Any advice on techniques and equipment for bolting a vertical ascent? Nothing too major, about 20 feet or thereabouts.

Have come across and used (once) an etrier and had a look at Petzl's site but it now lists so many different variations; quicksteps, quickfix, gradistep, wallstep.

http://www.petzl.com/en/outdoor/verticality/accessories  (under aid climbing)

Anybody got any opinions or recommendations? Or alternative bits of kit for making progress upwards?

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I'd like to know a lot more about maypoling and seeing how that actually works in the field.

You get some "tent poles" but a bit bigger. Poke them up where you're going and have a piece of rope tied to the top. Then you break the laws of sanity and ascend the rope with a drill. I've heard of some crazy crap, but this takes the biscuit.

There seems to be very little information about it on the interweb.

I've had maypoling explained to me a few times, by people with manic grins and 'love' and 'hate' tattoed onto their knuckles. It sounds awful :)

Hopefully somebody with some first hand maypoling info (Colonel?!) might post up some info and some pics?

I don't think my project is suited to maypoling though, it's from a flooded stope and the pole would need to go in the water.

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I gather you can fix the pole to some bolts that you have placed at the bottom of the pitch. I'd recommend a caving dwarf to go up with the drill.

I gather some people have attached wheels to the top of the pole so it doesn't snag.

Some of the older hands in the local caving club have extensive experience of it. Having said, they are also the sort of people who wouldn't have blinked at 400ft of electron ladders.

In my estimation, it sounds like a recipe for disaster.

Having been part of a group that at one time bolted up 120 feet vertically my advice is to read the relevant section in the book "Alpine Caving Techniques" by Marbach and Tourte. However there is much to learn that you can't read up in a book and will only pick up by actually doing it.

I'll let you know next time we are doing some so that you can come along. Alternatively if you have something interesting to get into we can probably demonstrate and assist at the same time.

I have never used maypoling - for most mines a 27' ladder is quicker to start off followed by bolting up. Progress is about 30' - 45' per day.

I aways used a maypole for short shafts with a electron attached and weighted down with a big boulder anything more than 30ft you can get a bendy pole, now thats scary. best to know your limitations in knowledge and suicidal traits,

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Any advice on techniques and equipment for bolting a vertical ascent? Nothing too major, about 20 feet or thereabouts.

For such short heights I've either dragged a length of rail or compressed air pipe to the pitch, attached a rope to one end, reared it up and then prussicked up the rope. If access for the rail/pipe was problematic due to tight bends, or there was a lack of suitable rails/pipes, I've usually pegged the pitch using etriers.

If access is straightforward then it's usually faster to take a lightweight housepainter's ladder in for such a short pitch.

Last weekend I bolted my way up a full 70ft vertical wall (actually, there was an 18" overhang half way up. Took me about 2 1/2 hours and was very funny.

I used a 2 stage 20ft aluminium ladder to gain the first 20'. Drilled a bolt above the ladder and another 1/2 way down the ladder. Then I attached myself to the bolt and lifted the ladder up and attached it to the same bolt with 3 or 4 rungs above the bolt. I went down and tied the lower part of the ladder to the lower bolt to stop it rotating.
I climbed up as high as I could while attached to the top bolt and drilled the next bolt. I repeated the process until I was high enough to reach the level. I drilled 6 bolts I think. This was in slate.

I also climbed a 20ft wall in Rhosydd by first shimming up an 8 ft pipe I picked off the ground. That allowed me to drill the first bolt about 9 ft off the floor. Then attached my self to that bolt, as high as possible and drilled the next bolt as high as I could reach. Etc, etc. Unfortunately, I only had enough battery life left to drill 4 bolts and so gained the final 5 ft by lassoing a rusty spike and climbing up it. Bit of a cheat but I had no option.

It works for me but you do need to be a little crazy to use these techniques.

Cheers for all the feedback chaps, much appreciated :thumbsup:

Time to get out and give it a go. I think my arms will give out long before my drill battery though 😉

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I mainly saw maypoling in the 70s, one big difference was that you could not at that time, buy hand-held battery drills of any worthwhile power and endurance.

Hence most bolting was done using either compressed-air drills, genny-driven cable drills or in most cases, hand-driven star-type drills in the best "t'owd man" style. Progress with this kind of thing was pretty slow.

plus, cavers ( mine exploration not being a separate issue at that time, and urbex being unheard of ) were thrifty if not downright skint, and leaving a fair few quids' worth of bolts in a wall was not done lightly....

a propos "old hands" and electron ladders, once you graduated to actually climbing the ladders, as opposed to dragging bags of them around underground as a "sherpa", you knew you were becoming accepted.... by that time you were as fit as an international standard prop forward, not that THAT was saying a great deal in the early 70s...

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