Solo Aid Climbing

My last post was Leaning Tower which was about six months ago. I’ve been caught up with school, work, my girlfriend and most importantly my greatest next adventure, training for The Nose. I spent a day at The Grotto practicing aid by my self. Yes, solo aid climbing. This article is going to be about my personal set up for solo aid climbing and my experience with it. Disclaimer: I don’t recommend you try any of this due to modifying gear In ways that void warranty as well as may result in a defective product, injury or death. 
I spent a few weeks researching various ways to solo aid climb and solo free climb. From various forum posts, asking climbers and watching videos. It was abundantly clear that the silent partner was the superior winner. I’m second place, to me it seemed like a tie between at least 5 different techniques, with each having their own pros and cons. I do not claim to be an expert on this system, if any one has any ideas/thoughts/suggestions about this please let me know. 
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The Concept: I decided on the GriGri w/ Micro-Traxion method. It seemed pretty straight forward but also involved a lot of extra work compared to the silent partner. The biggest con is you have to take a hack saw to the device that will catch your fall. It just doesn’t seem right but is a necessity for this technique to work well. The idea of this technique is that you flip the GriGri upside down clipped to your tie in points so that the “climber side” of the device is down and the brake hand side is up. The “climbing-side” of the rope is the side of the rope you are going to be clipping the pieces of protection in and ultimately is tied way below to a bomber anchor which will take the force of the fall. Pretty straight forward, and there are more in-depth how-to articles explaining this concept. ​

As stated above, a Mico-Traxion is involved. Now there are no articles explain this Micro- Trax method, so I can’t tell you how well this may or may not work, just my personal experience with it. Im sure its been done before but to my knowledge and research I have not been able to find anything about this. Basically the Micro-Trax helps feed the rope through the Gri-Gri all while serving as a back up in the event the Gri-Gri doesn’t catch. 
As I’m flaking out the rope, I tie overhand slip knots on the brake end of the rope. The Micro-Trax sits on the chest harness and is oriented so the teeth catch when you pull the brake end of the rope. (See Picture) As your aiding, your pulling a bubble of slack through the Micro-Trax that will feed through the GriGri as your ascending. If you were to fall with this bubble of slack out and the GriGri malfunctions and DOES NOT catch, the rope will feed through until the overhand slip knot jams the Micro-Trax and the GriGri will lock up. As your climbing, you will eventually encounter the slip-knot in the rope. Once it comes up, you just pull on the rope and the knot pops, just repeat this process. ​

In Action: I aided up a 5.10d splitter that eats gear, so I was pretty confident that each of my pieces were bomber. I made an anchor at the base of the climb and aided my way up. I used a steel carabiner rated to 50kn on its spine and only 7kn cross loaded. Issue: The carabiner had some trouble staying vertical causing the GriGri to sometimes be oriented in a weird way. Solution:I think I might attach a cord to the GriGri to prevent this from happening. As I aided higher and higher I threw in a bomber cam at the top and tested out a couple falls on the system. I unclipped my ladder from my self and clipped it directly into the piece as well as my daisy. I pulled a bubble of slack through the Micro-Trax and tied a back up knot between the Micro-Trax and GriGri so if the GriGri were to slip, It would only slip so much. I stepped up onto the ladder and proceeded to step off taking falls at various heights. The GriGri worked well catching each fall and not letting me go to far down. ​

Issue: One issue with this system is that when your about 60ft off the ground, the weight of the rope on the climber side becomes heavy enough to start feeding the bubble of slack between the Micro-Trax and the GriGri through the GriGri by itself causing a giant bubble of slack at the anchor that you had no idea about. Solution: I believe you can tie slip knots on various pieces so theres less weight being pulled down on the climbing since of the GriGri. If you were to take a fall the slip knot would just pop its self out and would result in falling on the anchor below. ​

Free Climbing: This system did not work well for me free climbing. I know some people have been able to free climb well with not a lot of issues with a GriGri but for me it didn’t work out to well. 

If it wasn’t for numerous no hands rest, letting me pull slack through and other quick-fixes, I would of been screwed. Issue: I felt that the biggest issue that prevented this system from working well and fluid was the carabiner kept moving around causing the GriGri to be oriented improperly. Solution: Same as before, tie a cord to the GriGri to keep it oriented correctly.

Overall: This system worked very well for aid climbing. Since your not going to fast and hanging on your daisies, you have the opportunity to adjust the system as needed. For free-climbing I would try and perfect and smooth out all the issues with it before. ​