How to Haul a Climber Out of a Crevasse

Hi, I'm Jeff Ward, AMGA Instructor Team Member. We've ascended out of the crevasse and now we're ready to haul. I'm going to come back a little ways from the lip so I have some room to work. I don't necessarily need to go all the way back to my anchor. I can work a little closer to the edge and that'll make for better communication and a little less rope stretch and friction. So I'm going to move back a little ways and if I've assessed this zone really well with probing, I can, since I'm away from the edge, now come off of here safely. If I had concerns here, I'd stay attached to this prusik and maybe keep a longer leash because this is going to be weighted. But this is a good zone here. We're going to work in here. I'll tie a master point here and just do a figure eight. And now I'm going to set up my ratchet. So I really like using the micro traction and I always have to look at the pictures here. Where's the person? There's the person or the weight. That, lock that in and I should be able to pull on Emily. So I've set up the micro traction. So that's my progress capture. I have a drop C, which gives me a two to one. But I'm probably going to need a little more mechanical advantage. So the lines here, we have our haul line that's pulling on our two to one that's in the hole. And then behind me here is the original load line, what Emily's hanging on right now. So that's great. That gives us a bit of a backup for a while. While we set up our system. So now I'm going to walk down here, still tied into the rope. So I have a bit of security, not much slack, which is nice. And I'm going to tie a friction hitch onto this line here. So this is the one that's going back to the anchor that goes down through a locker on Emily's harness and comes back up here. We'll add some mechanical advantage by tying a prusik hitch here and putting a carabiner on this. So now we've taken our two to one drop C and added a three to one on top of that. That gives us a six to one mechanical advantage. I'm going to back up so I can get a good angle on this. The more I open this up, the less mechanical advantage I'm going to get. So I want to be nice and in line here. And now I can just start hauling. Once it gets back near the micro traction, I can then just slide it out and keep hauling. So I've pulled Emily quite a ways up. And so I've generated some slack in the system. And currently, the only thing holding her is this micro traction, which is quite reliable. But ideally, I'd like to back that up. If I go over to the original load line, one of the methods is to see if I can get slack in that original line. If I can, I'll pull all the slack up until I come tight to the person in the hole. And then I can just tie a knot in that system. And that eliminates that slack. And then I can continue to haul and continue to put knots in that rope or extend that original knot. And that'll back up my progress capture device. So for a backup, I can take my haul line and clip that into my master point here. That way, if we get anything in here, you know, if it's stuck in the snow, I might dig this out. I'll decrease the likelihood of it having any issues. But to be extra safe, we'll just stick a clove hitch in here. Now, if we have any slippage or any issues, she won't go too far. As Emily gets close to the lip, that's often the most difficult time of the haul. So I might need to go out there and give her a hand. If I've done a really good job of lip prep, my job of getting her over the lip is going to be much easier. So a little bit of coaching here for Emily would be try and push yourself away from the wall as we're hauling. And we'll try and not get that knot stuck in the lip. So we'll see how that goes. Go ahead and push yourself away. I'm going to haul slowly. Nice. That's looking pretty good. If for some reason we get her knot stuck, maybe she's unconscious, she can't help. We might have to go down there and do a little redirecting by lifting the ropes out. Or we might have to pull from a different direction if she's gotten stuck. This is, for most people, this is the hardest part of the hauling. So this drop C with the Z added on top of it, the 6 to 1, that's usually enough mechanical advantage to get someone out of the haul. As long as you've done really good lip preparation, you should be able to do that even with just one rescuer on the surface.