Vertical Caving Certification

It is the expectation that an approved beginner vert caver that they can confidently do all of the skills listed below. Vert clinics of all parts are offered during eroom hours and will be announced during our meetings on Tuesday nights.

A three part vertical caving school is typically taught in the following format.

Part 1: Skills listed under Equipment, Ascending, Descending, and Downclimbing

Part 2: Skills listed under Changeover

Part 3: An open practice time to review and practice anything from the first two parts. This is also an opportunity for testing and approval from a vertical caving leader.

Equipment

  • Harness is well-fitting and all straps are doubled back
  • D mallion with screw gate closing to the left
  • From the caver’s view right to left
    • Croll oriented correctly and in rightmost position on D mallion, held up with   chest strap
    • Long or short frame micro rack attached to D mallion to the left of the croll 
      • Attached with long frame mallion screwing down, hyper-bar is on the right side.
    • Cowtails on the left of the micro rack
    • Hand ascender attached to long cowtail carabiner with well-fitting foot loop on the same carabiner

Ascending

  • Uses rope commands before getting on and off rope
  • Attaches croll before hand ascender, avoids tangling
  • Can disengage (“thumbing the cam”) and fully open croll and hand ascender one handed
  • Can efficiently sit/stand to climb the rope

Descending

  • Uses rope commands before getting on and off rope
  • Understands clipping into traverse line if applicable to safely approach pit
  • Loads micro rack correctly
  • Tests micro rack by weighting device away from pit edge
  • Can lock off and remove lock off while maintaining break hand 
  • Can augment friction by utilizing hyper bar and spreading/squeezing bars.
  • Controls decent at reasonable speed
  • Understands critical importance of always maintaining a break hand

Downclimbing

  • Can downclimb ascenders smoothly without weighting long cowtail or dropping sharply on ascenders

Changeover

  • Safely completes changeover from ascending to descending (rack above OR below croll method) 
  • Safely completes changeover from descending to ascending (croll above OR below descender method)