex three-to-one because it is a change of direction. That can clip onto that down there. And so when I pull up, I have to pull up three feet to make it move one foot. Now you don't oftentimes want to be hauling like that for your haul bag. If you just throw a beaner into this thing. There you go. Clip that in. Now you at least have a change of direction. So all I have to do is pull down with a goo-goo or some kind of progress capture. You pull it down. But then the downside is you have to be able to push this whole thing back down to reset it. And then you pull it back down. That's if you're like doing a rescue and you need to get a person up or something. This is. Or pull your rappel line that got so twisted that you need to put a five-to-one on so you can move it. This ends up becoming a five-to-one. Or haul Peter's bags. Or, yeah. Oh, so look at this. This is crazy. Watch how far I have to move my hands and how much rope actually gets moved. Ready? Keep pulling. I'll just keep on pulling that. That's a lot. Keep going. Keep going. I moved it that much. But in reality, the rope only moved that much. Yeah. This is why I never do it. Just because you have more mechanical advantage does not mean you can haul faster. It 100% means you're going to haul slower. Yeah. Yeah. Like. But just so people know, just mechanical advantage is not really mechanical advantage. It's mechanical disadvantage. Yeah. Please put in the comments if you are following through this series. And if you guys like A to Z content, I think this is super helpful for people who want to learn big wall stuff. And it also guides me on what to break to help break gear fear. I think something I'm interested in breaking is haul bag straps because we're relying on them so much. And maybe more in protractions and stuff and when things get desheathed. So we're going to have all that in the book of numbers in the big wall Bible. And we're going to share what things actually break at episodes. You can go dig if you want. And then the forces you actually put on when you're jugging and when you're maybe even taking a whipper. Then it'd also be a good point to bring up that you do not always need to use a protraction. A micro traction does suffice. But my recommendation is usually if you're doing loads that are, I don't know, around a hundred pounds or so, a micro traction is good, but a protraction above a hundred pounds for sure. The efficiency is worthwhile. I've never had the luxury of taking under a hundred pounds. So if I did, it was just a small haul bag called a stubby. And I just jug with it on my back. We're going to get into lowering and repelling, but you never want to repel with a haul bag on your back. I just want to throw that out there. Now what's really cool about making the course free is this reaches a lot more people. There's a lot of people in a lot of countries that one can't afford it and just dirt bags don't want to pay for it. And that's okay. What's cool is we only need 1% of the audience or 1000 people to donate $1 per episode to make this truly viable. Rocky talkie took the edge off for the website stuff and really cool swag also helps a little bit, but in the YouTube ecosphere, it's nice to have a little bit of all sources of income to pay because free content is not free to make. There's a lot that goes into this and I love doing it. So I'm okay going backwards for a couple of years. I quit my job last year, so I can do this full time. That is not because YouTube is paying you enough to do it. Oh no, it's like 1400 bucks a month in ad revenue. I mean, I blow that in gear alone in a month on this channel. Yeah. And I'm super transparent about like how much money came in and where it went. I'm not a nonprofit. I'm just a business that makes no profit. It's easier and cheaper to run that way because I too am a dirt bag. I do want to emphasize before we ended this episode, that communication is critical. This is not another Rocky plug. If you don't have the walkie because you didn't know you could get 10% off, that is a plug. Um, then what happens? Let's play a game. The, as a follower, you need to interpret what the ropes are doing. You have a climbing rope and a hauling rope. Yep. Climbing rope and hauling rope is going up at the same speed. That means that they are currently climbing, uh, and covering terrain well. What happens if the climbing rope is going up quite a bit? They're not at the anchor. You know they're not at the anchor. They're going up a little to 20 feet or so. The hauling hasn't moved. That means that they are going to be doing a big cliff. What I've done in the past is I'll go free climb and I know I have rope drag because I've been clubbing my pieces too much and I'll pull 20 feet of rope, have it in my thumb, uh, knowing I'm not going to be able to pull that when I'm free climbing. That means I'm not moving as a climber. When the haul line moves is when the climber is moving. The other thing that could mean is they are at the anchor because if they're not moving now, if you're not sure, you leave it in the gri gri and then you wait till it gets to you. Leave it on the gri gri. It's a mindful thing for the leader that even if it's easy terrain to not just start cruising like crazy because your belayer may think that you're trying to pull up rope like crazy. Um, so just being mindful even while leaving. Somebody's blasting down the freeway way too fast. The safest thing you can do is to be predictable because they're playing a video game with your life and so as a climber you want to be predictable for somebody who may not be able to see or communicate with you. The walkie talkie literally just eliminates this whole section right here. You can just tell people what's going on. Um, if you miscommunicate, that's the problem. Um, I was on the Lost Arrow Spire. I climbed to the top and I'm in that free section that at the time was scary for me, right? Um, and I got up there and Dean Potter was free soloing the 110 foot slack line and I was like, oh, and I just kind of stopped mid free and I just paused. I didn't have a walkie talkie and if my partners thought, oh, he's been up there for six minutes and hasn't tied us off yet, I'll start jugging. If they started jugging, they would have pulled me off 10 feet above my last crappy piece. It would have been really bad and luckily they didn't go to ascend the rope early. And so like when he was done doing his thing, I got up there, asked where I could put my thing and then I rope tugged. I tried to communicate through me pulling up the tagline and our stuff. Understand the order in which you do things. Ideally you go do some rough tests with people before you go up a wall with them. Yep. Going back to the first video, pick your partners well and have a walkie talkie with you. These Rockies last for, I've not turned mine off since filming this thing here at Brent's. It's been like three days. I'm just seeing how long it lasts with picking your partners. That was one of the things that Ryan and I disagreed on this morning was within my partners, the way I communicate is also because I have partnerships with those. You have past experience with them. Yeah. So when I communicate, it's based on an experience of our cadences of how we talk. But if I was to climb a wall with Ryan, he doesn't know my cadences. Give an example of that. So when I do a cadence, I like to make it sound based on syllables. So if I say, that typically is the same cadence of saying Ryan on belay or something like that. You can hear those are means lines fixed. So my partner knows what that sounds like. And I am always trying to only say commands, not have conversations. I like redundancy all you want. It's nice to have rope signals, understand what's going on. And that is going to lead us to our next video, which is following for you to know how to be a good belayer, how to go up the rope efficiently, how not to start putting on your shoes after they're done starting the hall and your ropes been fixed for 10 minutes. And how to do simple things like cleaning gear and lower routes, how to pull out. Stay tuned.